TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin Bikini no soft opening as reported

Stopped by today.

No soft opening in any nature and from the looks, will not be for at least a week or two by my estimation for what that is worth.

They have made big progress from earlier in the week, but "soft opening", guess it depends on your meaning, but that is not likely in the next week at best.

Very Vert Soft Opening -- Meaning if working out of carry in coolers and renting chairs, that I could see maybe, anything more extensive??? NO. This is based on what I am seeing today.

There is construction material on the main area, the one fence they were working on is 85% done, the front signs, etc are 85% done. Pavers are still stacked all over the place.

And I know the electrical is not done at all. Why you ask,.... because there was electrical people there today still doing stuff, and from what little I know, and what I saw there is still a ways to go on the electrical.


But it is getting there and it will be nice. Personally (and this is my opinion only) have a extreme soft opening with hand coolers and chairs, would not be a great decision. Better to wait for a better soft opening with more and a whole lot better. At this point, my guess (and it is just A GUESS) there would not be any functional facilities available. You need some electric also for even that, as water pumps need electric.

And will not go there on inspections for approval on the permits. Yes, I saw permits posted.

Work also being done on the yellow sub location and laplaya location also. So things are happening, just not as fast you we tourist would like, but that is the way it is.

Good to know. Thanks for the onhand assessment.

yes ... we were anticipating the opening, not even close...there is NOTHING THERE . we looked from Esmeralda all the way to Club O, nothing, nada, lol

If your referring to Bikini, there has been all kinds of pictures taken on the near completed structure posted by various people on Facebook.

...not to mention the pictures we posted here... We took some more pictures Saturday morning which we haven't posted yet, which showed some progress since the first time we were there but still seems a long way away. They are working on LaPlaya also, but I expected some other action on some of the other "Five Stars". Luftman has more money than God, so I really don't think it's a matter of insurance money. I still think some people may not be rebuilding until after hurricane season, as they're not even sure they WANT to rebuild, if SXM has another hurricane this year. And some people didn't have insurance at all, so if you didn't have insurance, I can really see waiting till after hurricane season, so see what this year brings.

According to resent reports on the lower water temps they are saying it might be a milder year for the carribean. Hope so. Anything can happen as we saw last year.

Bikini has lots of building going on. I heard they are going to try for a soft opening again this Friday. Unfortunately, we leave Thursday.

Mirian, formerly of Passaat and now with No1SXM, shared a video today on FB of the new Bikini. It opens Monday.

Sorry we missed it, but we'll be back again in November.

OK, are they supposed to open with FOOD?? Not sure how that could happen. Drinks and chairs, I could see..

I read on the Orient Village Facebook page that Bikini opened for lunch yesterday.