Maureen Barnes-Smith is the Vice President of Sales & Marketing, Canada for Unique Vacations (Canada) Inc., an affiliate of the worldwide representatives of Sandals Resorts and Beaches Resorts, a globally recognized brand of luxury all-inclusive resorts based in the Caribbean. She has been an integral part of the organization for over 30 years since joining the Toronto office in 1994, holding a series of progressively responsible roles, including operations and human resources. In 2009, she assumed the leadership role as Director of Sales & Marketing, which she held for over a decade, prior to her promotion to Vice President in March 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Under her strategic leadership, the Unique Vacations (Canada) Inc. team has flourished. Maureen has consistently spearheaded national expansion and growth across Canada in both sales revenues and personnel, all while maintaining great fiscal prudence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Responsible for the resort company\u2019s overall sales and marketing strategies in the Canadian market, she works closely with airlines, tour operators, tourist boards, retail travel agency partners and travel media, resulting in an unprecedented achievement of doubling business revenues in just six years. In addition, her ability to lead through crisis and keep her team motivated enabled the UVI Canada team to recover and surpass its pre-COVID numbers in less than two years. Equally adept at negotiating with senior-level executives or frontline retail partners, Maureen\u2019s straightforward and sincere communication style serves her well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a motivational mentor to team members under her direction, she manages a national sales and marketing staff of over 20 individuals \u2013 the largest operation of any Caribbean resort chain in Canada \u2013 including Business Development Managers, an inside sales department, group sales, agency training and reservations. The Canadian sales team is regularly acknowledged with company-wide awards and achievements during annual Global Sales meetings, and the Sandals and Beaches brands have consistently won several annual trade awards in Canada.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her commitment to her Caribbean community remains steadfast through her many volunteer positions, including Director of Philanthropy for Sandals Foundation (Canada) and several roles (Past President\/Vice President\/Special Projects Coordinator) with Clarendon College Alumni Association, her high school alma mater in Jamaica.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maureen is an honours degree graduate of the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica and holds two Master’s degrees, an MBA (York University) and a Master of Arts – Communication and Culture (York \/ TMU University).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Maureen Barnes-Smith is the Vice President of Sales & Marketing, Canada for Unique Vacations (Canada) Inc., an affiliate of the worldwide representatives of Sandals Resorts and Beaches Resorts, a globally recognized brand of luxury all-inclusive resorts based in the Caribbean….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7275,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"speaker-category":[161],"speaker-tags":[],"location":[],"class_list":["post-7323","speaker","type-speaker","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","speaker-category-non-featured"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/travelpresslive.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/speaker\/7323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/travelpresslive.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/speaker"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/travelpresslive.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/speaker"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travelpresslive.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travelpresslive.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7323"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/travelpresslive.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/speaker\/7323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7324,"href":"https:\/\/travelpresslive.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/speaker\/7323\/revisions\/7324"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travelpresslive.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/travelpresslive.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"speaker-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travelpresslive.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/speaker-category?post=7323"},{"taxonomy":"speaker-tags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travelpresslive.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/speaker-tags?post=7323"},{"taxonomy":"location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travelpresslive.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/location?post=7323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}