Visa and entry requirements Sint Maarten:
Passport required
No visa is required

Information from the Foreign Office about your Sint Maarten trip:
https://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/de/niederlandesicherheit/211084

Sint Maarten is the southern part of a Caribbean island, which it shares with the French St. Martin in the northern half. St. Maarten has a population of around 40,000 and is considered an autonomous region within the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

The land area of Sint Maarten consists of the main island and several uninhabited smaller islands. Geographically, the archipelago is located south of Anguilla and northwest of Saint Barth.

The two official languages in St. Maarten are English and Dutch. The national currency used there is the Antilles guilder, where 1 euro corresponds to around 2 ANG. However, the US dollar is also accepted everywhere as a means of payment.

The largest cities on the Dutch part of the island include Philipsburg, Simpson Bay, Cole Bay, Little Bay, Cul de Sac, Lower Prince's Quarter and Upper Prince's Quarter.

Sint Maarten has a tropical climate all year round, so the island is regularly exposed to severe tropical cyclones, especially in the summer months. Like most recently in September 2017, when Hurricane Irma severely devastated most of the island and even the Princess Juliana Airport had to be closed for four weeks due to significant damage.

Sint Maarten's most important economic sectors include tourism and various tax-privileged financial services.

The Philipsburg Freeport, where no taxes or duties are levied, is considered one of the largest and most modern cruise ports in the entire Caribbean. In this well-developed port, at least five huge cruise ships can now dock at the same time.

However, St. Maarten's biggest tourist attraction is the world-famous Maho Beach. On this famous beach, right next to the airport runway, planes land just above the heads of the crowds of tourists, creating a unique spectacle. In the Sunset Bar next to Maho Beach, the exact arrival and departure times of individual flights are displayed on a surfboard every day.

Other important sights in St. Maarten include the border monument to French St. Martin as a reminder of the earlier division, the history museum, the bird sanctuary, the large harbor village “Harbour Point Village”, the boardwalk, the Great Bay Beach and the Philipsburg Church, Fort Amsterdam, Old Street, Courthouse, Botanical Gardens, Sint Maarten Museum, Mary Star Church, Fort Williams, Front Street - largest shopping street in the capital, Simpson Bay Lagoon and other fascinating ones Sandy beaches.

Only around 2,000 people live in the capital, Philipsburg, but up to 20,000 cruise tourists can populate the place during the day.

In July 2015 I visited beautiful Sint Maarten for the only time so far. I arrived by plane from Tortola in the British Virgin Islands with the Caribbean airline LIAT. During my week-long stay I lived in the tourist hotspot of Simpson Bay, not far from the airport.

For me, the holiday island of St. Maarten is one of the best developed tourist destinations in the Caribbean. I was able to do so much there that week that my days went by so quickly.

Several times this week I visited the capital, Philipsburg, which was very easy to reach from Simpson Bay thanks to a well-developed bus system on the island.

Philipsburg is an absolute beauty of the Caribbean and is practically entirely designed for tourism. Some areas of the city actually looked like they were painted or even resembled a postcard. My city tour was just a lot of fun; I had rarely felt so comfortable in a Caribbean capital before.

All of the city's streets and paths were primarily lined with countless palm trees, all of which were perfectly trimmed and sometimes even resembled plastic palms. What was particularly noticeable was that there was no rubbish lying around anywhere in Philipsburg, which is guaranteed to make it one of the most beautiful cities in the Caribbean for me.

The primary goal of my stay in St. Maarten was of course to visit the world-famous Maho Beach. All day long I commuted between having cool drinks at the Sunset Bar or watching the spectacular planes land directly over the beach. Every plane that took off, with its strong and violent winds, was always duly celebrated by the thousands of visitors. The atmosphere on that day, in this extraordinary place, was simply unique and will never be forgotten by me.

In addition to an island tour by bus and a visit to the French north of St. Martin, my program also included day trips by ferry to Saint Barth and Saba.

The island part of Sint Maarten is a fantastic travel destination in the Caribbean and is therefore highly recommended by me for a longer stay. I hope that one day the island will have fully recovered from the hurricane's devastation and that I can one day return for a relaxing vacation.

During my long nine-week Caribbean tour, I then went on to the archipelago of St. Kitts and Nevis.