NEW YORK, NY–The Caribbean re­mains a great busi­ness in­vest­ment and still of­fers "the sin­gle best hol­i­day prod­uct in the world", says chair­man of San­dals Re­sorts In­ter­na­tion­al Gor­don "Butch" Stew­art, the man who built a tourism em­pire from the ground-up and re­mains ac­tive in in­vest­ments across the re­gion.Ja­maican-born Stew­art's pearls of wis­dom to glob­al in­vestors come as he gears up to re­ceive the 2014 In­vest Caribbean Now Lead­er­ship Award on June 4 at the Har­vard Club in New York City.

In­vest Caribbean Now, the biggest glob­al sum­mit on the Caribbean out­side the re­gion, is ho­n­our­ing Stew­art for his in­vest­ment, com­mit­ment and ded­i­ca­tion to the Caribbean "and for in­spir­ing us all." Past ICN ho­n­ourees have in­clud­ed Sir Richard Bran­son and Roy­al Caribbean Cruis­es In­ter­na­tion­al.Stew­art, for­mer CEO of Air Ja­maica and pres­i­dent of the Ja­maica Ho­tel and Tourist As­so­ci­a­tion, calls it "an ho­n­our to be"con­sid­ered a leader among those serv­ing and suc­ceed­ing inthe Caribbean",

"My work here, the com­pa­nies I have built, the jobs we have cre­at­ed and the peo­ple we have served are the best ex­am­ple of what is pos­si­ble in the Caribbean and why we must con­tin­ue to in­vest here at home," he added.

Stew­art has urged Caribbean gov­ern­ments to con­sid­er the last­ing ef­fects of the in­vest­ment they ac­cept on their re­sources and their con­stituen­cies, es­pe­cial­ly as "it's not sim­ply about land de­vel­op­ment or ac­qui­si­tion but about in­vest­ing in peo­ple, giv­ing them the re­sources and op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­tribute in re­al, mean­ing­ful ways".

"Hu­man cap­i­tal will al­ways re­turn the great­est re­ward and is where thought­ful lead­ers spend their time and their re­sources," said the for­mer pres­i­dent of the Pri­vate Sec­tor Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Ja­maica and the coun­try's one time di­rec­tor of tourism.

"As a pri­vate in­vestor in the re­gion, our foot­print is some­thing we think about every day and we are mak­ing con­sci­en­tious de­ci­sions to be good, ef­fec­tive cor­po­rate cit­i­zens. The fact is job cre­ation leads to im­mense op­por­tu­ni­ty in ed­u­ca­tion and no oth­er sec­tor is ca­pa­ble of dis­trib­ut­ing wealth as rapid­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly as the tourism dol­lar."

CaribPR Wire