St. Maarten Has an All-Inclusive Beach Club — No Resort Required
On St. Maarten, the beach bar is usually a pay-as-you-go affair — a chair, a bucket of beers, maybe a grilled fish sandwich when the mood strikes. Big Bastard’s quietly turns that familiar rhythm on its head. Right on the sand in Simpson Bay, the irreverently named beach club has introduced something you almost never see at a Caribbean beach bar: a true all-inclusive experience, designed not for resort guests but for anyone who wants to claim a stretch of sand for the day and stop thinking about the tab.
They call it Beach Like a Billionaire, and the concept is simple but radical for St. Maarten. You book once, settle into your assigned beach chairs, and everything unfolds from there. Beverage service comes directly to your seat, with unlimited drinks flowing until late afternoon. Lunch is handled the same way, with food delivered beachside and a forty-dollar credit included as part of the package. There’s no need to flag down a server or wander back to the bar — the service comes to you, right down to the water’s edge.
The experience is deliberately streamlined. Seating is reserved in the second, third, and fourth rows from the sea, close enough to hear the waves but with clear sightlines across the bay. Wi-Fi stretches all the way to the shoreline, making it as easy to linger over emails as it is to disappear into a long, lazy swim. Restrooms are on-site, and the service charge for beverages is already built into the booking, eliminating the end-of-day arithmetic that usually defines beach bars across the island.
What makes Big Bastard’s stand out isn’t excess, but clarity. The package is adult-only, with alcohol service limited to guests eighteen and over. Premium liquors are excluded, and everything is enjoyed on site, keeping the focus on an easy, social beach atmosphere rather than a party scene. The day has a natural endpoint — the package wraps up by 4:30 in the afternoon — which gives the whole experience a defined arc instead of the open-ended sprawl typical of all-day beach drinking.
For St. Maarten, a destination famous for choice and independence rather than bundled experiences, the idea feels almost subversive. Big Bastard’s isn’t trying to compete with the island’s all-inclusive resorts. It’s offering something more localized: a way to enjoy the beach like a guest of the house, without checking into one. You arrive, sit down, and for a few hours the logistics disappear — replaced by cold drinks, a hot lunch, and the steady view of Simpson Bay stretching out in front of you.
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Karen Udler is the Deputy Travel Editor of Caribbean Journal. A graduate of Duke University, has been traveling across the Americas for three decades. First an expert on Latin American travel, Karen has been traveling with CJ for more than a decade. She likes to focus on wellness, luxury travel and food.
