Anse Marcel

The resort is closed, and most sites still say it is open

This is the most out-of-date fact on the French north coast.

The large resort at the head of the bay, 258 rooms, closed abruptly on 15 December 2025, mid-season, putting 137 employees out of work with no notice. Its parent company went before the mixed commercial court of Pointe-à-Pitre on 19 February 2026, and on 23 February the court placed the business into redressement judiciaire, the French judicial restructuring procedure. On 11 June 2026 staff demonstrated again, because management's job-preservation plan proposed cutting roughly 90% of positions and rebuilding the hotel at 120 rooms instead of 258. As of August 2026 there is no announced reopening date. The stated reason for the closure was mould from leaking roofs, unrepaired since Irma, which the owners declined to fund.

Booking sites, listings and dozens of best-beaches posts still describe it as a functioning resort.

The property has cycled through more names than almost any hotel on the island. It opened in the mid-1980s as part of the Le Meridien L'Habitation de Lonvilliers estate. It later traded as Radisson Blu Resort Marina & Spa, which is still the trading name attached to the owning company in the French companies register. Irma shut it for years in 2017. Investors bought it in 2019 and reopened it in 2020 under the Secrets brand, whereupon COVID closed it almost immediately. It dropped the Secrets brand in June 2025, traded independently as Saint Martin Beach Resort for six months, and then closed.

There are two hotels here and only one of them is shut

Travellers conflate them, and both possible mistakes are wrong.

Le Domaine Anse Marcel Beach, at 26 rue de Lonvilliers, is a separate operating property with its own beachfront restaurant, a second restaurant called Le Gourmet, and a beach bar. It was open and busy enough to host the island's first ChocoCarib' chocolate fair over three days in March 2026, with more than 1,000 visitors.

So: anyone writing that Anse Marcel is closed is wrong. Anyone writing that the resort at Anse Marcel is open is also wrong. The bay in 2026 has one working hotel, a working marina, and a large dark building at the head of the beach.

Older listicles claiming ten or more restaurants at Anse Marcel with a $23 to $40 average check are describing the estate before the closure, and should not be trusted for 2026. We could not find a published day rate for chairs and umbrellas for non-guests, or confirm what beach facilities a day visitor can actually use now.

The marina is the other half of the bay

Port de Lonvilliers, marketed as Anse Marcel Marina, sits in a dredged basin behind the beach. Published figures put it at roughly 150 berths on the main pontoons with about 40 reserved for visitors, vessels up to 27 metres, three metres of depth, with office hours 8h to 12h and 14h to 18h. Those berth numbers come from a single aggregator and want confirming with the capitainerie.

It is a working charter base, which is why Anse Marcel is a departure point for Tintamarre day trips. Whether it is operating at full capacity with the resort closed is not something anyone has published.

The trailhead nobody signposts

Anse Marcel is the west end of the Sentier des Froussards, the Réserve Naturelle's dry-forest discovery trail. The reserve gives it as 4.5 km and 2.5 hours, running from Anse Marcel to Grandes Cayes beach by way of the empty Petites Cayes, through what the reserve calls the island's last intact coastal forest.

The practical trailhead is not on the beach. You walk up and right out of the resort area, follow the road past the water treatment plant, and start from a small gravel lot there. That detail comes from a single trip report written when the resort was still branded Secrets, so its landmarks predate December 2025.

That makes Anse Marcel a genuinely useful base for a hiking morning followed by an easy swim, which is a different pitch from resort beach and probably a better one in 2026.

Getting here: one road in, one road out. From the Cul-de-Sac and Orient Bay side of the north coast, turn onto the Route de l'Anse Marcel and climb over the ridge, then descend into the bay. It is roughly 7 km from Grand Case and about 23 km from Princess Juliana airport, so allow 35 to 50 minutes from Philipsburg in normal traffic. Under French law the shoreline is public and the beach is not gated, even where hotels front it.