St Barths · Lorient · Now a private villa
La Banane
Once one of the island's most charming small hotels, now a nine-bungalow private villa in a Lorient garden.
Once one of the island's most charming small hotels, now a nine-bungalow private villa in a Lorient garden.
The short answer: La Banane is no longer a hotel. The nine-bungalow property in Lorient operated as a boutique St Barths hotel until the mid-2010s, then became a private villa rented in its entirety, and it no longer takes per-night bookings. It still ranks among the island's prettiest small compounds, but for a conventional honeymoon you now book it as a full villa or choose a bookable St Barths hotel instead.
Our editorial assessment of the property's design and setting. La Banane is no longer a per-night hotel, so this is not a live hotel ranking.
No, and this is the single most important thing to know before you plan around it. La Banane ran for years as a nine-bungalow boutique hotel in the Quartier de Lorient, and for a while it was also one of the island's better-known small-hours spots. Around the middle of the last decade the owners stepped back from hotel operations, and by 2017 the property had shifted to being let as a single private villa. Reputable hotel-inspection sources that visited it, such as Oyster, confirm it stopped operating as a hotel and moved to exclusive villa rental. You will still find La Banane on aggregator and booking-comparison sites with a per-night rate and a Book Now button, and one large aggregator even files it under Gustavia rather than Lorient. Treat those listings with caution: they are scraping an old hotel record, not selling you a current hotel room. If you want a room you can reserve for two nights next February, La Banane is not that, and pretending otherwise is how honeymoon plans go wrong.
It remains a genuinely lovely piece of St Barths design, which is why people keep asking about it. The property is nine freestanding bungalows arranged around two small pools in a dense tropical garden of banana trees, frangipani and bougainvillea. Each bungalow was individually decorated in homage to a designer or artist working at their peak in the 1950s, with names and details nodding to figures such as Pierre Jeanneret, Charlotte Perriand, Serge Mouille and Jean Royere. The look is white and pastel-blue, with tiled floors, open-plan bathrooms, indoor-outdoor showers and private terraces that open straight into the planting. Rented as a villa, those nine bungalows become bedrooms for a group rather than separate hotel accommodations, and the two pools, the garden and the shared living spaces are yours alone. What it does not have is the infrastructure of a resort: there is no full-service restaurant, no spa and no gym, which was true in its hotel days and remains true now. Day to day, the compound reads more like a private home than a property with a lobby: you cook or cater in the shared kitchen, gather at the pools, and treat the garden as an outdoor living room. The individually themed bungalows mean no two bedrooms are alike, which is charming for a group choosing rooms but worth coordinating in advance so everyone knows what they are getting.
La Banane sits in Lorient on the calmer north coast of St Barthelemy, roughly a five-minute walk from Lorient beach. Lorient is one of the island's prettiest and most low-key strands, a favourite with local families and morning surfers rather than a scene, and that quiet is a large part of the property's appeal. Gustavia, the harbour capital with the island's marquee shopping and restaurants, is about a 10 minute drive, and the airport at St-Jean is similarly close. Practically everyone arrives via a short connecting flight from Sint Maarten (SXM) into St Barths (SBH), one of the more memorable landings in the Caribbean. Because the property sits back from the water in a garden rather than on the sand, you trade a beachfront position for privacy and greenery, which suits some travellers perfectly and disappoints others who pictured stepping from bed to sea. You will want a rental car here: St Barths is small and the roads are steep and winding, but the beaches, Gustavia's restaurants and the surf breaks at Lorient and Toiny are all within a short drive, and a car is how you make the most of a north-coast base rather than being tied to one cove.
If a whole-villa buyout is what you are after, enquire through a reputable St Barths villa agency well ahead of the December-to-April high season, and confirm exactly what is included: catering, housekeeping, and whether a chef can be arranged, since there is no hotel kitchen. If you simply want a room to book, skip straight to the bookable hotels listed below.
Rented as a private villa, La Banane makes most sense for a group. A honeymoon combined with close family, a small wedding party, or two or three couples travelling together can take the whole compound and enjoy the design, the garden and the privacy without any of the compromises of shared hotel space. It is genuinely special for that. It makes far less sense for a single couple who wanted the things a hotel provides: daily restaurant dining, a spa, a concierge desk, room service and the easy anonymity of checking in and being looked after. A couple after that experience will be happier, and often no worse off financially, at one of the island's operating hotels. Be honest with yourselves about which trip you are actually planning before you fall for the photographs.
If you want a room you can actually book, St Barths still has an excellent field of operating honeymoon hotels, and our Top 19 St Barths honeymoon list ranks them in full. For beachfront glamour, Cheval Blanc St-Barth Isle de France and Eden Rock St Barths are the island's headline addresses. Hotel Le Carl Gustaf gives you a hillside suite over Gustavia harbour, Hotel Christopher is the calmer Pointe Milou choice, and Hotel Manapany and Villa Marie Saint-Barth round out the boutique end. Any of these can be reserved for a couple, per night, with the service a honeymoon usually wants, which is exactly what La Banane no longer offers.
Because the property lets as a single villa, you are pricing a whole-compound rental rather than a room, and you book it through a St Barths villa agency rather than a hotel reservations line. In this class of nine-bedroom compound, high-season rates (roughly December through April, and especially the Christmas and New Year peak) run into five figures per week, easing in the quieter shoulder months, and exact figures move constantly, so confirm current pricing and minimum-stay rules directly with a reputable local agency before you build a budget around it. When you enquire, pin down what the rate actually includes: daily housekeeping is usually standard, while catering, a private chef, airport transfers and concierge services are typically arranged and billed separately. Ask about minimum stays, since peak weeks often carry a seven-night floor, and about deposit and cancellation terms. With no hotel front desk on site, the agency and the on-island villa manager become your point of contact for everything from grocery provisioning to booking a boat day, so choose one with a solid St Barths track record.
The dry, sunny high season runs from December to April, late spring and early summer offer similar weather with noticeably better value, and the core hurricane months of August to October are the ones to weigh carefully. St Barths is at its most reliable from December to April: warm, dry and social, which is also when rates peak and the island fills with the Christmas-through-February set. May, June, July and November are the sweet spot for many couples, with weather that is still largely fine, calmer beaches and restaurants, and softer pricing. The Atlantic hurricane season officially spans June to November, with the highest risk from August into October, when some businesses trim their hours and a passing storm can disrupt travel, so if you honeymoon then, travel insurance and flexible bookings matter more than usual. Whichever window you pick, reserve flights into Sint Maarten early, because the onward hop to St Barths uses small aircraft with limited seats that sell out around the busy weeks.
A ranked shortlist, a special offer worth booking, and the overpriced stay to skip. Straight from the editors.