Orient-Express Hotels comprises 35 hotels, six tourist trains, three restaurants and two river cruise businesses. On the resort side of its business, it specializes in boutique properties ranging from 100 to 120 rooms. Many of the resorts have adjacent land that is suitable for high-end villa development. The plans are for a limited number of exclusive luxury villas for private ownership.

"We have been working on the Baie Longue cliff side development for some time. We can now move ahead with the first phase of the development as we have all the essential permits and we see strong demand in the international real estate market for these exclusive, full ownership villas with market values from 3 to 4 million Euros." said Simon Sherwood, President of Orient-Express Hotels. "While we are committed to maintaining the intimate ambiance of our hotels, we anticipate similar developments at other properties around the world as we launch this new aspect of our business."

The 36 acre development site will provide sweeping views of Baie Longue and the exclusive lowlands neighbourhood. In the first phase of development 10 Mediterranean style villas will be built in 2005, ranging in size from 4000 to 4500 square feet. Each villa will feature expansive outdoor terraces, arched doorways and windows, a private free form pool, granite finishes and 21 foot ceilings.

Construction of the first villa is already well advanced and the final preconstruction phase of the full project will be complete in the next few weeks with pre-selling of the 10 villas slated to begin in the first quarter of 2005.

Orient-Express is also working on plans for a larger project on a 12 acre site on the Dutch side of the island including a marina, retail and condominium development and hopes to be able to formally announce the launch of this project early in 2005.

The 37 square mile island of Saint Martin/Sint Maarten is one island with two nations. For visitors this means a true multi-cultural experience where numerous languages are spoken, the cuisine is outstanding and the hospitality refined. The cliff side development is ideally situated just 15 minutes from Marigot, the capital of French St. Martin in the French West Indies and a short drive from the fabulous restaurants of Grand Case.

Orient-Express Hotels owns 46 deluxe hotels, restaurant, tourist train and river cruise properties (38 of which it manages) in 21 countries from the Hotel Cipriani in Venice to the Mount Nelson in Cape Town, the Copacabana Palace in Rio de Janeiro to the Observatory in Sydney. Restaurants include '21' Club in New York, Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons in Oxfordshire, England, and Harry's Bar (a private club) in London. Among the tourist trains is the legendary Venice Simplon-Orient-Express in Europe and The Eastern & Oriental Express in Southeast Asia. The company also part-owns and manages PeruRail in Peru, which operates the Cuzco-Machu Picchu train service used by nearly every tourist to Peru. The Road To Mandalay in Burma and Afloat in France are two of the cruise properties. The company believes that discriminating travellers will choose a famous individual property in preference to a chain brand, so each property retains its individual name and character but joins the collection of Orient-Express Hotels, Trains & Cruises that is globally renowned for luxury.