Recently, I’ve been getting some questions about Sandals Whitehouse European Village & Spa closing its doors. I wanted to reassure everyone that coming December 18th, our resort on Jamaica’s untouched South Coast will be back, even more magnificent than ever before!

In keeping with Sandals Resorts’ commitment of ensuring that each one of our guests has the most unforgettable and best vacation of their lives every single time they stay with us, we’re constantly refining, upgrading and improving our resorts. As the industry leaders, we’re always in search of something even better than perfection. We simply won’t settle for anything less.

So, that’s why we decided to temporarily close Whitehouse and spend the next few months taking this property to new heights. We’re leaving no stone unturned in our mission to create a completely renewed and spectacular resort for two people in love. Some of the major enhancements we’ve planned include totally spruced up public areas, improvements to our beachfront rooms and suites and a revamped and even more incredible Red Lane® Spa including an unbelievable health and wellness concept guaranteed to take your client’s vacation experience to a whole new level.

So get ready… in a few short months, for a brand new Sandals Whitehouse that will literally take your breath away!

Sandals Whitehouse is sure to make a BIG Splash when it reopens on December 18th, 2009

Tables for two under the stars around the Venetian piazza or at one seven gourmet specialty restaurants make for a perfect dining experience!

The endless stretch of beach at this five star diamond resort is second to none!

I’m so excited to talk about a new addition to the Sandals and Beaches family…as if we didn’t already have enough Stewart’s in the clan, we’re unbelievably proud to welcome another Stewart to our line-up, Martha Stewart that is!

We’re always looking for new ways to raise the bar on our product and reinforce our position as innovators in the industry, and that is why beginning January 2010 we’ll be ready to welcome your clients with all-new and exclusive Sandals and Beaches Weddings by Martha Stewart.

Martha and her team have personally designed the 5 customizable wedding packages, along with over-the-top enhancements like rose petal pathways, bonfire beach parties, tailored wedding gifts and welcome amenities, just to name a few, that will make any destination wedding experience at Sandals or Beaches Resort second to none.

And if this news wasn’t already exciting enough, we will introduce Martha Stewart craft classes for couples at Sandals Resorts to make your romantic vacation last a lifetime and craft camps for families to enjoy at Beaches Resorts!

I got to hand it to Martha and her team – after spending the weekend with her at Beaches Turks & Caicos, even I was feeling a little bit crafty.
        It was a feast fit for kings and queens, Caribbean-style, at the all-new Barefoot by the Sea Restaurant in the new Italian Village at Beaches Turks.

                                         There I am with our Chairman, Gordon “Butch” Stewart; Darcy Miller, Editorial Director for Martha Stewart Weddings, and of course, Martha Stewart.

Getting out onto the open waters of the Caribbean Sea in my boat and fishing with my friends is one of my favorite things in life. That’s why it was such a blast to be able to combine fishing with work, recently, when I took a crew from Florida Sport Fishing Magazine down to Royal Plantation Island at Fowl Cay in the Exumas, Bahamas. They were on-hand to shoot some pictures and do a story about the incredible fishing off of our amazing, 50-acre, private island retreat.  We spent hours fishing in waters so clear that, most times, you can see all the way down to the seafloor. The sun was bright, there were hardly any clouds in the sky and the fish were biting—just another perfect day in the Exumas.
 

Of course, after you’ve had a great day out at sea, there’s nothing quite like coming home to Fowl Cay and all of that unbelievable Royal Plantation service and luxury.
 

Boating, fishing and swimming in the Bahamas—now that’s what I call a fun day at the office!
 

Check me out in the “fighting chair” of my boat, Stew Fish. Doesn’t it look like I’m just about ready to reel in a big one?

Sometimes, you just have to jump in and cool off. As you can see, I was definitely loving life. Can you believe how clear the water is!

Scott Peiffer, Senior Designer from Unique Vacations in Miami and Creative Director behind Island Routes and Sandals Lifestyle, was on hand to help out with the shoot.

The whole gang poses with our catch. Judging from our big smiles and the size of those fish, I guess you could say it was a pretty successful day!
 

I always love to hear stories about how much our guests enjoyed their stays at Sandals and Beaches. So, I thought it was really cool when I heard about how much fun a really special guest recently had at Sandals Dunn’s River.
 

Big-time star and recording artist, Sean Kingston, took time from his busy schedule to come home to Jamaica and attend his mom’s wedding at Sandals Dunn’s River. Out of all the places they could have chosen to have this wedding Sean and his mom, Janice Turner, decided on Sandals Dunn’s River. And, they were really happy that they did!
 

Sean’s mom got the wedding of her dreams. And Sean loved the food, the staff and especially the Butler Service, which made sure he never had to lift a hand the whole time he was at the resort.
The other guests who were at Sandals Dunn’s River at the time also had a blast, when Sean got up on stage and sang some of his hit songs. Plus, he even signed autographs and posed for pictures with the guests and resort team members!
 

It sounds like good time was had by all. Just another incredible Sandals success story! Sean says he’ll “definitely come back and stay at Sandals Dunn’s River soon.” And we’ll be waiting to welcome him home.

It’s special wedding smiles all around, from Sandals Dunn’s River General Manager, Louis Grant; bride, Janice Turner; groom, Marvin James; and proud son, Sean Kingston.

Sean gets a kick out of posing with a Hobie Wave on the beach as his Billboard Top 5 hit song, “Fire Burning,” booms in the background.

Flashing a sign to let us know that everything is cool, especially him, Sean chills out in front of the pool at Sandals Dunn’s River.

Signing autographs for guests and team members, Sean shows some love to Wedding Attendant, Jermaine Hart, who made the wedding so perfect for Sean, his mom and his entire family.

Sean strikes a pose in between the two butlers who took such good care of him, Alshane Bailey, on the left, and Tamon Allen, on the right.

Sean Kingston in da house! Sean dances and does his thing up on stage for the lucky guests of Sandals Dunn’s River.
 

I sometimes get to meet the most amazing people...it's truly one of the great perks of my job.
 

I was recently down visiting Beaches Turks and Caicos and I got to spend some time with one of my long-time musical idols, Darryl “DMC” McDaniels, a founding member of the legendary hip hop band, Run-DMC.
When he wasn’t onstage or performing at the Scratch DJ Academy, I got the chance to hang out with him. What a cool guy! I found out that he is really, really interested in offering children the opportunity to lead a better life. When he was 35 years old he discovered that he was adopted and that drove him to try and give kids some of the same breaks that he had received. In fact, he even won the Congressional Angels in Adoption Award for his work with children in foster care.
 

Since one of the main initiatives of the Sandals Foundation is to give back to our community by uplifting the lives of children all across the Caribbean, DMC and I talked a lot about our mutual interest in transforming kids’ lives. He was so excited by what the Sandals Foundation has going on across the region that he immediately signed up to help.
 

So, stay tuned because DMC will be coming back to the islands to work with the team and the Sandals Foundation. He’ll be giving benefit concerts and donating his talent, time and financial resources to aid the children of the Caribbean. Together DMC and the Sandals Foundation can really make a difference for so many young people. I’m totally psyched and can’t wait to get started!

DMC and I strike a pose. A larger-than-life musical icon and me—what a rush!

DMC looks on with a smile as DJ Immortal from the Scratch DJ Academy works the turntable and Shock from the Electric Company rules the mic in an intimate performance for the local Turks and Caicos kids.

DMC and Shock, from The Electric Company, hang out with some lucky Turks and Caicos youngsters in front of a cool mural of Bob Marley in our very own, Trench Town.

DMC raps for the island kids in the Scratch DJ Academy, with DJ Immortal spinning by his side.

DMC rocks the house.

Two very talented guys strut their stuff—Joey Fatone joins DMC onstage and together they heat things up!

A priceless moment, as DMC interacts with one of his littlest fans. You can really see his strong connection to the kids.

When I need to kick back and really relax, there’s one spot that always calls out to me. I hop on a small plane or on a boat and head out to Royal Plantation Island at Fowl Cay in the Bahamian islands of the Exumas. This secluded private island in the middle of glass-clear seas is the perfect place to escape from everything. The most exotic form of transportation is a golf cart. Simplicity rules. Nature completely takes over—the sky is huge, the waters change everyday, the sand bars come and go and pretty soon tangibles become absolutely unimportant.
 

Whenever I get the chance, I love to come down here, jump in a boat and go island-hopping or fishing. Fowl Cay is the ideal spot to dive into the boating life and I just can’t get enough of it. No matter what you feel like doing or where you feel like exploring, the beauty of a boat is that you can change your address every day. I always enjoy introducing people to this incredible lifestyle. Everyone that comes here learns pretty quickly that, once you stop looking for an agenda, you find yourself.
 

So, since we had recently decided to immerse ourselves in the Royal Plantation vibe, it seemed like an excellent time to take a few key staffers from our Unique Vacations office in Miami down to Fowl Cay to see the latest addition to the Collection. I had a blast introducing them to this boating paradise. And they certainly had adventures along the way. One of our team members has always had a fear of flying. That was until she flew over in a puddle jumper plane—as the co-pilot—and before we had her hovering up in the air in our chopper. She loved it! One by one, each of these team members unwound and got into the laid-back, mellow rhythms of life on Royal Plantation Island.
 

The gang’s all here! The Unique Vacations group poses by their plane after a very safe and happy landing in paradise.

Now that’s what I call a warm welcome! There’s nothing as heartwarming as being greeted by your butlers with cold, refreshing drinks, big smiles and two of the island’s friendly golden labs.

That’s the Unique Vacations gang from Miami—with me right in the middle— sitting around the table after yet another delicious meal in Fowl Cay’s hilltop restaurant.

You have to see it with your own eyes to believe it—these pigs just jump in the ocean off of nearby Big Major Cay, where they live, and start swimming around!

What a gorgeous place—it looks even more amazing from the air!

A wave from the helicopter as the Chairman flies above Fowl Cay.
 

Last week, I was really excited to attend and participate in an incredible ceremony at Sandals Grande Ocho Rios, where I handed out the first ever Ultimate Team Member of the Year Award to Patricia Bucknor-Cox, Arts and Crafts Assistant at Beaches Boscobel. This award recognizes the person who—out of 10,000 hard-working, talented and dedicated Sandals, Beaches, Royal Plantation and Grand Pineapple Beach Resorts employees across the Caribbean—really possesses all of the qualities and characteristics of our ideal team members. And that’s an unbelievable achievement!
 

I am absolutely convinced that it is because of our group’s hospitality, spirit and commitment to excellence that our resorts continue to win the industry’s most prestigious awards year after year. That’s why we like to take every opportunity possible to pay tribute to these outstanding individuals. Over the past several months, we’ve recognized twenty of our most deserving employees as winners of their resorts’ Prestige Team Member Awards. Proudly, these exceptional individuals were the nominees for our First Annual “Ultimate Team Member of the Year” Award.
 

Patricia Bucknor-Cox represents everything that makes the Sandals and Beaches family so well-known and so well respected by our guests, by our industry peers and by travel agents like you. She really fills us with pride. Once again, I’d like to take this opportunity to offer my congratulations to Patricia Bucknor-Cox, the Sandals Ultimate Team Member of the Year!
 

Everyone loves “Auntie Pat”! It was an honor for me to present her with the Sandals Ultimate Team Member of the Year Award.
 

Standing tall with twenty of the most amazing people you’ll ever meet—our Prestige Team Award recipients from our resorts in Jamaica, Antigua, St. Lucia, the Bahamas and Turks & Caicos.

Here’s Patricia proudly showing a little love to her trophy!
 

At Sandals we’re never fully satisfied until we’ve gotten every detail just right—and even then we keep trying to make perfection that much more perfect. That’s why we just spent over $1 million to upgrade the already phenomenal beach at the Sandals Royal Bahamian Spa & Offshore Island.

Despite the fact that this resort was well known as one of the most (if not the most) luxurious destinations in the Bahamas, with its amazing suites, unprecedented Rolls Royce transfers, British-inspired Butler service and gorgeous offshore island, we still wanted to find ways to make this five-star resort even better. So, we transformed what was already a magnificent strip of coastline into a spectacular cove beach, providing your clients with more room to wiggle their toes in the sand, stretch out and bask in the sun, or take a romantic stroll down the beach.
 

I can’t tell you how gratifying it is for me, and for everyone in the Sandals and Beaches family, to take on projects like this and to constantly refine and improve every single aspect across every corner of each of our resorts. It’s all about looking for new ways to raise the bar on our product and we do it again and again just for you! When it comes to knowing the Caribbean and its best beaches, nobody does it better than Sandals!

Take a look at this shot of the old beach when it was still in the middle of its renovations—definitely a work in progress!

Check out what the Sandals Royal Bahamian beach looks like now after its million-dollar makeover. Talk about a huge success story!

Click here to see the full transformation in action. Don’t you just love before and after pictures?

Well, the event the entire team has been planning for, working towards and looking forward to for so long finally arrived—the Grand Opening of the brand new Italian Village at Beaches Turks and Caicos. And boy was it worth the wait! Thanks to the enthusiasm and hard work of so many people, this was one totally unforgettable celebration.

We kicked the festivities off on Thursday, May 14, with a really rocking “Welcome to Beaches” Barefoot Beach Party, where everyone could hang out, have a cocktail, listen to some music and dig their toes into the sand. From that point onwards it was a non-stop party, filled with superb activities, great performances and endless excitement. It was a blast to share this unbelievable occasion with so many partners and friends, as well as all of the incredible guests, Sandals and Beaches team members and celebrities, who all came down to the resort to mark this awesome day.

On Saturday, the Chairman, various dignitaries and I participated in the ribbon-cutting ceremony. We all snipped away and, just like that, the Italian Village was officially declared open. It was a proud moment for me, one that got even prouder, when the Chairman and I accepted an unprecedented two Six Star Diamond Awards from the American Academy of Hospitality Sciences (AAHS) for Beaches Turks and Caicos. Already the industry is recognizing just how spectacular the Italian Village and this spectacular resort truly are!

It was a very full and rewarding four days for everyone and especially for me. Along the way, I managed to get in some surfing, in our state-of-the-art surf simulator, and meet some amazing people, some of whom you might recognize. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again—I absolutely have one of the best jobs in the whole world!

Here I am with Jenna Elfman, one of the many celebrities who were with us at Beaches Turks and Caicos to celebrate this fantastic event.

The buzz was over-the-top. It seems I kind of got in the middle of something here, as Maria Menounos interviews Joey Fatone for Access Hollywood.

Check out the surfer-dudes! Here I am with Elijah Mack, the Marketing Team Rider from American Wave Machine (the folks who created our thrill-a-minute surf simulator), as well as Yoni Epstein, Director of Call Center Operations for Sandals and Beaches, as we strike a pose before riding the waves.

Wipeout! It took me a while to get the hang of this surfing thing, but it was really fun trying.

Smiles all around as two of our entertainment team members and I get into the swing of the party!

A good time was had by all, including every single person who made this event such a success. Here I am with all my boys, Mario Campbell, Beaches Turks and Caicos’ Chief Engineer; Ricky DuQuesnay, Sandals and Beaches Director of Food and Beverage; Jordan Samuda, Group Manager of Procurement; and Shawn DaCosta, Director of Operations.