Observer Business Leader Award gets new home

• December 16 2018
• http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/observer-business-leader_152237

THE AC Marriott Hotel will be the new home for the Jamaica Observer Business Leader Award presentation and banquet, replacing the Jamaica Pegasus hotel which has hosted the annual gala event for all but two of its 21 iterations.

Originally scheduled to climax this month with the naming of the Business Leader, the 22nd renewal of the award has been pushed back to the first half of 2019 as the Observer awaits the completion and opening of the hotel, which is now at an advanced stage of construction on Lady Musgrave Road in St Andrew.

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 hotel trademark. The capital city project, a departure from the resort-centric Sandals brand, is being spearheaded by the group's Deputy Chairman Adam Stewart.

Stewart says he is looking forward to hosting the Business Leader Award presentation, a programme that has emerged over the past two decades as the country's foremost celebration of entrepreneurism.

“It is an honour to host the top-brass corporate event in Jamaica,” he notes. “This will perhaps be our first major event to showcase one of our investments in the island and the family's continued commitment to driving the country's economic growth and development.”

With the AC Marriott as the new venue for the yearly gala, the Stewarts are aligning two important corporate interests: the family owns the Jamaica Observer of which Adam is deputy chairman, and it is the newspaper that is the promoter of the award.

Stewart says that guests at the banquet and other clients will be seduced by the building's avant-garde architecture and the keen attention to ergonomics and other design details. The ballroom where the Business Leader Award presentation will take place will seat over 500 comfortably — an important factor for an event that regularly attracts close to 600 guests.