Heading to St. Maarten? Read This to Save Money and Have A Great Day Visiting Maho Beach
Are you planning on visiting Maho Beach in St Marteen? Excited to see the airplanes take off and land right above you? Don’t buy the excursion!! Take this advice instead and enjoy more time on the beach!
If you’re cruising into the port of St Marteen, you’ll notice there are several excursion options. Food and drink tours, ATV tours, catamaran tours, etc. but the main draw for many people is airplane beach and for good reason…it’s incredible!
Cruise lines have minimal options for excursions to Maho Beach. You’ll likely see $79-$159 per person excursions that involve a few hours on a boat and a quick stop at the beach or a food tour that includes 45 minutes on the beach. Don’t buy it!
Do this instead…
- Walk off of the cruise ship and towards the port exit 👉🏽
- Look for an orange sign that says “land taxi dispatch area”. You’ll then see a big blue sign that says “taxi dispatch”
- Under the blue sign, you’ll meet some very friendly tour operators. They charge around $16 per person for round-trip service to Maho Beach (Airplane Beach). They will give you a wristband, load you into a shuttle, and off you go!
You are now on your way to a great day visiting Maho Beach!
To make the most of your day visiting Maho Beach (Airplane Beach), you should prepare in a few ways.
- Before your trip, look up which planes are landing during your arrival to Maho Beach. The local restaurants have chaulk boards but they only listed 5ish of the 20+ we watched fly in!
- Disembark from the ship as early as possible! You want to get to the beach as soon as you can because it gets very busy very quickly. We arrived around 9:15 am and left the beach at 1 pm. It was nearly empty from 9:15-10 am.
- Hop on the taxi from the port (as mentioned above!) and grab a spot on the beach as soon as you arrive.
- Send someone in your group to grab drinks from Sunset Bar & Grill. Drinks are between $8-$16 depending on the size and what you’re getting. We also bought a fresh coconut for $5. They also have a small pool, gift shop, restaurant and bathrooms! It’s $1 to use the bathrooms.
VERY IMPORTANT: Be extremely careful in the ocean; the waves and rip currents are intense and very dangerous.
Also important: the tide comes in quickly!! Keep your stuff towards the road on the back of the beach.
We had a great day visiting Maho Beach with planes landing every 15-20 minutes. We heard from a few people that this isn’t always the case, so double-check before planning a full day on the beach.
