Riu Palace St Martin All Inclusive - Anse Marcel, St. Martin

Beautiful pool and beach, wonderfully friendly staff, room service and buffet food was great. I don't recommend the restaurants as the staff wasn't as nice and frankly the food was nothing special and actually not even as good as the buffet. Just enjoy doing your own food and then get back to the pool! Bars were great and the tenders friendly and fun...

The way the hotel is situated, the sea-view rooms actually have views of mountains and an interior harbor rather than the open ocean. If you like the temperature cool in your room, you have to request for a computerized A/C over-ride in order to get the temperature down. The internet is pretty slow in the rooms and elsewhere. And, even in the nice restaurants, which require reservations days in advance, the food is pretty mediocre. All that said --the beach, ocean and pool are wonderful and relaxing and there's easy, around the clock access to all the food and drinks you could possibly want.

Everything about the Riu Palace was outstanding, especially the amazingly friendly and helpful staff. The hotel is impeccably maintained, and the food was very good. I would certainly go back there. We booked early on hotels.com so got a nice discount and felt we got extremely good value for what we spent.

Was an amazing vacation, lovely people and great service.

This resort was definitely a thumbs down. Perhaps coming from a much better resort in terms of service, newness and beauty on the Dutch side contributed to my assessment. However, there are some things that just should not happen at a 4-star resort. 1) They make it incredibly difficult to make reservations at their a la carte restaurants. Have to make reservations IN PERSON only a few hours a day and then the agent taking reservations was not even at her post at the allotted time many times. Should be able to make reservations via phone period. On a positive note, the food at Krystal was good which we got into by just going to the restaurant on check-in night and asking if they could seat us and were obliged by the kind host. 2) The beach is lacking and stony. The water is green compared to other beaches on the French and Dutch side where the water is crystal clear and turquoise. 3) The pool was warm which was nice, however, the pool towel hut closed before the pool closed! The pool bar also closed before the pool closed...again poor service to guests. 4) Ordered 2 items via late night room service - did not tell us 1 was not available until they arrived at our door and the other was 3 days old as indicated by the dated sticker on the Saran wrap. Definitely would not recommend this resort to anyone and would not stay here again. There are much better options elsewhere on the island for even lower cost.