How covid-19 'unified' competitors in the tourism industry

In a recent episode of “Influencers with Andy Serwer,” Sandals Resorts Executive Chairman Adam Stewart discussed how covid-19 and its effects on the economy has helped to ‘unify’ competitors in the tourism industry.

Video transcript

ADAM STEWART: We're seeing inflation skyrocket, the knock-on effect to the supply chain. Many of the things that we consume, at least partially, are made overseas, even if they're manufactured locally or they're finished locally through manufacturing. So for us, it's a tricky time. We've seen it-- you've seen it in the cruise industry. You've seen it in hospitality at large, new restaurants, bars. People being delayed because of unforeseeable challenges.

Our group also is in the car business. We represent BMW and Mini for this region in the Caribbean. Lots of supply issues, between chips and different elements made within the cars, the Ukraine war. So you just see it on a whole. And what it's forcing you to do is to be-- to work your relationships more from a shipping point of view on just moving our product from wherever it's made anywhere in the world.

And it's requiring a different level of infrastructure. We are running a team about 25% larger today than we were in 2019, like for like, just to get all the, what we call in the hotel industry, the circulating inventory. So the linens and the food and the-- all the elements that we can't procure locally. But even locally right now in Jamaica, we're having issues with glass bottles. So for alcohol made product, they are just unable to get the raw materials to finish the product--

ANDY SERWER: To put the rum in, for instance?

ADAM STEWART: To put the rum in, for example, exactly.

ANDY SERWER: Wow.

ADAM STEWART: So what I saw, though, Andy, which I just absolutely adored, is leading up to now, I saw in COVID a level of unification amongst competitors that was second to none. The cruise industry came together with the land-based hospitality industry, came together with the airlines, came together with associations like the World Travel and Tourism Council, and everyone worked daily on this recovery. And I think you're starting to see it more and more now on the supply chain side of people just trying to do everything they can to get over the hump of these supply chain issues. But it's affecting us.

On the labor side, it's a bit of a big mystery where everyone's going, where they're all going to work. There are a lot of people leaving and moving between industries. But I've never-- I've never actually seen-- maybe you can tell me. You may know better. But I've never actually seen a document that I understand well enough as to where everyone's going, including here in the Caribbean. People have been moving around more from industry to industry than probably ever before.

We being the employer of choice, between benefits and medical and pension and all the things that we've done, training, you-- as a part of being a team member of Sandals, you are automatically enrolled into what we call the Sandals Corporate University, where you can go from learning to read and write to literally getting your master's free of charge and underwritten by the company. So when you put it all together, Sandals really, all things being equal, has a lot more attrition and rotation of staff than probably most any other business in this hemisphere.