A 264-suite resort on Smith Bay at the east end of St. Thomas, Jimmy Buffett's hospitality brand stretched into a full apartment-style operation, with studios through two-bedroom presidential suites and the kitchens groups actually need.
"The Buffett brand stretched into a 264-suite Smith Bay address, apartment-style accommodation for groups that need a kitchen and a balcony."
Margaritaville Vacation Club by Wyndham St. Thomas occupies the former Wyndham Sugar Bay Beach Club & Resort, a long-running St. Thomas timeshare-and-resort property on Smith Bay at the eastern end of the island. The property was rebranded under the Margaritaville-Wyndham vacation-club partnership in 2017 and underwent staged renovation through the late 2010s and into 2022, with the most recent room refresh completing in 2024. The site is at the eastern end of St. Thomas, fifteen minutes from the Red Hook ferry to St. John (the most-visited departure point in the U.S. Virgin Islands) and twenty-five minutes from Cyril E. King Airport. Smith Bay itself is a quiet eastern bay with calm Caribbean water and a working resort beach.
There are 264 suites across two main towers, and the structural feature of the property is that every accommodation is a suite. The smallest category is the studio (around 30 square metres with a partial kitchen, a king bed, and a balcony); the working category for families and groups is the one-bedroom suite (separate bedroom, full kitchen, dining area, sofa-bed in the living room); the headline category is the two-bedroom presidential suite at around 1,070 square feet (two bedrooms, two bathrooms, full kitchen, washer/dryer, two balconies). The apartment-style scale is the structural advantage: a six-person group books one two-bedroom rather than three hotel rooms, with the kitchen and the laundry that the kids' breakfast and the swim-week laundry actually need.
The resort runs three pools (the main pool, the cascading family pool with the slide, and the adult quiet pool), three restaurants (the Frank & Lola Caribbean kitchen, the LandShark Bar & Grill for casual, and the Joe Merchant's coffee-and-quick-bite), and a small spa. The Buffett brand brings the live-music programming, Latitude Concerts on the pool deck in season, the Sunday brunch with a steel band, and the genuinely deep tropical-cocktail bar list. The on-site activity programme runs to the standard Caribbean lineup (kayaks, paddleboards, snorkelling at the small reef off the bay, sailing instruction).
The position is the great variable. Smith Bay is twenty-five minutes from the airport on the eastern end of St. Thomas, further than the Ritz or the Westin but closer to the Red Hook ferry to St. John, which is the most-used day-trip from St. Thomas. The bay itself is a calm Caribbean swimming bay rather than a postcard crescent (Sapphire Beach, two minutes' drive, is the photographed beach on this stretch of coast). For groups, families, and bachelor/bachelorette parties needing apartment-style accommodation with the kitchens and the room-block scale, this is the practical answer at a sub-Ritz price band.
Families take the two-bedroom presidential suites for the obvious reasons, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, the full kitchen for the children's breakfast, the laundry for the swim-week towels, and the balcony with the calm Smith Bay water in front. The cascading family pool with the slide, the Kids' Club programme, the Sapphire Beach two minutes' drive away, and the Red Hook ferry to St. John fifteen minutes away cover the activity calendar without needing to leave the immediate area.
Bachelor and bachelorette groups work the room maths here in a way they cannot at smaller properties. Two two-bedroom suites take eight people in two adjacent units, one suite as the daytime-lounge and one as the night-out base. The LandShark Bar & Grill handles the welcome dinner; the resort organises catamaran day-charters from Red Hook to the British Virgin Islands; the live-music nights on the pool deck are the kind of programming that groups actually use. The Frenchtown bar strip in Charlotte Amalie is twenty minutes by taxi.
For a Virgin Islands anniversary at a comfortable rate band, the one-bedroom Caribbean View suites do honest work, the separate bedroom, the proper balcony, the kitchen for the morning coffee on the terrace, and the Frank & Lola Caribbean dinner with the steel band on Sunday brunch. The price band runs roughly 50, 60% below the Ritz for comparable comfort if the brief is the trip itself rather than the property.
6080 Estate Smith Bay
00802 St. Thomas
U.S. Virgin Islands
264 suites in two towers
Studio Suites from $295/night
One-Bedroom Suites from $445/night
Two-Bedroom Presidential from $850/night
All-Inclusive add-on $145/person/night
Check-in: 3:00 PM
Check-out: 12:00 PM
WiFi: complimentary, high-speed throughout
Apartment-style suites with kitchens
Three pools incl. family slide
LandShark + Frank & Lola + Joe Merchant's
Latitude live-music programme
On-site spa and watersports
15 min to Red Hook ferry
Sapphire Beach 2 min drive
From USD 295/night. Peak rates apply during high season; book three to four months ahead for the headline suite categories.
Book This Hotel →The only true five-star in the U.S. Virgin Islands, thirty oceanfront acres on Great Bay at the eastern tip of the island.
The 1973 Frenchman's Reef, returned to scale in 2022 after a $425M rebuild, the harbor view that defines St. Thomas.
The first all-inclusive in the U.S. Virgin Islands, a 65-room family-run quarter-mile of beach.