TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin US State Dept. Travel Warning

My wife is traveling to the middle east for business soon. So we were checking travel warnings for the countries she will be visiting. Out of curiosity I looked at St. Martin. Would you believe that the threat level is higher for our beloved SXM than it is for Jordan, Egypt, and Israel (although certain areas are definitely off limits). I was a bit surprised--maybe that just exposes my own naïveté. FYI-According to the State Dept., the threat in SXM is related to all of the hurricane damage not terrorism.

To me, I don't understand how that constitutes a threat level..

I'm not finding that. It is showing Level 1, exercise normal caution

https://travel.state.gov/content/tr...sories/sint-maarten-travel-advisory.html

https://travel.state.gov/content/tr...nchWestIndies.html.html?wcmmode=disabled

They actually had the same Damn travel warnings when I went to sxm in 200y, 2007, 2008. It was relative to crime then. Im not sure how they do rhe ratings but qe never had an issue. Travel smart and you wont have issues.

French West Indies is threat level 1, Sint Maarten is threat level 1, St. Martin is threat level 3--Reconsider Travel. Considering that it's one island, how can there be such disparity. We've all read about the Dutch being further along on the cleanup effort, so maybe that is it. In any event, we bought our tickets and would by them again in a heartbeat.

I would just like to interject that we are currently on the island which is our 13th visit since 2005, and it’s our BEST trip to date.
The traffic is almost non-existent (and it’s Carnival)
We’ve been thanked several times by locals for coming, both in Maho & Philipsburg, everyone seems appreciative & the overall feel we’re getting is “safe”
If you’re reading this, and trying to decide whether or not you should visit, please do not hesitate. Yes there’s been an unbelievable amount of devastation, but we’ve never felt so humbled and happy to bring our tourist dollars here again.
Come come!!

I suppose all that broken glass after Irma imbedded in the beach sand could cause the State Department to react and elevate the travel threat level! I realize they have a job to do, but in reality they need to focus on the truly unstable countries where such warnings should be heeded. I hate to appear cynical, but I can't help but think that such 'travel alerts' are posted in an attempt to keep U.S. citizens at home to spend their tourism dollars in places like Florida, Hawaii, etc. Every time my wife and I have traveled to the Yucatan Peninsula and Quintana Roo there has been a state department warning or advisory posted regarding unsafe travel to this region. And, every time we have made this trip we have never seen one shred of evidence that things were unstable in these areas. In fact, we have felt much safer in Mexico than we have in many large U.S. cities (i.e., Miami, Atlanta, etc.).