Light to white, soft, sloping gradually into the water. Bobby's Marina or along Pondfill Boulevard. Parking on the sand itself was ruled unlawful by a court in September 2018. Drive-up access. No fee.
Getting in
Short walk
Parking
Street parking. The tourism board points at Bobby's Marina and Pondfill Boulevard. What you cannot do is park on the sand: a court ruled in September 2018 that parking on Great Bay Beach near Walter Plantz Square is not allowed, and the Nature Foundation welcomed it as a precedent. Philipsburg is the hub of the Dutch-side minibus network, so this is the one beach on the island where not having a car is genuinely fine.
Water
Calm
Shorebreak
Calm
Snorkeling
Not worth it
Shade
Palapas for rent
Chairs
Chairs available
Food on site
Restaurants
Restrooms
Public
Facilities
Chairs and umbrellas, restrooms, snacks and drinks, showers. No natural shade or lifeguard
On a ship day
High
Crowds
Varies by day
Best time
A day with nothing in port. Visitors describe the same beach as shoulder to shoulder with ships in and near empty without them.
Best for
A cruise day, food and drink, people watching, or families
Safety
No lifeguards. The water is calm and the beach sits in the middle of a town, which helps, but two drownings were reported here in 2021, in May and again in August, so this is not a risk-free beach. Police reported beach-bag thefts on the Boardwalk in January 2024 and advised keeping valuables secure. A March 2026 government report described the Boardwalk and Great Bay Beach as littered with trash and broken glass after the solid waste tender collapsed, so wear something on your feet. Water quality is rain-dependent: see the section on the Great Salt Pond floodgates. The Office of Disaster Management also names the Great Bay Beach and Boardwalk area among the island's flood-prone and erosion-exposed locations.
The story
Great Bay is the capital's own beach, a mile of sand with a boardwalk of bars and restaurants along the back of it, and it is the beach cruise passengers reach without booking anything. That makes it two completely different places depending on the day. In January 2025 it was voted one of the ten best beaches in the Caribbean in a readers' choice award. Fourteen months later a government report described the same sand as littered with trash and broken glass. Both of those are true, and saying so is more useful than picking one.
Checked: August 2026 · Reported
It is entirely a function of the cruise schedule
Sint Maarten's port handles more than two million passengers a year, and the Tourist Bureau itself describes Great Bay as one of the nation's prime beaches used by thousands of cruise passengers and locals daily. On a big day the loungers are set almost touching each other, and one February 2026 visitor said exactly that: rows and rows of beds, some of them nearly touching, not much personal space. A December 2025 visitor described the same beach as dead as a ghost town when no ships are in.
So check the port's cruise schedule before you plan a beach day here. It is the single most useful thing you can do about this beach.
Chairs run from about $20 for second-row loungers, with better positions costing more, and visitors report being able to bargain on quiet days. The beach itself is free.
One number to be careful with. Tourism sources say the cruise terminal is about a ten minute walk from town and from the beach. The pier is physically at Point Blanche, around a headland, and the walking route follows the harbour road, which is hard to reconcile with ten minutes. There is also a water taxi. We are not going to publish a walking time on our own authority until somebody has walked it with a phone in their hand.
Looking east toward the cruise terminal in February 2012. The pier sits around the headland at Point Blanche, which is why the ten-minute walk figure is hard to credit.giggel · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 3.0
Do not swim here right after heavy rain
Great Bay sits directly downhill from Philipsburg and next to the Great Salt Pond. When the pond's floodgates open after heavy rain, that water goes into Great Bay Harbour.
In August 2019 the Nature Foundation tested Great Bay Beach and found coliform bacteria, an indicator of sewage, with the highest concern east of the Captain Hodge Pier. The then manager said plainly that they recommended bathers exercise extreme caution when using the beach, and noted the contamination may cause ear infections and skin irritation. The cause was identified as runoff from surrounding communities plus the opening of the floodgates.
There is nuance worth keeping. An earlier survey in August 2018 found no coliform indicators at Great Bay, though it did find medium to high phosphates and nitrates. So the honest framing is not that Great Bay is polluted. It is that the water quality here is rain-dependent and nobody publishes daily results. The practical rule is to skip swimming for a day or two after heavy rain.
The Nature Foundation's published testing record for this beach appears to stop in 2019, which is its own kind of answer.
This beach is rebuilt by machine, and the Nature Foundation objected
On 17 July 2017, six weeks before Irma, the Ministry of VROMI ran an excavator on Great Bay Beach between Down Street and the Holland House Hotel to repair erosion from heavy rainfall, closing that section from 8am to noon.
In September 2019 the Nature Foundation formally objected to heavy equipment being used on Great Bay and Oyster Bay to reconstruct the beach and clear storm debris and sargassum. Its warning was specific: beach driving and mechanical cleaning are among the most common dangers to sea turtle nests, and machine work compresses sand, accelerates erosion on narrow beaches and risks fuel and oil leaks.
So this is a beach actively maintained by machine, and that is part of why it looks the way it does.
The turtle point is not abstract. On 8 October 2018 the Nature Foundation relocated a green sea turtle nest of 150 eggs from Great Bay Beach to Simpson Bay, because of the risk of beach umbrellas puncturing the eggs and other tourism activity. Guana Bay, the usual relocation site, was rejected because of heavy sargassum. Nesting season on Sint Maarten runs April to December.
An award-winning beach with an enforcement problem
In January 2025 Great Bay Beach was voted one of the ten best beaches in the Caribbean in the USA TODAY 10Best Readers' Choice awards, after nomination by a panel of Caribbean travel writers and reader voting through the end of December 2024.
In March 2026 a report on the government's failed solid waste tender described the Boardwalk and Great Bay Beach, once vibrant attractions, as littered with trash and broken glass and posing safety hazards. Seventeen bids came in, eleven were excluded early and six were disqualified, and an unfinalised 2026 budget legally prevented multi-year contract awards.
In July 2026 the Minister of Tourism walked the Boardwalk on a two-ship day and reported inconsistent identification of authorised beach vendors, sanitation problems despite available bins, and continued unauthorised solicitation, known locally as barking. A moratorium on new beach activity permits is currently in force while the policy is reviewed, and a new Beach and Vending Policy is being developed with the National Recovery Program Bureau and the World Bank.
Vendor pressure is what visitors actually notice. One January 2026 visitor put it as: you say no, they keep walking. Others report more persistent selling. The Boardwalk police substation is currently inactive, and a May 2025 meeting between the Minister of Justice, police management and the Philipsburg branch of the Indian Merchants Association discussed reactivating it. Whether it has been, we do not know.
The full arc of the bay in March 2025, the most current free-licensed view of this beach we have.Dr. Thomas Liptak · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
The Boardwalk, and a length nobody agrees on
The Philipsburg Boardwalk opened in 2006 and runs along the back of the beach with bars, restaurants and shops on it. Venues confirmed operating in the 2024/2025 season or later include Ocean Lounge, Big Bastards, Brews & Bites, the Seaview pool bar, St. Rose Beach Bar, The Pier at Walter Plantz Square, Aziana and the Austrian Schnitzelhouse. A visitor in August 2025 named Caribbean Blend for jerk chicken and Beach Boys Watersports. Everything is priced in US dollars.
A widely shared article headlined that the Boardwalk was rejuvenated and ready for high season 2024/2025 is worth reading closely: it contains no renovation dates, no cost, no funding source and no engineering detail. It is a roundup of new and refreshed businesses. Whether any structural rebuild actually happened, we do not know, and we are not going to write a boardwalk rebuild story off a business roundup.
The length is a mess. The tourism board's beach page says 2 to 3 kilometres. Its own Philipsburg page says the Boardwalk runs about one mile from Philipsburg Marina to Walter Plantz Square. The Boardwalk's promotional site claims 1.5 miles. A visitor says roughly two miles. The one-mile figure with named endpoints is the most specific and internally consistent, so that is the working number, and it is flagged rather than asserted.
The Boardwalk is a continuous paved promenade at beach level and is promoted as having smooth pathways suited to wheelchairs and strollers. That is a promotional claim, and getting from the promenade onto the sand still means a step down and a walk through soft sand, with no beach matting documented.
Common questions
Quick fact
Can you walk to the beach from the cruise port in St. Maarten?
Yes, and there is also a water taxi. Be careful with the walking time you are quoted: tourism sources say ten minutes, which is hard to square with the geography, since the pier sits at Point Blanche around a headland from town and the route follows the harbour road.
Quick fact
Is Great Bay Beach free?
Yes. The beach is public and there is no entry fee. You only pay if you rent a lounger and umbrella, which starts around $20 for a second-row set and is reported to be negotiable on quiet days.
Quick fact
Is the water clean at Great Bay Beach?
Usually, but it depends on rain. In August 2019 the Nature Foundation found sewage-indicator bacteria after runoff and the opening of the Great Salt Pond floodgates, and advised extreme caution. There is no daily public water quality feed, so avoid swimming for a day or two after heavy rain.
Quick fact
When is Great Bay Beach least crowded?
On days with no cruise ships in port. Visitors describe the beach as nearly empty without ships and shoulder to shoulder with them. Check the port's cruise schedule before you plan a beach day here.
Quick fact
Is Great Bay Beach safe?
The water is calm and the beach sits in the middle of a town, which helps. But two drownings were reported in 2021, there are no lifeguards, police reported beach-bag thefts on the Boardwalk in January 2024, and a 2026 government report flagged broken glass on the sand.
Last checked August 17, 2026. Everything on this page is confidence reported: drawn from credible sources but not independently confirmed by us. Beach conditions change with the weather and the season, and businesses on the sand open and close, so check anything you are building a day around.
Desk research pass, docs/research/research-great-bay-beach.md, holding the full claim to source table and the confidence flag on every claim
Ships in port, what's on, and island conditions for the week ahead. Every Monday. A couple of minutes to read, unsubscribe anytime.
Something went wrong on our end and we could not add you just now. Please try again in a moment, or emailleslie@thisissxm.comand we will add you by hand.
We will only use your email for island guide updates. Unsubscribe anytime.
