We found an interesting article on Concierge.com. It got my attention as I represent the villas described in this article as well and was professionally ‘involved’ during the development and construction of this project as I was the Coral Beach developer’s property manager and villa rental specialist for 18 years in Oyster Pond, St Maarten. It’s a very good, interesting and accurate article and as the writer stated, it shows you how helpful a travel agent (in this case it was a well know colleague and friend of mine) can be for you and assist you in making the right decisions. Below you will find the edited version of the article, the original can be found on concierge dot com’s website.
It’s the holy grail of villa rentals: A home smack on the beach, where your terrace is just a shell’s throw from the sand and where the first thing you see when you sit up in bed in the morning is an unobstructed expanse of turquoise sea. Such a place is often extravagantly expensive, of course. Of all the features a rental villa can have, a beachfront location is the one that will shoot the price the highest. Renting a house just a one-block walk from the strand can save you hundreds if not thousands of dollars.
If ever there was a time when the beachfront rental has entered the realm of possibility, however, that time is now. On many islands and coasts, homeowners are ready to negotiate, and the deals are flying. Last winter, I decided to seize the day and see how little I could pay for a snazzy beachfront villa in the Caribbean at the height of the season: the February Presidents’ Week school holiday. I ended up scoring a state-of-the-art three-bedroom villa with a private pool on the French/Dutch island of St. Martin/Sint Maarten.
The living room and master bedroom were no more than 20 steps from the beach, and the floor-to-ceiling glass walls facing the ocean made you feel like you were outdoors even when you were in. My family and I had 5,240 square feet of space—including a private 1,500-square-foot oceanfront terrace and an architecturally unique 522-square-foot pool—as well as every comfort, from king-size canopy beds with plush pillowtop mattresses to iPod docks with poolside outdoor speakers to bathrooms with the most elaborate showerheads, jets, and nozzles I’ve ever seen. The nightly rate? Including housekeeping and tax, $1,062. That breaks down to $354 per bedroom per night. Even with today’s great deals at beach resorts, I can’t imagine getting all this at any hotel for less than $1,000 a night.
How did I find this bargain? First, I avoided tiny and exclusive islands—e.g., St. ………………….., where the demand for villas outweighs the supply and puddle-jumper flights to get there can be pricey. Instead, I chose a more trafficked island where supply exceeds demand and affordable nonstop service is available from many U.S. cities. Now, ………………………. it has plenty of scenic drives, hidden-gem beaches, authentic local color, and world-class cuisine… if you know where to go (mainly on the French side). I chose a spot on the Dutch-French border so we could quickly reach the delights of the French side while also having convenient access to the boating and water sports infrastructure of the Dutch side.
Another strategy for getting the best beachfront value for your dollar is to rent a villa that’s not a freestanding house but rather a unit in a set of residences. Most unattached beachfront Caribbean rentals have more than three bedrooms and represent a value only if you can fill every bed. My party was small, however: I required only two bedrooms for my family of four. And when you need just two or three bedrooms on a beach, it often makes sense to rent a residence that splits the cost of the amenities with other units. We chose one of six beachfront villas (and 15 non-beachfront) that belong to the Coral Beach Club in Oyster Pond. Each shares a concierge desk, a gym, a parking garage, and a housekeeper but has its own private pool and terrace. Only when we walked outside our villa did we feel like we were part of a larger development; indoors, gazing through those glass walls at the sea, there were no other buildings in sight, so it felt like ours was the only thing on the beach.
My third tactic for achieving the affordable beachfront villa was to rent a property with adjustable rates, where the price depends upon how many bedrooms you occupy. Such arrangements are common in the Caribbean: You can pay a lower rate by renting only a portion of the rooms, yet you get the entire property to yourself. The Coral Beach Club has such sliding rates, so we were able to reduce the $1,062 even further by renting just two bedrooms for $798 per night (including housekeeping and tax). I also sought out a property that allows stays of fewer than seven nights. Many owners—especially in Europe—insist on a seven-night minimum, often from Saturday to Saturday. When you’re trying to snag cheap airline tickets, however, date flexibility is key. Because the Coral Beach Club allows rentals of six nights, I managed to reduce my airfare from New York to $328 per person. (Renting for seven nights would have doubled the airfare.)
* Villa Starfish private pool directly located at the beach
My most important strategy, however, was to seek the guidance of a villa rental agent who knew my destination like the back of her hand ………………….. Not only did she steer me to Oyster Pond—which provided quick access along picturesque roads to the most charming spots on the French side of the island—but she also picked a beach suitable for kids (Dawn Beach, perfect for bodyboarding) and a property with every amenity on our wish list (free no-hassle Wi-Fi above all). She knew that the Coral Beach Club was offering a special pay-the-low-season-rate-in-high-season deal, and she suggested villa No. 5, Starfish, because it’s on a relatively private, peaceful section of the beach.
What did I give up to get this bargain? Well, I did not get the silky, flotsam-free white sand beach with a calm glassy sea that I would have gotten on, say, Anguilla—where a beachfront two-bedroom of equivalent comfort and appeal, Meads Bay Beach Villas, would have cost me $1,080 per night, including tax (versus the $798 I paid). I did not get the picture-postcard panoramas unmarred by high-rises in the distance that I could have gotten on, say, St. Barts—where the charming beachfront home I might have rented, Crystal Dream, had a two-bedroom rate of $1,178 per night. Nor did I get the glamorous seclusion—the virtually private beach—that I could have gotten on St. Martin itself had I rented a villa such as La Vie en Bleu, located on the spectacular strand at Baie Rouge, for a whopping $1,807 per night.
For $798 per night, however, I don’t think I could have done better than Starfish. My family was more than happy to put up with a few passersby on the beach in exchange for the convenience of having several restaurants, a beach bar, a small grocery store, and the activities of Oyster Pond Marina only a short walk away, and we sacrificed nothing in the way of comfort. Our villa’s gleaming kitchen was outfitted with all manner of gourmet touches, from stainless steel Viking appliances to a custom-built wine cooler. The living room had a 50-inch flat-screen TV with a gazillion channels, surround sound, and a DVD player, as well as a dining area with a formal glass table and seating for eight. Each bedroom had an enormous closet, a 32-inch flat-screen TV, and a sleek en suite bathroom. The pool terrace had six overstuffed chaise longues, four huge armchairs, and a dining table with eight more chairs, yet it was so spacious that the furniture seemed to disappear entirely. One of our favorite touches was an outdoor shower (for washing off sand) that opened into the indoor shower attached to the master bedroom. Mid-pool was a sunken gazebo—accessible via a little walkway from the terrace—where you could lounge on pillows, enjoying a cocktail and the ocean view, yet remain dry and shaded from the sun. The sand-colored travertine floors both indoors and out meant that the only thing distinguishing the interior from the terrace and the beach was a glass wall, and when you looked through it from the living room or the master bedroom, the glorious view was of nothing but pool, sand, and sea.
St. Martin/Sint Maarten may not have the cachet of more exclusive islands, but we found plenty to do and, thanks to ………………………. insider advice, managed to do most everything on just the right day and at just the right time, avoiding logistical pitfalls such as traffic jams and parking problems. We made day-trips by ferry to both Anguilla (a 20-minute ride from the French capital of Marigot) and St. Barts (a 45-minute ride from Oyster Pond). We zip-lined through the rain forest at Loterie Farm, a nature preserve atop Paradise Peak, where there are three ropes courses: one for kids, one for adults, and one extreme. At La Ferme des Papillons, we held butterflies on our fingers and watched several take wing for the first time. We signed on for one of local legend Captain Alan’s boat trips to St. Martin’s uninhabited outer islands, including Pinel, where we snorkeled and hand-fed fish, and Tintamarre, where we slathered age-old volcanic mud all over our bodies. We hung out with the plane spotters on Maho Beach—which sits at the end of the runway at Princess Juliana International Airport—watching in awe as 747s and A340s zoomed past, just a few dozen feet overhead, right before landing.
What’s nice about French St. Martin is that if you’re seeking authentic island culture, you can find that, too. The village of Grand Case (a 20-minute drive from Oyster Pond) throws a homespun street festival called Harmony Nights every Tuesday from January through March. It features local artisans selling crafts made from native woods and plants, sensuous rhythms from local bands, and a small-town parade of stilt walkers and costumed, dancing children. You can find traditional island food in Grand Case at its lolos—open-air waterfront shacks serving barbecued snapper, conch sausage, and the like—but the best homegrown fare we had was the melt-in-your-mouth seafood at Lee’s Roadside Grill in Simpson Bay and the Caribbean specialties at Loterie Farm’s Hidden Forest Café, an après-zip-line must. Haute cuisine is part of the local culture (many consider French St. Martin to be the Caribbean’s culinary capital); so are the families who have owned and run the island’s finest restaurants for years. At Mont Vernon’s romantic Sol é Luna inn, for instance, Mom is the manager, Dad is the chef, and Daughter is the hostess and—thanks to her stage presence and beauty—the floor show, too. And every detail of our spectacular dinner there—from the puff pastry that topped the lobster bisque like a beret and the homemade fruit-flavored rums to the lush vegetation embellishing the wraparound terrace—left us swooning. …………. knows these families, of course, as well as exactly which restaurants to recommend depending on the occasion. Indeed, every one of her food suggestions—where to dine, which supermarket to shop at, what staples to bring with us on the plane—was spot-on.
We did a lot on St. Martin/Sint Maarten, yet we barely scratched the surface. There was no time for sailing the Americas Cup yacht, snagging deals on duty-free cameras and watches in Philipsburg, scuba diving with Aqua Mania Adventures, day-tripping to the island of Saba, dining at famed Grand Case establishments Le Pressoir and L’Auberge Gourmande. Clearly I’ll have to convince my family to go back. It won’t be hard.
Source : concierge.com
