We have just returned from a week at the Simpson Bay Resort & Marina. I have to say that I am impressed with some of the positive things about the resort. One is the big effort being made to renovate the rooms. Another is the number of employees working for the resort. Security personnel were everywhere. Maintenance personnel were readily available. All of the staff seemed friendly. The location of the resort is great. It is close to the airport and in the middle of a tourist hub - plenty of places to eat and things to do.
Two negative things about the resort are the lack of hot tubs at any of the pools and the steep hill between the beach and the upper buildings. This is a big resort, and the buildings furthest from the beach require walking up a long steep hill. The elderly and those physically challenged will probably have difficultly ascending the hill to the upper buildings.
We stayed in one of the non-renovated rooms in the lower "B" building. It was two bedroom lock-off. A fully-equipped efficiency was downstairs from a fully equipped one bedroom unit. Both of the bedrooms had king-sized beds. Unfortunately, there were some pretty dumb design issues about the room: like the bathroom switches being outside of the bathroom, and the fact that one of the bathroom switches was actually behind a door when open, and the fact that the dishwasher door in the upstairs unit could not be opened fully because it was blocked by the range. We exchanged a 2BR Ocean Front Marriott for this room. I tried to talk the front desk into putting us into one of the renovated rooms, but they wanted over $900 to upgrade us. An upgraded room would have come close to Marriott quality, but the room they gave us was nowhere near Marriott quality. Even so, the room was livable.
Taken together, though, the positive things about the resort suggest that the owners are committed to the resort. That bodes well for the future. A lot of money is being spent on renovations. I definitely got the impression that the owners are serious about making it a high quality resort. The renovated rooms look to be a huge improvement over what they had been.
Negotiations are still ongoing with the Seminole Tribe to rebrand the resort with the Hard Rock name in some way that I did not fully understand. A senior sales person I talked to insisted that the owners are not going to actually sell the resort to the Seminoles. He said it will only be a rebranding. The only thing confirmed for sure about the Hard Rock negotiations is that the Hollywood Casino will be torn down and replaced with a Hard Rock Café. However, what the exact nature of the resort's relationship to Hard Rock will be is still not clear to me. Once all of the rooms are fully renovated and the Hard Rock association is achieved (assuming it will be), the resort will be a pretty good place to stay.
We rented a car from Unity Car Rental. That worked out well for us. It was significantly cheaper than the big well-known car rental companies. The car was well-maintained and ran well. We had no trouble negotiating the relatively narrow roads either on the Dutch or French side. This was our first trip to St. Maarten/St. Martin, and overall, we liked the island. However, I would imagine that during the high season, the roads will be pretty clogged. Traffic was kind of slow as it was in the tourist areas.
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