AC Marriott Nears Completion

• March 15 2019
• http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/business-report/ac-marriott-eyes-june-1-opening-kingston-s-newest-hotel-will-be-big-on-guest-comfort-meetings-and-conventions_159277

Looking on from outside the construction fence on Lady Musgrave Road in St Andrew, pedestrians and motorists see only the impressive edifice of the AC Marriott hotel that the operators intend to officially open on June 1.

If, however, you are fortunate enough to get onto the property, you will see a beehive of activity as construction of the 220-room hotel is near completion under the leadership of the Sandals Resorts International and Appliance Traders Ltd team.

The AC Marriott is an initiative of the Gordon “Butch” Stewart family enterprise and represents the family's first major tourism venture outside of its Sandals/Beaches resorts trademark.

The hotel, which adds to the growing skyline of Jamaica's capital, is a departure from the resort-centric Sandals brand and is being spearheaded by Sandals/ATL Group's Deputy Chairman Adam Stewart and managed by General Manager Koen Hietbrink, who has trained for the last two years with Sandals Resorts across several Caribbean islands.

The brand “offers concept-driven, turn-key customisation of guest room and public space design built for a new kind of guest — a creative, entrepreneurial-minded and modern global traveller — who prefers to have fewer things but expects them to be better than good”, the Marriott literature states.

Those are standards that Hietbrink is positive will be met by the new property.

A key to that is ensuring that the hotel's 150 team members meet exacting service delivery standards that fit with AC Hotels founder Antonio Catalan's mantra that “hotels should be so much more than just lodging; they should serve as an escape, an oasis from the mundane”.