Lots and lots of cruise ships

St.Maartens’s most important if not only source of income is Tourism.
The island receives a large amount of tourists by plane, cruise ships, yachts and boats each year. The biggest mass of tourists that visit the island travel by cruise ships. Late last year the world’s largest cruise liner, The Oasis of the seas docked on St. Maarten for the first time, and will continue to do so once a week for the rest of the season. Chief Operating Officer of the St. Maarten Harbor Group of Companies Keith Franka stated on Wednesday January 6th 2010 that it was an historic day for St. Maarten and the harbor, because of the fact that over sixteen thousand tourists made their way off six cruise ships on Wednesday at the St. Maarten port. It was the first time that the two cruise piers of the harbor were fully occupied by cruise ships. This was a very successful day for all the stores in town. St.Maarten is becoming more and more popular through all the cruises that dock on our island. Through all the tourists that visit our island on these cruises we get a lot of mouth-to-mouth advertising. It can be expected that Wednesday’s conditions will repeat itself at least four times for the remainder of the year. St. Maarten is continuously improving the harbor facilities which were completely renovated to receive the amount of cruise passengers it does per day a few years prior. Water taxies and busses are then provided to these tourists to carry them to the town, beaches and/or French side to shop, eat and just relax on the island. Promotion is also being done in all travel magazines and brochures and at cruise ship travel agencies in order to attract more tourists to the island.

Fine dining

St.Maarten is popular for its dining. We have so many restaurants that tourist can choose from. We have local, Italian, Indian, Spanish, Chinese, Indonesian, Dutch, French food, and thats just to name a few. We have a taste of everything on our tiny multi-cultural island. So whatever you’re in the mood for, we have to offer. This is of course good for our tourism. You can find all the different types of restaurants that our island has to offer on the different St.Maarten websites that they are. You can also find them in those vacation magazines from St.Maarten that you can most likely find at a tourism bureau or airport. On the site or in the magazine will give you a list of restaurants to choose from which makes it easier for the people vacationing on our island. We have restaurants with live entertainment and restaurants that would have a famous chef for the night which makes it exciting to dine in St.Maarten. The tourism bureau of St.Maarten also plays a big role when it comes to promoting the restaurants when they go to other places to promote St.Maarten they always talk about the best restaurants that our island has. The restaurants always have specials especially for the tourists visiting our island; I think this is a good idea because we're known as the friendly island. When you’re on vacation you certainly don’t want to cook that’s why we take care of the food for you because on St.Maarten we have nothing but fine dining.

The Boardwalk

The boardwalk is a beach promenade in the town of St.Maarten that is very popular for the tourists and locals. The beach promenade was made by the Commissioner of Tourism. It was made with the goal to attract more tourists to town but also locals. The beach promenade doesn't have a specific target group because there are things to do for all ages. The beach promenade is there for when you're done with shopping you can take a stroll down the boardwalk. The beach promenade has restaurants, bars, ice cream parlors, stores and an arcade for the kids. It’s also a beach so you can take a swim while you're strolling down. The boardwalk is popular for all kind of events such as new years. The boardwalk promotes events to hotels made especially for tourists. The boardwalk is where you can have a good time island style. The boardwalk is popular for the tourists that come from the cruise ships. There is a special water taxi that takes you from the cruise straight to the boardwalk. This was made for the tourists who wanted to go straight into town. St.Maarten keeps coming up with all these ideas and activities for the tourists that keep our image as one of the best vacationing spots. When it comes to the marketing aspect of the boardwalk there is not much in travel magazines or brochures, we need to increase the promotion. We need to try and get the hotels to have special busses going to the beach promenade. It is one of St.Maarten finest trademarks.

Nature at its best.

A reason why many tourists come to St.Maarten is because of are many nature trails. This is something our island is really popular for. We have lots of different types of hikes to follow, you will be able to hike all the way around the island along white sandy beaches, coral beaches, and climb the cliffs to view areas of St Martin from various perspectives. A popular hike that is visited by many tourists a day is The Lottery Farm hike. It’s located on the French side of the island. It’s a beautiful hike through the hills of St.Maarten. The owners realized how good the hike was doing and decided to extend its activities to attract more tourists and different target groups. They now have a hike and fly zone for kids. There is now a restaurant where you can have a nice lunch after your hike. All these nature hikes are talked about in the travel magazines and are most likely advised at an activity desk in a hotel. We have many other hikes that aren’t as popular because they are not as clear to walk through. In my opinion we should make these trails easier for people to walk because it’s a very nice activity to do on the island. The tourism bureau should try and promote these natural trails because these are the simple things of the island that tourists would love to see. Our island has beautiful nature and it’s something beautiful to see.

Mega Yachts

St.Maarten usually caters the middle class tourists but lately it’s been catering to upper middle class tourists. The main reason for this is, is that St.Maarten has a lot of docks specially made for mega yachts, a popular place to dock your yacht on St.Maarten is The Yacht Club. This mega yachts are owned by wealthy people. Docking a yacht at one of our docks costs about $200 dollars per hour. We gain a lot from these mega yachts. The people stay at our fancy pent houses and contribute to our island by buying groceries, renting cars and mainly just spending their vacation here. If more upper middle class people were to spend their vacation here it would better our image as an island. Right now we have the image that we go for quantity and not quality. This meaning that we go for a lot of tourists that don’t spend a lot of money on our island instead of going for a smaller amount of tourists who spend a lot of money on our islands. Islands in the Caribbean who do have the image of quality are St.Barths and Anguilla. A lot of celebrities go to these islands. But this year we’ve had celebrities stay on St.Maarten such as Sarah Jessica Parker and Mariah Carey as well. If a celebrity stays on the island it promotes our island big time. So we should try to better our image and continue serving the upper middle class as well.

The nightlife on St.Maarten

The nightlife on St.Maarten is for sure one of my favorite things about the island. We have one a really good nightlife here on St.Maarten. When you're here on vacation its fun to go to nightclubs, casino's and beach bars. St.Maarten has some really good nightclubs, casino's and beach bars. It is important to have something entertaining and fun for the tourists to do. St.Maarten has nightclubs on the Dutch as well as on the French side. On the Dutch side St.Maarten is popular for the night club Tantra, Bliss and 1eleven. How do these nightclubs attract the tourists? Every night these clubs have a different event. They bring dj's from all over the world. Not only dj's but dancers and performers. When these events are happening is it promoted big time on the island which makes it even more interesting. Bliss is a very well known club on St.Maarten is the only outdoor night club with a pool. Most tourists love it there because they have never experienced an outdoor club. Bliss does lots of promotion to promote their different events. Every night is a eventful night for the nightclubs. Not only does the nightclubs have good entertainment but also the Casino's. The Casino's are known for having special dancers which is good entertainment while your gambling. If you feel like just sitting at the beach with a drink then you should definitely check out Sunset beach bar, like the name says it’s a beach bar right in front of the sunset. The hotels always promote the night life on St.Maarten, they help with the marketing. Usually the marketing is done via radio, internet, brochures, magazines and the tourism bureau. The nightlife on St.Maarten is like no other.

White sand and blue seas.

One of the main reasons why tourists choose to come to our island is because of our beaches. If you look at the sites of St.Maarten and the magazines you'll see that the beaches a big topic is. On our 37 square mile island we have 37 beautiful beaches. We have so many beaches to choose from. It depends what kind of beach you are looking for. We have beaches with restaurants, beaches with all types of water sports, beaches that are safe for kids, beaches that are very private and a big deal, nude beaches. St.Maarten is one of the few places in the world that still has a natural beach (nude beach). This is a big deal for tourists because it's not allowed in a lot of countries and islands. A lot of tourists look for these natural beaches. This beach is a big deal for St.Maarten because it caters to a lot of our tourists especially the older tourists, which is important because of a lot of retired tourists need a place to go when their on pension and if they see that our island has this natural beach it will make choosing our island to vacation easier. It is important that we keep our beaches clean. There are many beach clean ups throughout the year that even tourists help! Our beaches don't really need to be promoted because this is the main thing the tourists come for, but if we do a little bit of promoting in those vacation brochures they will get a better idea of how nice are beaches are which can only be good for us. In my opinion promoting the beaches more would be a really good idea for our island. We have something good we should promote it!

Hotels on St.Maarten

A lot of people go to St.Maarten on vacation and of course these tourists need a place to stay. St.Maarten offers them so much from beach houses, to hotels and villas. We have more than 12 hotels on St.Maarten. We have hotels on the beach and hotels that are in the middle of the town, hotels that are from civilization and hotels that are in the middle of restaurants and clubs. The island has so many different things to offer. How to these hotels market their self to the tourist? Well these hotels have representatives that go out and promote the hotel. There are also these St.Maarten vacation magazines that you often find at book stores or airports that has all the hotels in it. The St.Maarten tourism bureau also promotes the hotels on St.Maarten. It is important that the hotels are as good as they are expected to be. The hotel service must be up to par to. I find it important for a hotel to promote itself to the rest of the countries because if the hotel looks attractive the tourist they will easier decide to come on vacation here. We should promote the hotels as much as possible to make finding a place to stay easier for the tourist and make sure that checking in goes quick and easy. St.Maarten is an island this is only focused on tourism so these are things we need to make sure we do.

Heineken Regatta

This is one of the biggest events on St.Maarten. This is an event were a lot of people from Holland come to. Heineken Regatta is a sailing race sponsored by Heineken. This event is a big marketing instrument that attracts lots of tourists from all over but mostly Holland. Its a sailing race around the island of about 250 participants. Its goes on for about 4 days. But after everyday there is a party with performers such as the popular singing group the black eyed peas. The events consists of 4 eventful days of sailing in the day and partying in the night. This event attracts so many people. This year with be the 30th anniversary of Heineken Regatta on St.Maarten. St.Maarten is one of the few places in the world that has such a big event for sailing. A lot of people from Holland come to participate in the race not only from Holland but from the United States too. This is a good time for our tourism because a lot of people come to St.Maarten and stay in hotels. Heineken Regatta does a lot of promotional merchandising by having shirts, pants, beer holders, hats, chains, light up stuff and much more with Heineken Regatta on it. Heineken makes a lot of money from this Regatta but not only does Heineken gain from it but so does the island. It promotes are island, people hear about St.Maarten because of this big event. Heineken gets a lot of sponsors from other companies, we should continue to support Heineken with this event because it does a lot for our island.

Is St.Maarten loosing it's culture?

If you were to ask the people of St.Maarten what exactly our culture is no one is quite sure. That’s because through the years we are slowly loosing our culture. If the people of St.Maarten don’t know what our culture is how will St.Maarten market its culture. If we have no culture there won’t be anything unique for those who are vacationing on St.Maarten to see. We have to do as much as we can to keep the culture of St.Maarten. The most of St.Maarten’s culture has been influenced by Africa and Europe. We’re a small island divided by two nationalities; our culture should be really strong as easy to see. Don’t get me wrong our culture is still there but we’re slowly loosing that island flavor. If you look around St.Maarten it’s filled with big buildings and malls. Our main tourism income comes from The United States and Canada. The Americans have all those things already, big buildings, huge shopping malls etc, and they don’t want to come on vacation to our island to see the same things. They want to experience the island life such as the markets. Our island is very popular for the markets. They also want to experience the beaches, forts, carnival and let me not forget the guava berry, our island drink. If we continue to Americanize our island we will loose the island image that we have so even though we our improving our island we just have to make sure to keep our culture, the culture all tourist travel to St.Maarten to experience.

Who markets St.Maarten?

For an island that main income is tourism it is important how it markets itself to the rest of the world. St.Maarten needs to
make sure they always have a positive image for tourist to continue choosing st.maarten as their destination for vacation.
They can market the island many different ways with different marketing ethics. The organization that is responsible for
promoting St.Maarten is the St.Maarten tourist bureau. The St.Maarten tourist bureau mainly concentrates on promoting St.Maarten around the world. They travel the other countries just to promote and make the island known. If they don’t go out and promote our island people would never hear of our tiny island that is almost never shown on the map. I spent a day at the tourist bureau for an assignment for school so I got an inside look of what really goes on in the bureau. They are constantly busy with planning events, making folders and brochures about St.Maarten to give out at hotels, airports etc. , making presentations to give at other countries and keeping in contact with other tourist bureaus in the Caribbean and around the world. They do a lot of there marketing via advertising, channel marketing, internet marketing, promotion and public relations. St.Maarten also has tourist bureaus around the world, in places such as Canada, Brazil, Italy, the U.S and many more. St.Maarten mainly bases is promotion on clients that our ready to travel but they also always are trying to get new potential clients. Besides getting new potential clients/tourist they also need to keep in contact with tourists that have already come to the island and try to influence them to come again by keeping them updated with new things on the islands such as clubs, restaurants and hotels. If St.Maarten doesn’t continue promoting itself we could loose our image as #1 vacation island in the Caribbean and #3 in the world and we definitely don’t want that!

A little bit about St.Maarten

Christopher Columbus discovered St.Maarten on November 11th 1493. St.Maarten is in the Caribbean and is part of the Netherlands Antilles. It is 37 square miles. St.Maarten consists of the French side (21 square miles) and the Dutch side (16 square miles). St.Maarten is the smallest island to be shared by two governments. Although St.Maarten may be a small island it consists of over 140 different nationalities. The official languages of St.Maarten are Dutch and French though you will hear many other languages such as English, Spanish, Chinese, Papimanetu, Creole and lots more. There is about 80,000 people living on the island of St.Maarten. The main income of St.Maarten is based on tourism, that is why it is important for our island to provide our tourists with nothing but the best. It is our job to market our island in a positive way and make sure that we live up to the high expectations. St.Maarten was voted #1 in the Caribbean and #3 in the world in the 2008 Travelers Choice Destination awards. To maintain such a title it is important that we market our island in the best ways possible. Because tourism is our main income it is important to maintain good service, a clean island and a safe environment for our tourists at all times. It must be tourist friendly, and it's important that St.Maarten remains a tiny island paradise with an intriguing mix of cultures and cuisine thanks to its dual Dutch/French heritage that it's known for.