Gyp Sea Hotel - St Barth

"Marie Sibuet, who recently opened Gyp Sea Beach Club and rebranded eight-year-old Villa Marie on Colombier hill as Gyp Sea Hotel."

"There’s a quaint charm to Villa Marie, a boutique hotel nestled high above the hills in Colombier. Sure, there’s no beach on site—although they offer shuttles to beach club Gyp Sea—but there’s simply no hotel with more spectacular views on the island. And, unlike its more bustling hospitality counterparts, Villa Marie is so quiet that you can hear the island’s natural fauna chirping in the tree canopies day or night."

"Villa Marie occupies a sweet spot at the small and intimate end of St. Barts' hospitality spectrum: pretty and cosseting, not flashy or forbidding. Although the serried sun loungers of the Isle de France on Flamands beach are clearly visible from the hilltop around which Villa Marie curls near the north-western tip of the island, all that seems light years away in terms of style and scale. Here the 21 suites and villas are woody, whitewashed and shuttered, with an abundance of ceiling fans, seashells and Emmanuelle -style rattan armchairs. Beds are vast and canopied, with elaborate headboards. Soft furnishings are printed with pineapples (which I found unfailingly happy-making), parrots (likewise, though something in their expression made me think they were laughing at me behind my back) and palm trees (dark, moody and weirdly haunting). Other features suggest influences from more distant shores: sideboards inlaid with mother-of-pearl; dreamcatcher-y wall hangings; Slim Aarons prints. This spirit of playful eclecticism comes directly from Villa Marie's co-owner, Jocelyne Sibuet. Together with her ex-husband Jean-Louis, and latterly with their children, she has built up the Sibuet brand into something of a mini-empire. It started in 1989 with the rustic-deluxe Les Fermes de Marie, in Megève. There are a dozen or so Sibuet properties scattered across France. The ace up this hotel's sleeve is its restaurant. I loved its airy open-plan design, which makes it seem bigger than it really is, and the fantastic attitude of the staff, who are mostly French and all clearly delighted to be on the island. And the superlative pain perdu . But whatever you do, don't miss the banane flambée . It, too, is cooked in generous quantities of island rum." - Steve King

"Villa Marie, a five-star luxury resort tucked away in the hills of Colombier above Flamands Bay, was just hitting its early stride when Irma hit, and while it suffered along with everybody else—an enormous tree shorn of its branches stands at the property’s center as a kind of testament and totem of remembrance—it suffered less. Beyond that stroke of good fortune, Nico Sibuet—the son of Jocelyne Sibuet of Maison & Hotels Sibuet—managed to be on the property before, during, and after the hurricane. And he made himself useful—not only in preparing for and weathering the storm, but in planning for repair and reconstruction needs before Irma even hit—and thus finding Villa Marie first in line when both materiel and labor were eventually ready to roll." - Corey Seymour