Visitors Are Flocking to the Caribbean Island of St Maarten Right Now, Buoyed By a Newly-Completed Airport
The landings. The beaches. The restaurants. The entertainment. The sheer friendliness. St Maarten has always been one of the Caribbean’s most beloved destinations, and now the island is seeing more visitors than ever.
That included more than 600,000 stopover visitors in 2024, according to new Tourism Minister Grisha Heyliger-Marten, who caught up with Caribbean Journal at the recent Routes Americas conference in Nassau.
The renewed influx of visitors comes as the island just hit another milestone, with the completion of the arrival and departure terminals at the Princess Juliana International Airport, which was named Caribbean Airport of the Year in the recent Caribbean Travel Awards.
It’s been a long journey for the airport and the destination, out of the storms of 2017 and then into a pandemic.
“We are extremely happy that, after so many years, the airport is finally done,” she said.
The most intriguing development is that the island is considering a push to implement US Customs pre-clearance at the airport, which would mean travelers can go through US passport control and immigration in St Maarten and then take the equivalent of a domestic flight back to the US — something just two destinations, Aruba and Nassau, have done.
Before that decision, the airport is going to launch a carrying capacity study, she said.
“At that point we’ll decide if we do need t expand our airport, and then we take it from there. Do we want to do pre-clearance? It’s something we’re considering, and then we take it from there.”
All this growth means there’s more to think about for the island, from new additions at the airport to innovations in the visitor experience.
The latter, Heyliger-Marten told Caribbean Journal, includes turning Philipsburg into “more of an entertainment capital.”
“No one is looking just for shopping anymore,” she said. “People want entertainment. We have the best nightlife, we have the best food. We want to capitalize on that, and we want to transform the way our capital is behaving. We want to create something new, something innovative in town.”
The growth for the island has been robust and diverse — and another five hotels are currently in development. On the aviation side, St Maarten is attracting new routes from markets like Minneapolis to another increasingly important source market for the island: Canada.
“We don’t talk about Canada often enough,” said Michael Parent, commercial director at the airport, who joined Heyliger-Marten as part of the St Maarten delegation.
“We now have four different carriers now flying from Canada,” he said. “We’re also exploring other hubs in the Midwest.” Then there’s the increasingly important intra-regional market, anchored by local carrier Winair, which serves more than 30 different destinations in the region, Parent noted, reinforcing the airport’s position as an essential Caribbean air hub.
“Winair is actually our second highest passenger carrier after American Airlines,” he said.
When an island gets popular, there are several challenges — on the one hand, you have to sustain the growth; on the other hand, you have to manage it. A big part of that, the Minister said, is a deeper understanding of the importance of tourism to the economy.
“We have to protect the product,” she said. “This is our bread and butter and this is how we protect it.”
Heading to St Maarten? Find cheap flight options at Google Flights.
