After Hurricane Irma, everyone wondered how things should go on with Sint Maarten. Hotel manager Paul Boetekees and other entrepreneurs, however, seized the disaster to get out better. Tourists also find their way to the island again.
We still know Paul Boetekees from radio broadcasts during the hurricane of almost two years ago. He saw the wild looting in front of his Holland House Beach Hotel and then begged the arrival of armed Dutch soldiers to protect his hotel guests. Now we meet a relaxed hotel manager. “Have you seen it yourself? Our island has remained afloat! It is unbelievable what has already happened. The population showed resilience, the business community is currently investing enormously and the government is also participating to the best of its ability. We only have to wait for the big money from the Netherlands, but we have already done a huge job together. ”
Now that tourists are increasingly finding their way back to the windward island, things are irreversibly heading in the right direction. Even the heavily damaged Princess Juliana International Airport, known from large aircraft arriving low over the bathers, is partly in use again. Both KLM and Air France (due to the French side) land there again.
Many hotels in the vicinity of the airport are under construction and crowding is taking place everywhere. If you drive towards the capital Philipsburg, you will see that most of the hurricane junk has been cleared away. Even the fire in the huge landfill has been under control for a while. Sometimes you rub your eyes: is this island the ruins of which we saw in the media shortly after the hurricane? Soon, under the leadership of the Red Cross, around 1200 houses will be provided with a new and better roof. It is a small selection of the prosperity that can be reported.
Emergency generator
Boetekees exudes positivism. “Thousands of people left the island, but those who stayed went to work immediately. There is no social safety net here, there are no benefits. Waiters who could build carpets picked up the hammer, chefs with two right hands became plasterers or electricians and everyone who could hold a brush started painting. It is unbelievable what has happened in the meantime. “
He shows photos. “The fourth floor of our hotel was a total loss. We have removed everything bucket by bucket and bucket by bucket has been rebuilt. Our motto became “Let’s build back better”, such damage to the hotel does not happen to me again. With better calculations, more steel, firmer fronts and better sliding doors, we are now completely hurricane resistant. ”
On the fourth floor, he furnished design rooms for the businessman and the tourist with the better stock market. “We have turned a disadvantage into an advantage, we have invested enormously. No wind gets the coolers of the air conditioning out of their place. Our emergency unit is on the roof in an indestructible aluminum cage construction: it will never blow away again. Because without electricity you are nowhere after such a disaster. “
Over the boardwalk
Holland House Beach Hotel is located in the middle of Philipsburg on the “boardwalk”, a pedestrian promenade along the Grote Baai. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the sailing ships of the West India Company anchored there. Every day there is already the necessary activity here with the sun rising. A civil servant from the cleaning department sweeps sand back to where it belongs: the beach. A little further on, a Chinese woman from an adjacent restaurant does her taichi exercises every morning. A seated man cycles past her in an effort to try and get some exercise. In the meantime, a rastaman kindly walks from nothing to nowhere and a newly dressed Indian is on his way to work in one of the many jewelry stores.
Everywhere you see activity: existing restaurants have opened again, new and more trendy bars have taken the place of tents that were actually no longer profitable for the hurricane.
Lawsuit
The destroyed old wing of hotel De Pasanggrahan from 1905 still looks just like it did the day after Irma. The messes are abandoned, because there is still a lawsuit against the insurance company. After a summary injunction, the hotel has already received a down payment and people are now busy with plans for recovery: the former monumental hotel lobby has recently been fitted with a provisional roof, the kitchen will be next. The new part that was built ten years ago defied the forces of nature and always remained open. “We are optimistic about the future,” says owner Oli Tinitali. “Our hotel is one of the few historical monuments on the island, the government must help to ensure that this is preserved for posterity.”
New on the beach is a large gilt cow, all day you see cruise tourists from the US posing at the artwork. Or is it a golden calf?
Demolished
Not only the hospitality sector has started, the middle class is also almost ready for the coming high season. There is still plenty of construction activity in the area where many cruise passengers are brought ashore by boats. Halfway the boardwalk, at the Captain Hodge Pier, there are nicer and more solid new Diamonds International buildings. This jewelery chain from the US, which has always had a dominant position on Sint Maarten, is ready to provide the many American tourists with diamonds, gold, jewelry and expensive watches. A cement mill discharges its load through a long high hose at a construction site behind the façade row. Someone quickly puts a piece of cardboard under the engine of the truck: some oil was allowed to leak on the boardwalk!
The sunlight stretches the fully restored Divi Little Bay Beach Resort in the distance. At the tip of the same headland you see Fort Amsterdam from 1636, the first Dutch fort in the Caribbean. Just before that there is a gap, this is where the Sonesta Great Bay Beach Hotel once stood. That collapsed under Irma and has since been completely demolished. There are plans for new construction.
It is still early, but a second cruise ship is appearing in the distance. On Wednesdays there are sometimes as many as five, good for many thousands of tourists. The beach chairs and umbrellas are placed on the beach. Then, from nine o’clock in the morning, cruise passengers can have the bucket filled with ice and cans of beer.
Safer
In Front Street – on old maps, this shopping street is still called Voorstraat – the palm trees have recovered their leaves torn off by the storm. Most facades have been repaired and everything is in perfect condition. Everywhere in Front Street, guards with dogs have taken their familiar positions, posting for the many electronics and jewelry stores.
The number of robberies and burglaries on the island, however, fell sharply after Hurricane Irma. Much of the murmur has left the island after the disaster and there is still Dutch police support. Apparently, a close-knit network of surveillance cameras at major traffic junctions also has a preventive effect. A satisfied Indian on the sidewalk of his watch shop: “Fleeing after a robbery no longer makes sense, even if you change cars.”
The court building that sets the scene for Sint Maarten only looks paintless, a few frames with storm damage are boarded up. A guard at the entrance announces reassuringly that a major renovation and refurbishment will commence in six months.
Dutch atmosphere
Market studies showed that American tourists find so little Dutch atmosphere on this island in the Dutch Caribbean. AMA Jewelers has taken up that challenge by simulating a small piece of Amsterdam around a side-alley in the old center. Manager Jelle van Woudenberg Hamstra: “We have imported Dutch bricks. We cut each stone three times and then glued it to the facades as strips. That is how it really seems. We also recently imported a 100-year-old tram set from Amsterdam. It should complete the Dutch atmosphere here. ”A little further on, the colorful and popy facades of rum shop Guavaberry shine in the sun. To everyone’s surprise, the vulnerable-looking monument, a showpiece for tourists, has hardly been damaged by Irma. What was blown away by ornaments has been restored. Cruise passengers are crowding in the store, where the saleswomen in Caribbean traditional costumes can hardly drag local rum and matching hats and T-shirts as usual.
https://www.rd.nl/vandaag/binnenland/sint-maarten-weer-bijna-klaar-voor-het-massatoerisme-1.1590487
St Maarten News 