Newsletter · · Ashutosh Agarwal

Royal Caribbean Buys Half of Sandals as Travel Firms Chase the Whole Trip - Travel, Airlines & Leisure Weekly - Week of September 26, 2026

Travel and hospitality podcasts centered on Royal Caribbean's $3 billion deal for half of Sandals, with Uber, Airbnb and the big hotel chains all pushing to own the whole trip, for the week of September 26, 2026 (coverage window September 20 to 26).

Travel, Airlines & Leisure Weekly

Week of September 26, 2026: Royal Caribbean Buys Half of Sandals as Travel Firms Chase the Whole Trip

The one-paragraph version

This week, travel podcasts talked about one story more than any other. Royal Caribbean is paying $3 billion for half of Sandals Resorts, the Caribbean all-inclusive chain. Two separate shows covered it, and both landed on the same big idea: travel companies no longer want to sell just one piece of your trip. They want the cruise, the hotel before it, the resort after it, the ride to the airport and the loyalty points that tie it all together. Uber and Airbnb are going after hotel bookings for the same reason. Beyond that story, we heard from the CEO of Belmond (the luxury trains and hotels business owned by LVMH), a Mediterranean cruise line that is growing on purpose into a niche, and a Texas founder who charges $129 for a bus ride and competes with airlines.

1. Royal Caribbean + Sandals: why a cruise line wants a beach resort

The deal, in plain numbers

On Behind the Stays ("This Week in Hospitality: Royal Caribbean Buys Half of Sandals, Uber's Hotel Play, and Big Hotel Brands Start Betting on Creators," September 25), a panel of hotel operators and travel experts went through the terms (Behind the Stays):

  • Royal Caribbean is buying a 50% stake in Sandals Beach Resorts for $3 billion, set up as a joint venture (a shared business the two companies own together).
  • The price is about 10 times forward EBITDA. EBITDA is a rough measure of a company's operating profit before interest, taxes and accounting charges for wear and tear; "forward" means next year's expected figure. In plain terms, Royal Caribbean is paying about ten years of Sandals' expected yearly operating profit for its half.
  • The deal is paid for with committed borrowing from Morgan Stanley and is expected to close in early 2027.
  • For scale: Royal Caribbean carries about 9 million passengers a year. Sandals hosts about 1 million guests a year, and 40% of them are repeat guests. The panel framed the target as the roughly $2 trillion global vacation market.
  • Sandals is building in Exuma, Barbados, Runaway Bay and St. Vincent. Separately, Royal Caribbean plans to start river cruising in 2027.

On Brew Markets ("McDonald's Investor Pitch & Royal Caribbean Lands on Sandals," September 23), Morning Brew's Dylan Lewis and Hannah Horvath added the market's reaction (Brew Markets). The deal values the whole Sandals and Beaches resort business at $6 billion and covers 20 resorts. Royal Caribbean shares fell about 6% when the deal was announced, wiping out roughly $4 billion in market value, before winning some of that back. The hosts also noted that the company's most recent quarter brought in $4.8 billion in revenue, that demand was "stronger than expected," and that it raised its full-year forecast. In other words, investors worried about the deal even though the core cruise business is doing well.

Why do it? Three reasons from the podcasts

1. Cruise lines only "own" their customers for a week or two. Edwin Kramer, a luxury hotel consultant and former hotel general manager, said on Behind the Stays that cruise lines have their customers for only one or two weeks a year. Owning resorts on land lets Royal Caribbean earn money from the nights before and after a cruise. It also spreads its bets across more Caribbean real estate, so it depends less on a few private island destinations.

2. Sell more to people who already love you. Hannah Horvath put it simply on Brew Markets: "Royal wants to figure out right now is how to make more money from the people who are already taking its cruises, and Sandals gives them a pretty obvious way to do that."

3. Cut out the middlemen. Dylan Lewis pointed out that selling a cruise and a resort stay together "helps cut out a lot of those middlemen like Booking.com and Expedia from that transaction. And it reduces... those overall acquisition costs." ("Acquisition costs" means what a company spends to win each customer, such as commissions and advertising.)

Cruise is growing, but it can't just build more ships

Scott Eddy, a travel and hospitality commentator on Behind the Stays, gave the bigger picture. He called cruise companies "some of the most interesting businesses in the entire hospitality industry." He made two points:

  • Cruisers are getting younger. He said the average passenger age is falling by 1.5 to 2 years every year. That is the opposite of the old stereotype.
  • Shipyards are booked for 10 to 15 years. A cruise line cannot quickly add capacity by ordering new ships. So if it wants to grow faster, it has to buy into nearby businesses, such as resorts.

Eddy also made a bold prediction: Royal Caribbean will buy the rest of Sandals within three years.

Ben Wolff, who runs boutique hotels, said the real value is keeping "real estate, operations, and brand under one roof": owning the buildings, running them and controlling the name all at once.

Everyone wants to be part of someone else

Dylan Lewis summed up the week's mood on Brew Markets: "It feels a little bit like every travel company right now wants to be a part of some other travel company." He added that Marriott, Hyatt and Hilton "have been aggressively expanding into all-inclusives," so Royal Caribbean is walking into a crowded space. His co-hosts noted that Royal Caribbean and Carnival already sit "at the top for overall market share" in cruising. His closing line: "If you're going to get trapped in an ecosystem, I think one with beaches and pina coladas is probably not the worst one to get trapped in."

Why it matters: The 6% drop in the stock shows investors are not sure a cruise line should run resorts. The podcast view is more positive. Royal Caribbean has loyal, repeat customers, it can't add ships fast, and every extra night it sells directly is a night Booking.com or Expedia doesn't take a cut of. The question to watch is whether the joint venture actually brings in cruise passengers and resort guests who book both.

2. Uber and Airbnb want your hotel booking too

The same Behind the Stays podcast showed the "own the whole trip" idea spreading well beyond cruise lines (Behind the Stays).

Airbnb: from "forget hotels" to listing them

  • Airbnb now has about 4,000 hotels on its new hotel-listing format, launched in September 2026.
  • Hotels are still only a single-digit percentage of nights booked on Airbnb, but that business is growing about three times faster than Airbnb's core home-rental business.
  • Airbnb is going after 3- to 4-star hotels, not 5-star luxury properties.

Ben Wolff described this as a shift from ideology to pragmatism: Airbnb used to tell travelers to skip hotels, and now it lists them. He called the change "necessary for stock growth."

Uber: a travel "super app" in the making

  • Uber operates in more than 70 countries, and its Uber One membership has more than 50 million paying members (at $9.99 to $11.99 a month).
  • Uber One members get 10% to 20% discounts at some Expedia hotels. Expedia's own loyalty program, One Key, has about 150 million members.
  • Vrbo vacation rentals are coming to the Uber app later in 2026.

Zach Busekrus of Journey said the real prize is "shared data across touch points." If one app sees your flight, your airport ride, your hotel, your dinner reservation and your tickets, it can sell you each next step. He expects the industry to consolidate into one dominant travel "super app" over time.

Hotels bet on creators

IHG, the owner of Holiday Inn and InterContinental, launched a Creator Collective: a standing roster of about 100 social-media creators, reviewed once a year, in place of one-off paid posts. Ben Wolff's advice for brands going this route: "Audiences smell PR jargon in three seconds and scroll in four."

Why it matters: Booking a hotel used to mean going to a hotel brand or an online travel agency. Now ride-hailing apps, home-rental apps and cruise lines all want a piece of it. For the big hotel chains and for Booking and Expedia, that means more competition for the same traveler.

3. Belmond's CEO: selling time, not rooms

On The Stanza ("The Thesis Behind Slow Luxury: Why Belmond Treats Time As The Product with Dan Ruff," September 24), Belmond CEO Dan Ruff explained how LVMH's luxury travel business thinks about growth (The Stanza).

Luxury trains are a real business

Belmond has run trains for about 50 years. Its best-known train, the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, was launched in 1982 by founder Jim Sherwood. The lineup now includes the Britannic Explorer (launched from London last year), the Royal Scotsman, the Eastern & Oriental Express, and trains in Peru and Scotland, with new routes in England's Lake District, Wales and Cornwall. A new 12-person private dining car on the British Pullman, called Celia, has been "blowing up since we launched it a couple weeks ago," Ruff said.

Ruff's case for trains as a business: "The overall profitability of the [train] business is similar to a hotel if you get it right." And because very few companies run luxury trains, "there isn't so much supply, which creates the opportunity for us to really be exclusive... strong rates, good margins." He called Belmond "fundamentally the global leader in luxury train travel."

Owning the buildings, and growing slowly

Unlike the big hotel chains, which mostly manage or franchise hotels that other people own, Belmond owns nearly all of its hotels. The one exception he named is Romazzino in Sardinia, owned by a Qatari group. Its hotels include Hotel Cipriani in Venice, Splendido in Portofino (a 600-year-old former monastery now in a multi-year restoration), Villa San Michele, Copacabana Palace in Rio, Cap Juluca and Maroma. Belmond is in the middle of a 10-year renovation program. It sold El Encanto in Santa Barbara last summer, its last US hotel, even though Americans are still its biggest group of guests.

Ruff was frank about how LVMH changed the company: "LVMH forced Belmond to slow down." He recalled being told: "You are comparing yourself with the big players. I want you to be best-in-class with the small players but at scale." His own summary: "We're not going to grow to grow. We are going to grow to continually improve."

"Slow luxury" and AI

The idea behind the brand: "Our guests... their greatest value is time. So we say at Belmond, when you're with us, your time is invested rather than spent."

On artificial intelligence, Ruff is a fan, but only behind the scenes: "AI across hospitality is going to be a giant disruptor... I'm super bullish... I don't want our guests ever to see the robots. I want them to feel the people."

Why it matters: Belmond is the opposite of the Royal Caribbean model. It grows slowly, owns its buildings and competes on scarcity, not scale. Ruff's point that a well-run luxury train earns hotel-like profits is a useful reminder that the most profitable part of travel is often where supply is hardest to add.

4. Celestyal: a small cruise line that picked a niche

On The Insider Travel Report Podcast ("How Celestyal Is Now a Cruise Specialist for the Entire Mediterranean," September 21), host James Schillinglaw spoke with John DiOrio, who runs North America for Celestyal Cruises (The Insider Travel Report Podcast).

Celestyal, known for Greek island cruises, is expanding across the whole Mediterranean rather than trying to go global:

  • New winter itineraries for 2026–27 and 2027–28 on the Celestyal Discovery: Athens to Barcelona, and Barcelona/Tarragona to Lisbon, which can be combined into 14-night trips.
  • The Celestyal Journey's first season on a new route in 2027–28: Athens to Istanbul, just 7 sailings.
  • 14 new western Mediterranean ports, including Malaga, Gibraltar, Casablanca, Cadiz, Tangier, Valencia, Palma and Sete.
  • Everything is now on sale through November 2028.

DiOrio said: "We're just authentically a Mediterranean cruise line, really sailing all in the Med. That's our playground right now," stretching "as far west as Lisbon to as far east as Istanbul."

He also explained the timing, which says something about demand: "We obviously want to always have at least two years of inventory available. We were already getting some requests from advisors for booking summer 28. So we knew back in July we had to do this sooner than later." In other words, travel advisors were asking to book trips nearly two years away.

The pitch to travelers is value. The fare includes main dining meals, soft drinks with meals, Wi-Fi and tips. "The only thing you have to pay for when you get on board the ship is shore excursions," DiOrio said, plus extras like specialty dining and cocktails. The line's fall promotion is called "Uncrowded, Unforgettable, Authentically Med."

Why it matters: Big cruise lines are growing by buying resorts. Smaller ones like Celestyal are growing by owning a region. Advisors asking about summer 2028 already is another sign that cruise demand is holding up.

5. Vonlane: the $129 bus that competes with airlines

On The Deal Table ("Alex Danza, Vonlane: They Said Nobody Would Pay $99 to Ride a Bus," September 21), Vonlane founder and CEO Alex Danza made a direct case against short flights (The Deal Table).

Vonlane runs premium coaches with 22 first-class leather seats between cities in Texas, Tennessee and Georgia. The numbers he shared:

  • 1.8 million passengers to date, 180,000 trips, 35–36 million miles traveled.
  • 12 routes and more than 500 departures a week, with 236% growth over three years. About 225 employees.
  • The fare launched at $99 in 2014 and is now $129.
  • 60% of trips are booked within seven days of travel.
  • Its Net Promoter Score, a standard customer-loyalty survey, is consistently above 90. He compared that with airlines, which he put in the 60s.

Why a bus can beat a plane

Danza's argument is about total travel time. His sweet spot is 200 to 250 miles. A 50-minute flight, he said, really takes 3 to 3.5 hours door to door once you add getting to the airport, security and waiting at the gate. That's about the same as his bus ride, and on the bus you can work the whole way. Business travelers want productivity: a quiet cabin and Starlink Wi-Fi, so they can arrive with a clear inbox.

He also said Vonlane benefits when air travel gets harder. During the last government shutdown, when TSA staffing problems slowed airports, Vonlane's passenger numbers rose 30%.

The money side

Each new coach costs about $1.2 million all-in, compared with the tens of millions an airplane costs. Coaches earn money for 12 years or more; Vonlane's first two vehicles are still running. Danza said the model has a "fabulous IRR" (internal rate of return, meaning the yearly return on the money invested), with "no need for bailouts."

It wasn't easy. COVID cost the company 2.5 to 3 years of growth. It shut down for six weeks starting July 2020, took about two years to get back to pre-COVID capacity, and at one point saw fuel costs rise 80%.

Why it matters: This is one of the few airline-related threads this week, and it comes from outside the airline industry. Short routes are where airlines are most exposed: airport hassle can double the trip, and a comfortable, predictable alternative can take business travelers. It's a small company, but it's a clear example of short-haul flying facing ground competition.

6. Quick hits

Cruising as a first trip, and a business. On Money Making Conversations Master Class (September 25), host Rashawn McDonald spoke with Angelita Long, who owns Global Travel Design, a Cruise Planners franchise (Money Making Conversations Master Class). Her pitch for cruising is simplicity: "your cruise fare, it covers your accommodation, your dining... the entertainment and transportation to the multiple destinations that you get to visit." She noted that Norwegian Cruise Line gives veterans an extra 10% off, that Margaritaville offers veterans a free three-night cruise from West Palm Beach each year, and that she cut a Universal vacation package quoted at "over $4,000" elsewhere to $2,200 using a military discount. On starting her business, she described being one of only a handful of Black professionals at an industry event: "black people, we spend a lot of money in travel. I said, if the table isn't big enough for us to fit there, we don't have to make our own table." Her promise to new cruisers: "once you come the first time, you're going to keep coming back."

A UK restaurant operator on building hospitality brands. On Brave Bold Brilliant (September 21), Shereen Ritchie, group CEO of Kuvi Hospitality and former managing director of Leon, talked about launching Coyo Taco in the UK (Brave Bold Brilliant). She led Leon's 2017–2019 turnaround after a very weak 2016, before its sale to EG Group for £100 million in 2021, and earlier grew Buns from Home from 6 to about 30 sites in 18 months. Coyo Taco's first UK site (3,500 square feet) was selling 150 liters of frozen margaritas by its second week. A second, 1,500-square-foot site in Soho was close to signing, with a six-to-eight-week build. Her view on the job: "If you come for your mum's 70th birthday, that photo is going to be on your mantelpiece to the day that you die. And I was part of that."