If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.
Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (EUR246.50), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.
Covetable Cul-de-Sac bolthole, Le Martin Boutique Hotel – set back from the bay across from Ilet Pinel – is a welcoming base from which to explore the French-Caribbean charms of St Martin. This polished retreat never hosts more than a dozen guests, an intimate set-up that allows staff to tailor your stay with personal recommendations and twice-weekly dining events that feel more like private parties. There’s a help-yourself honesty bar, board games and library that add to its homey feel – although its heated pool, sleek interiors and top-notch service are welcome hotel frills.
Six – two of which can connect to create a family suite.
Check–Out
11am. Check-in, 4pm–6pm. If you arrive early or need to loiter after check-out, you’re welcome to stow your luggage and use the communal areas.
Prices
Double rooms from £219.54 (€256), including tax at 4 per cent.
More details
Rates usually include an à la carte breakfast of sweet and savory plates, as well as cold buffet options, served in the main lounge-diner.
Also
One Ground-floor Deluxe Suite is wheelchair accessible, as are Le Martin Boutique Hotel’s communal areas.
Hotel closed
The hotel closes annually from August to mid-October.
At the hotel
Free WiFi, concierge, honesty bar, board games, library, and bikes and kayaks to borrow. In rooms: smart TV with Apple streaming services, USB outlets, minibar and sink, Nespresso machine and tea-making kit, beach towels and baskets, waffle bathrobes, and Grown Alchemist bath products.
Our favourite rooms
Any of the Deluxe Suites (the equivalent of junior suites with more lounge space and generous balconies) get our vote – each individually decorated to owner Marion Dufaur’s taste. Ground-floor Deluxe Suite, Marius, feels more like a studio rental, with its own entrance and a sizable plant-fringed terrace beside the pool. Families will love the connecting set-up of the hotel’s Deluxe Family Suite.
Poolside
Beside the lounge-diner, parasol-shaded sunloungers edge Le Martin’s heated saltwater pool (open day and night, but unattended), which has step entry beside a mid-pool planter of palm trees that seemingly jut out of the water.
Spa
There’s no spa at Le Martin Boutique Hotel, but staff are happy to arrange yoga or personal-training sessions on request.
Packing tips
Your balmy coastal surroundings call for colour – vivid or pale – and toothpaste whites; leave your darker threads at home.
Also
The hotel hosts themed dinners once or twice a week. And if you’d like Le Martin to yourselves, you can book the hotel in its entirety for exclusive use (speak to your Smith travel specialist).
Children
The intimate nature of this boutique stay means it’s better suited to couples, but under-18s are welcome and the hotel’s happy to arrange daycare or babysitting. There’s a two-bedroom family suite and extra beds can be added to some suites.
Take your breakfast to a spot on the pool deck, or dine communally at the long table indoors.
Dress Code
There’s an intimate homey welcome at Le Martin – part of which is not telling you how to dress for breakfast or dinner.
Hotel restaurant
There’s no restaurant at Le Martin Boutique Hotel, but a chef is at the hotel daily to prepare sweet and savory plates to order for breakfast. Once or twice a week, the hotel organises dining events, too – from seafood cook-ups to barbecues.
Hotel bar
As well as a selection of wines and soft drinks in your minibar, Le Martin Boutique Hotel has an honesty bar in the lounge-diner, where you can mix yourself a G&T, cool down with a beer or fix a nightcap. There’s also coffee and tea available self-service throughout the day.
Last orders
Breakfast hours can be tailored around you, but are approximately 8am until 10am.
Room service
You can order breakfast to your room for a €15 supplement.
Le Martin Boutique Hotel is a short drive from the beaches overlooking Cul-de-Sac Bay in a northerly corner of French-Caribbean St Martin.
Planes
The island’s international hub, Princess Juliana international Airport, is in the Dutch territory of Sint Maarten, and has direct flights from the United States, Amsterdam and Paris, as well as Caribbean connections. It’s 90 minutes (sometimes less) from the hotel by road, and Le Martin staff are happy to arrange taxi transfers at extra cost.
Automobiles
We can’t see much need for having your own wheels on St Martin, where it’s more likely that seafaring craft will come in handy, but if you’re a dedicated landlover, there are free parking spaces in front of the hotel.
Other
Regional connections, private plane and helicopter charters touch down at Grand Case-Espérance Airport, only 10 minutes by road from the hotel, who can arrange taxi transfers at extra cost.
Worth getting out of bed for
St Martin has proudly totted up its haul of beaches – 37 in total – but you’ll need to know more to make the most of any sojourn here. From your base at Le Martin Boutique Hotel in Cul-de-Sac, you’re not right beside the sea, but you are handily placed for the ferry to Ilet Pinel – a tiny cay rinsed by clear aquamarine waters where a fleet of thatch parasols and sunloungers line up on the powder sand, and there are bars and dining spots to sustain you through idle beach days. And you can borrow bikes from the hotel or book a taxi to a number of beaches in a 10-minute radius. South of Le Martin, Orient Bay is one of the island’s best known sandy strips, as its fringe of swish restaurants testifies. From Orient Bay, you can paddle out to Green Cay on kayaks, but nearer to base, Le Martin staff are happy to help you organise a closer-to-home paddle (or skippered boat trip) across to Petite Clet. It’s worth driving across the peninsula to the flour sands and turquoise shallows at Anse Marcel. For something a little wilder, the nature reserve at Grandes Cayes (just north of Cul-de-Sac) has deserted beaches where its tree-carpeted hills sweep down to the ocean, but is better for strolling than swimming. Head to Marigot to browse the market stalls – all kinds from fresh produce, to fish, to clothing and crafts – and to scale the rocky outcrop where centuries-old batteries and ramparts at St Louis Fort speak to the island’s history of conflict and land grabs. Between December and April, humpback whales raise their calves in St Martin’s balmy waters and organised boat tours are your best bet for spotting them.
Local restaurants
Potted palms, painted woodwork and bamboo-backed chairs lend a colonial flavour to the dining room at Maison Mère in Orient Bay, where diners flock for the French-with-a-Caribbean-twist plates and award-winning cocktails. Start off in style with their take on negroni, Une bouteille à l’Amer. And follow on with dishes such as coconut-crumbed tempura prawns, crayfish carpaccio, fresh lobster, and local fish cooked in a curry-spiced broth. Plates at Villa Hibiscus are frame-worthy (flawless quenelles, glossy jus, tweezered garnishes), and chef Bastian Schenk’s French fare (he trained under Joël Robuchon and Anne-Sophie Pic) impresses equally with flavor in a choice of tasting menus (reservations only, Tuesday to Saturday). For more traditional St-Martin dining, ask the hotel to recommend a local ‘lolo’ – the island’s answer to street food.
Every hotel featured is visited personally by members of our team, given the Smith seal of approval, and then anonymously reviewed. As soon as our reviewers have returned from this coastal Caribbean hotel and unpacked their single-estate rum and hand-dyed pareos, a full account of their all-about-the-beaches break will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside Le Martin Boutique Hotel in St Martin…
Why include the words boutique hotel in your name… It’s a rhetorical question we’re here to answer for Le Martin Boutique Hotel. Perhaps it’s because this six-room retreat in northerly Cul-de-Sac celebrates all that’s good about being small – bonhomie around the breakfast table, individually dressed rooms, staff who get to know you and can flex to execute your wishes – and delivers it with aplomb. Or perhaps it’s an attempt to redress Le Martin’s homey seduction: its cache of books, games, bikes and kayaks to borrow, an honesty bar, and coffee and tea on tap put us in mind of a covetable villa; but, as the polished interiors, calendar of culinary events and excellent service testify, this is very much a hotel stay. Easier to agree on is the appeal of the hotel’s location: its setting in Cul-de-Sac – slightly inland, but with incredible bay views across the turquoise waters to Ilet Pinel – is a beachcomber’s dream, putting you between the wilds of nature reserve Grandes Cayes and the sybaritic trappings of opulent Orient Bay.
