St. Barth's: Where to Stay: Overview

For a tiny island, St. Barth’s has a remarkable number of first-class hotels: seven that are ranked four-star luxe and another that would be if the inspectors were invited. However, among those, only one has more than forty rooms (Le Guanahani), and some have fewer than twenty. That means you have a lot of choices, but it can be tough to get a room. As only Guanahani is owned by a large real estate company, these hotels have retained real individual characters, so it’s important to choose the right spot for you. Adding to the capacity crunch, though, is guests’ tendency to develop favorite haunts; repeat visitors make up more than 50 percent of the clientele. (On a trip in July, I bumped into a couple on the plane who were going to St. Barth’s for their third long weekend in six months.) While the quantity of luxury rooms has increased in recent years, with the upgrades and additions of Eden Rock, Le Sereno and Le Guanahani, there are still less than 270 high-end rooms. However, hotels are only one option; hundreds of villas are available for rent, and the range of these is enormous. A word of warning: whether you stay in a house or a hotel, you can expect to pay a fair amount. Just about everything needs to be flown in, so it’s expensive. One regular visitor joked that one of St. Barth’s official slogans should be: “If you have to ask what it costs, you probably can’t afford it.”