The incident involving a resident trying to return home reported on in Saturday’s paper, while perhaps not very serious, is worth looking into. Delta Airlines told the St. Martin-born French passport holder during a stopover in Atlanta, Georgia, on his way from Paris that he could not stay in St. Maarten longer than three months without a visa.
Despite the student’s explanation that he was headed north of the border and as local resident did not need any visa, they changed his return date to remain within the maximum 90-day period for most foreign guests to the Dutch side. Although this was done at no extra charge, the young man is now stuck with a non-refundable and non-transferable ticket to leave again more than four months earlier than he had planned.
The problem obviously has to do with the fact that Princess Juliana International Airport (PJIA) is used as main gateway for both sides of the two-nation island. This has been the case for many years, but somehow the message doesn’t always seem to properly reach especially relevant parties abroad like airlines.
The negative impact of such apparently persistent misconceptions on the tourism product ought not be underestimated. An impression must be avoided that travelling to “The Friendly Island” is unnecessarily complicated because of bureaucratic glitches.
Immigration authorities of both St. Maarten and St. Martin would do well to jointly emit and widely distribute clear, updated information on how exactly their cooperation at PJIA works and what the different requirements are to visit each side. There should be no room for doubt.
