Gordon “Butch” Stewart, the founder of popular vacation resort chain Sandals, has died at 79.
According to his son Adam Stewart, his father kept a recent health diagnosis private and died suddenly.
“He was a marketing genius and talented showman, but those who knew him best recognized that he was a dreamer who could dream bigger and better than anyone. It was often said: the best thing for people around him to do is be dream catchers,” Adam Stewart wrote on the Sandals website.
“That’s why he always credited his success to the incredible team around him, why he listened intently when it came to creating innovative things that would excite and delight our guests, and why it is so important that I remind you today of all days, that we will all continue to be his dream catchers.”
Born in Jamaica, Stewart founded the first Sandals resort in Montego Bay in 1981 and expanded to 16 other locations in the Caribbean.
Jamaica tourism minister Edmund Bartlett praised Stewart for helping make the island nation a vacation hotspot.
“Butch was truly an icon and innovator, philanthropist and perhaps the greatest marketer tourism has ever seen,” Stewart said in a statement to the Daily News. “I think that we can look back on his life and times and draw inspiration from the success that he has had. But I think, most importantly, we can be inspired by his resilience and the fact that he has started from nowhere, and has ended up as being one of the most celebrated human beings that Jamaica has produced in the last century.”
Stewart is survived by his wife Cheryl and their seven children.
