Half of it is Dutch and half of it is French, and the line between has been crossed without a checkpoint for centuries. Sint Maarten in the south is the busier side, built around a cruise port, a lagoon and one of the busiest airports in the eastern Caribbean. Saint Martin in the north is slower, with a market town, a hilltop fort and a coastline of small bays. Together they make the smallest inhabited island anywhere split between two nations, and a holiday where lunch can change country halfway through, with nothing but a roadside monument to mark the spot. The crossing itself asks nothing of you, which is why the formalities that do are the ones that catch people out.
Almost everyone arrives on the Dutch side, and clearing immigration there admits you to the whole island, because nobody checks the internal line. Arrivals into the Dutch-side airport, and yachts, are asked to complete an electronic entry form online before travelling, submitted through the territory's own official site, which charges nothing; the look-alike sites that surface in search results and ask for a fee are not the official channel, and one submission can cover a family rather than a separate form for each traveller. The requirement has come in stages, so check how it is being applied before you fly; arrivals at the small French airport are treated differently. It is worth pausing to compare flights and hotels for Sint Maarten and choosing your half deliberately, because the two sides sell different holidays on the same small island.
The visa question is the one most often got wrong. Neither half sits inside the Schengen area, despite one of them being French, so a Schengen visa admits you to neither side, and travellers who need a visa apply separately through the Dutch or the French authorities depending on where they land. Money has quietly changed too. The French side runs on euros, as it always has, while the Dutch side has retired the old Netherlands Antillean guilder in favour of the Caribbean guilder, shared with Curacao and pegged to the United States dollar at the same rate as before. In practice the dollar is taken across the whole island and cards are widely accepted, so this matters mainly if you are carrying leftover notes from an earlier trip, which are no longer legal tender.
Where you sleep decides the accent of the trip. In Simpson Bay, resort hotels and marina apartments sit between the lagoon and the runway at Princess Juliana, within walking distance of the bars. In Philipsburg, mid-range town hotels stand a step from the boardwalk along Great Bay, which fills and empties with the cruise ships. Over the border in Grand Case, small French guesthouses line the beach road above the restaurant strip. At Orient Bay, beachfront bungalows and villas gather along the bay's long Atlantic sweep, popular with families and windsurfers. The distances between them are trivial and the atmospheres are not.
A hire car earns its keep here rather than a string of unmetered taxis, and, unusually for this part of the Caribbean, driving is on the right on both sides. The island can be circled in about an hour, crossing the border needs no paperwork, and one road ties it together, although traffic thickens badly on cruise-ship days. Boats matter as much as cars. Ferries run from Marigot to Anguilla in around twenty minutes, with tickets sold at the terminal rather than booked online, and you clear immigration at Blowing Point and pay a departure charge at the pier; Saint Barthelemy is the longer crossing, closer to an hour, and is worth booking ahead. One warning about the famous beach. Aircraft passing low over the sand at Maho Beach is a real spectacle, but standing behind a departing jet is not a stunt, it is a way to be badly hurt, and people have been. You can check car hire and day trip options and see both halves properly.
The contrast is the whole attraction. Philipsburg lines its boardwalk with duty-free shops and cruise crowds, Simpson Bay keeps the bars and the nightlife, while north of the line Marigot has a French market and a hilltop fort, Grand Case is the island's kitchen with its beach shacks and restaurants, and Orient Bay stretches long and open to the wind. Season sharpens the difference. The dry winter and spring months are the reliable ones and the priciest, filling further around the sailing regattas the island hosts in that window, while late summer and autumn are cheaper and quieter but sit inside the Atlantic hurricane season, which this island knows better than most. Personally, I would sleep on the French side and play on the Dutch one, because Grand Case gives you the better dinners and the quieter evenings, while Simpson Bay and Philipsburg are a short drive away when you want noise, casinos or shopping.
Q: Do you need a passport to cross between the Dutch and French sides?
A: No. The internal border is open with no checkpoint, and clearing immigration on arrival admits you to the whole island. Your passport still matters at the airport and for onward travel to other islands.
Q: Does a Schengen visa cover Saint Martin?
A: No. Neither half is in the Schengen area, despite one of them being French, so travellers who need a visa require a separate one for the side they arrive on.
Q: Is there a charge for the online entry form?
A: Not on the official site, which is free. Paid look-alike sites are not the official channel, and one submission can cover a family, so there is no need to file a separate form for every traveller.
Q: What currency should you carry?
A: Dollars. The French side uses euros and the Dutch side the Caribbean guilder, which replaced the older Netherlands Antillean guilder at the same dollar peg, but the dollar is accepted island-wide.
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