St Martin Beach Resort: ‘122 families sacrificed’
On Wednesday 10 June, staff at the St Martin Beach Resort sounded the alarm. Gathered outside the hotel, they protested against a redundancy plan that could see 90% of the workforce made redundant.
In Anse Marcel, the St-Martin Beach Resort, formerly known as the Secrets, has not been welcoming guests since 15 December 2025. Although the gates of this establishment, which opened in 1986, remain closed, the labour dispute is very much alive. According to staff representatives, around 100 employees are currently directly threatened by redundancy proceedings. “That’s 122 families being sacrificed,” warns the company’s Social and Economic Committee (CSE), estimating that around 500 people could be indirectly affected. “Today, we’re being made redundant under a plan that calls itself a job-saving plan, but which saves nothing at all,” exclaims Ingrid Mathurin, secretary of the CSE. Beyond direct jobs, the economic consequences of this closure also affect suppliers, taxi drivers and service providers linked to the hotel business owned by Solcer.
A “sudden” closure
With 258 rooms, the St Martin Beach Resort was the second-largest private employer and the largest hotel establishment in the French part of the island. In December 2025, to justify its closure, management cited “safety” concerns. A point the Works Council disputes, asserting that “no official document required an immediate closure”. Staff representatives argue, “it was a matter of work to be carried out within a given timeframe, with possible compensatory measures”. A cessation of operations deemed “abrupt” at the height of the tourist season. On 31 December, the establishment’s director left the ship, a departure that only reinforced the sense of abandonment among the staff.
An “organised strategy”?
Staff representatives claim to be relying on internal communications obtained legally. According to them, these documents point to an “organised strategy” aimed at artificially reducing the hotel’s activity in order to facilitate redundancies. The Works Council sees this as proof that “the reduction in business is not being endured” but “that management has deliberately manipulated the situation”. Staff representatives are therefore denouncing a job-preservation plan which they describe as a “job-sinking plan”. An initial redundancy plan was reportedly set to affect nine employees in September 2025. However, the procedure now appears to target more than “90%” of the workforce. According to the CSE, the labour inspectorate has “implicitly” approved this plan.
Public authorities called upon
Today, the CSE is “solemnly calling on the public authorities, the prefecture, the labour department and the local authority to intervene”. In February, staff members had approached Senator Annick Pétrus, whose intervention is said to have facilitated contact with the labour inspectorate. Today, the CSE is calling for “total transparency, the suspension of unjustified decisions and concrete solutions to safeguard the business and jobs”, as well as “the immediate launch of an independent administrative inquiry”. For staff representatives, “this is not simply a restructuring; it is the organised sacrifice of employees”.
