TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin How Busy is Orient Beach

Hi Everyone, we are annual visitors to Club O and missed our 2020 trip. When we went in 2019 (May) the Club O beach was not that busy. As all of you know, if you have spent time on the CO side of the beach, it is the people that make it so great. prior to the hurricane, it was always bustling with different characters and activities, it was so much fun. Has anyone been to the beach in the last couple of months? is anyone there (other than Cedrick)? We are currently planning a trip in May (we are from Ontario) but haven't booked anything yet. Next year we have booked a villa in Orient Village for Feb and March to celebrate my retirement. So I'm curious how busy it will be then (will it be back to what Feb was before the hurricane / Covid).

Anyway, any feedback would be welcomed regarding how many people are on the beach during peak times. I hope all are keeping well.

M&G

We were there a few times through Jan 24th and it was reasonably active. The yellow umbrella section of Club O was nearly all occupied and quite a few walked past that area and set up their own chairs/towels etc. There is a happy hour 130p-230p right there at Perch lite....

The rest of the beach had quite a few patrons with some establishments doing much better than others....some 1/2-3/4 full and the others with a few chairs occupied. Upscale KKO Beach Bar was doing a great business in chairs etc...looks pretty nice.

Edit: rather than being misleading by stating "nearly all occupied" I meant the 30 yellow umbrellas with adjoining chairs that were set up. I will assume more would be made available if needed

You get a look at Bikini or La Playa? We usually go there.

Ya know....I am not that familiar with the names and location of each establishment...I did make a comment while walking that these places should have some kind of signs visible from the beach as to what their name is....most times I got the name by the logo on the shirts of the servers.....sorry

OK. Thanks anyway.

Bikini and La Playa were not particularly busy but really no one is. We had great service and an awesome lunch at Co Co Beach which was also not overly busy. Saturday and Sunday seemed better probably due to locals.

Thanks.

We are on the island now and have been to Orient a couple of times. We grabbed chairs at Chez Leandra, as we wished to support the smaller establishments. We walked up the beaches several times and the Club O section was packed. I didn't see any spare chairs, and in fact, it was so busy that we wouldn't have felt comfortable there (in light of COVID) even being outside. If you're looking for people, the density was much, much higher than any other section of Orient Beach.

thanks very much for the note. Covid aside, it is good to hear that there are lots of people. I hope people hang in there with Club O as it sounds like there is an intent to rebuild.

Are the owners intending to rebuild? What is the status of their Insurance claims concerning the recovery of their losses? I too hope that Club O could rebuild, but I doubt that we will see it anywhere in the near future. I hope I am wrong. We certainly miss our annual trip to Club O. It was the best two weeks of the year for us. We really don't have any plans to return unless Club O gets up and running again. We have no interest in staying anyplace other than Club O.

I’ve had an owner reply directly to me stating they fully intend to rebuild. We too really have no interest in staying anywhere other than Club O.

there is another chat in here somewhere from January I think where an individual purported to be an owner (from Ontario) and gave a really detailed update about the challenges they were facing and that they were 'all' working on it very hard. It was rather encouraging. He (?) said that once they had something to say publicly about what was going on and the plans, that they would post it on the club O website. He didn't give a timeframe. I feel shortchanged... after my wife and I going to the beach for 8 years, we had finally decided to stay at Club O... and then then hurricane hit and that all went away. of course I'm not trying to whine when so many on the island were devastated by the hurricane. we just want to come back and support the island (and may be coming in June this year).