Stewart PHILIPSBURG, St Maarten:
"AIR JAMAICA wants to spread its wings toward St Maarten to increase its Caribbean presence and a developer wants to build a Sandals and Beaches Resorts location here," officials attending a business conference said.
"St Maarten is a destination we would want to fly to," said Allen Chastenet, Air Jamaica's vice president for marketing, on Friday. "We would have flown here earlier, but the island doesn't meet our core hub."
The Caribbean island in the Netherlands Antilles could be on Air Jamaica's itinerary by late next year, but first the airline needs to acquire additional aircraft to handle the flights, Chastanet said.
Air Jamaica currently flies to 28 destinations in the Caribbean, North America, and Europe, according to its website. The carrier will begin flights to Belize on November 21. The president of the Sandals and Beaches Resorts chain, Gordon 'Butch' Stewart, wants to develop a location in St Maarten, said Tourism Commissioner Theo Heyliger. Stewart, also chairman of Air Jamaica, promised to return to St Maarten to have a closer look at Mullet Bay and Dawn Beach on the west coast, Heyliger said. Sandals has seven resorts in Jamaica, three in St Lucia and one each in the Bahamas and Antigua, according to its website.
Chastanet and Stewart were attending the seventh annual CaribNews Business Conference, which also attracted 300 United States and Caribbean business leaders and officials to the event Friday through Sunday.
Taken from The Barbados Nation website
