Per­haps the great­est debt of grat­i­tude that the Caribbean has to the late great Gor­don Butch Stew­art is the con­fi­dence that he has giv­en to the re­gion, that al­lows a peo­ple so im­pact­ed by slav­ery, in­den­ture­ship and colo­nial­ism to show the world that we can in­no­vate and gen­er­ate wealth based on our nat­ur­al re­sources, tal­ent and smarts.

In Stew­art, Ja­maica and the Caribbean pro­duced a man who saw the pos­si­bil­i­ty of of­fer­ing a lux­u­ry prod­uct to mid­dle and up­per mid­dle class cou­ples and fam­i­lies, for a price that they could af­ford.

For sure, San­dals and Beach­es are no bud­get re­sorts, but they brought lux­u­ry va­ca­tion pack­ages to many who could, but for a while, live like the rich and fa­mous.

Gor­don Butch Stew­art dropped out of school when he was on­ly 16 and be­gan his ca­reer at the Dutch-owned Cu­ra­cao Trad­ing Com­pa­ny, where he even­tu­al­ly rose to the po­si­tion of sales man­ag­er.

He ex­it­ed the com­pa­ny in 1968 and start­ed his own busi­ness called Ap­pli­ance Traders, Ltd (ATL).

Orig­i­nal­ly found­ed as an air-con­di­tion­ing ser­vice and dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­ny, ATL added re­frig­er­a­tors, freez­ers and oth­er ap­pli­ances.

In 1981 he bought Bay Roc: a run­down ho­tel on one of Mon­tego Bay’s largest beach­es.

De­spite his lack of ho­tel ex­pe­ri­ence, sev­en months and $4 mil­lion in ren­o­va­tions lat­er, San­dals Mon­tego Bay opened its doors.

Stew­art had no ex­pe­ri­ence in the tourism in­dus­try but he un­der­stood that if you pro­vid­ed a qual­i­ty ser­vice that was sec­ond to none, if you dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed your prod­uct and cre­at­ed val­ue then you were like­ly to suc­ceed.

Like all en­tre­pre­neurs, Stew­art had his fail­ures. The first time I met him, I was a young jour­nal­ist and was sent to cov­er the launch of Air Ja­maica’s non-stop flight be­tween Nor­man Man­ley Air­port and Pi­ar­co. Some may re­mem­ber the all stop BWIA flights to Kingston that stopped off in Bar­ba­dos and then An­tigua and on to Ja­maica, that took longer than a flight to New York City. Air Ja­maica’s for­ay in in­to the T&T mar­ket was meant to break the mo­nop­oly.

It nev­er worked out. BWIA launched a fare war, start­ed fly­ing non stop and ran Air Ja­maica out of the mar­ket. Added to this, the cham­pagne flights Air Ja­maica had with pas­sen­gers pay­ing mau­by mon­ey meant that Stew­art’s en­try in­to the air­line busi­ness was not a suc­cess.

Stew­art had oth­er busi­ness­es, in­clud­ing Ja­maica’s sec­ond dai­ly news­pa­per, the Ob­serv­er. But his lega­cy is for­ev­er writ­ten in the tourism busi­ness.

San­dals is a glob­al brand. It al­so has sig­nif­i­cant ver­ti­cal in­te­gra­tion with its own mar­ket­ing arm, it part­ners with air­lines to re­serve seats and in that process cre­ates greater de­mand and air­lift to their des­ti­na­tions.

For years, To­ba­go has com­plained about the is­sue of air­lift and tax­pay­ers have forked out tens of mil­lion of dol­lars over the years to pay air­lines to fly to the is­land.

The way this works, is that if your des­ti­na­tion does not gen­er­ate suf­fi­cient de­mand for the air­lines to fly prof­itably, then you have to pay the air­lines to fly. The hope is that over time you can de­vel­op the mar­ket and there­fore in­crease the num­bers suf­fi­cient­ly to en­sure the air­lines want to fly there by mak­ing the route prof­itable.

To­ba­go has not been able to do this, in part be­cause of the lack of mar­ket­ing spend, but if we are bru­tal­ly hon­est the ser­vice in To­ba­go is at best poor. There are al­so lim­it­ed sites and at­trac­tions and the en­ter­tain­ment is lim­it­ed.

The lack of vi­sion by To­bag­o­ni­ans in the tourism sec­tor, where there is the view, shared by the Prime Min­is­ter and Tra­cy David­son Ce­les­tine, that the is­land is in com­pe­ti­tion with Trinidad, in­stead of see­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ties of in­te­grat­ing the ex­pe­ri­ences of vis­i­tors, is in part what has us in this sor­ry state.

It is a true tragedy that many To­bag­o­ni­ans and the Op­po­si­tion UNC did all they could to dam­age San­dals and im­pugn its name that led to the ul­ti­mate aban­don­ment of the project.

Now that San­dals has pulled out, the Gov­ern­ment seems in­ca­pable of ar­tic­u­lat­ing a new strat­e­gy to build a sus­tain­able tourism sec­tor that does not just lim­it it to en­cour­ag­ing Trinida­di­ans to spend the week­end in To­ba­go.

The con­struc­tion of the new air­port ter­mi­nal build­ing that tax­pay­ers are spend­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars on is like­ly to be a white ele­phant un­less To­ba­go sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­creas­es its ar­rivals.

Had To­bag­o­ni­ans and the UNC not done a job on the project and had the Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion re­spect­ed the need to com­mu­ni­cate, we might have been in a dif­fer­ent place now.

If you con­sid­er wher­ev­er the San­dals group op­er­ates, it has been a case of the ris­ing tide lift­ing all boats. Grena­da is a prime ex­am­ple of this and Stew­art was a mas­ter at un­der­stand­ing this.

Yes he had strong views and like all busi­ness­es de­mand­ed the abil­i­ty to get the nec­es­sary in­cen­tives and be able to repa­tri­ate his mon­ey to pay bills and as re­tained earn­ings. But that is busi­ness.

In Butch, the Caribbean has lost a great son and in this year of chal­lenge and pos­si­bil­i­ties,Butch’s pass­ing will leave a hole in terms of our col­lec­tive wis­dom on the way for­ward as a re­gion that is so tourism de­pen­dent .

It will al­so leave those to come and those who wit­nessed so much of his bril­liance an op­por­tu­ni­ty to say how for­tu­nate the re­gion was to have him.