Jamaica claims 8,943 new hotel rooms in a $4.2 billion pipeline, but the projects with brand flags attached are the ones stalling. When you decompose the per-key costs on the delayed projects, the financing gaps stop being surprising.
Sandals turned a forced hurricane closure into a $200 million blank-canvas renovation across three Jamaica properties. The interesting question isn't whether the rooms look better... it's what happens to the tech stack when you rebuild everything from the ground up.
Three Jamaican resorts closed since Hurricane Melissa could have reopened in May. Instead, Sandals pushed the timeline to December and tripled the spend. That tells you everything about where their head is... and it's a play more operators should understand.
When a Category 4 hurricane shut down three of your flagship resorts, you've got two options: fix what broke, or rip the whole thing down to the studs and build the hotel you always wished you had. Sandals chose door number two.
