A tourism career wasn’t something Maureen Barnes-Smith trained for, in fact she says she got into the business “quite by accident.” But after nearly three decades in the industry, it’s safe to say she’s made her mark, which is why TravelPulse Canada is featuring her in our Women in Travel series.

“I actually migrated to Canada from Jamaica in October 1992 and when the first breath of winter came, I went straight back,” she tells us with a laugh.

She ended up coming back the following April and decided to stay; she had family and friends here and was already familiar working with Canadians, due to her job at the University of the West Indies, building linkages between her home country and Canada.

“I was really struggling as to whether I was going to stay in Canada or go back to Jamaica to further my education. It was around that time that Mr. Butch Stewart was very much on the radar in Jamaica because of all the work he was doing to bolster the local economy. Sandals was still growing and he had just started the Jamaica Observer newspaper, so I knew him not as a tourism person, but as a patriotic Jamaican. He was such a maverick and such a powerhouse in Jamaica, so when I heard that there was a Sandals office in Canada, I thought “Oh, my God, wouldn't it be nice to work for them?”

And so her career began. Barnes-Smith is now Vice President of Sales & Marketing for Unique Vacations (Canada) where she has been an integral part of the organization for 29 years since joining the Toronto office in 1994, holding a series of progressively responsible roles including operations and human resources. In 2009, she was promoted to Director of Sales & Marketing and again in March 2021 to her current position of Vice President.

Barnes-Smith says she didn’t immediately see challenges women face at the start of her career, though there were some undertones that became more obvious as she moved into mid-management positions.

“Being female was one issue, but being a black female was an additional issue. When I started, my boss was a female, so that initial glass ceiling for women was not immediately perceived by myself. But as you kind of got through and you work through, you saw within the industry that we worked in, that she was the only female.

It certainly became more glaring when I became a leader of a team. There were so many times, and I remember this distinctly, where I would have colleagues set up a meeting for us and they wouldn't say who the boss was. And when I went in, they automatically assumed that the white male was the boss, and I was the assistant.

I haven’t had anybody really say I’m not supposed to be in the room, it’s been more of a surprise factor; like wow, you’re here and actually competent.”

But while she had those experiences outside the organization, within the Sandals family Barnes-Smith says she always felt supported, and Stewart never shied away from having women in strong positions in his company.

“Butch Stewart gave you a seat at the table. And yes, you knew he had power, kind of C-suite powerbrokers that were mostly male. But then that was the world that we lived in. And in a sense, it’s the world that we pretty much still live in. But within that, there was always space for you to have your input.”

Something Barnes-Smith says she’s learned most from her time at Sandals, directly from Stewart, is the importance of travel agents.

“Mr. Stewart always said the travel agent is a backbone of Sandals. Our B2B business with our travel agents and our tour operators is what keeps us in Canada front and centre. I can’t say thank you enough to our travel agents. So many of them have been with us since the beginning, and though we lost some during COVID, most have come back. I think as a distribution channel, travel agents are so integral to everything we do, because they understand the brand.”

It's clear Barnes-Smith brings a unique mix of approachability and knowledge to those she comes across. That’s something she attributes to her father.

“It’s something you struggle with every day: Am I getting it right? You need a strong moral compass which I had, growing up from a strong Jamaican father. He was a fearless Christian man and though slight in stature, when he opened his mouth you listened. He always set the bar for me.

When I was young, he would put a mark on the door. He said, this is your mark, you never go lower, you allow people to come up to your level. And I've lived by that all my life. I've never ever felt I wasn't good enough.

I've never been limited by my gender or my race, because of that. I always felt if you allow me to speak, then you're going to understand what I have to bring to the table.”