If you’re traveling to St. Maarten exclusively to enjoy the pool and beach, this resort is fine, but it is nothing special and I wouldn’t stay here again.
Starting with the pros, the resort is impeccably clean and the rooms are very modern. All of the staff we encountered were very pleasant and helpful – especially the pool/Breeze staff and Kevin at the lobby bar. The jerk chicken wings on the room service menu were phenomenal!
The location of the hotel is the #1 con. It’s located in Oyster Pond, up/down several very steep hills, with virtually nothing else around. If you want to leave the resort, you’ll NEED to take a taxi and taxis in SXM are not cheap. We paid $70 round trip for (2) people to go a 20 minute drive from the hotel to Grand Case for nightlife. There is one restaurant nearby, Big Fish (excellent food and service), but it is not safe to walk there due to the hills, lack of sidewalks and street lights.
The hotel itself is nice and well-maintained, but it did not look like any other Marriott resort I’ve ever visited. The interior looked much more like a conference hotel in the middle of a boring city than a Caribbean island resort. It was very lackluster. I paid for a “Resort View” room and the photos online showed rooms facing the pool. Unfortunately, our room view faced trees and the hotel next door. The balcony was right above a terrace where children would play beginning very early in the morning. The walls were also very thin. We could hear everything!
