Blue Bay Beach & Golf Resort - Vacation Rentals Curaçao

Why guests choose Blue Bay over the rest of the island

Most advice about where to stay in Curaçao pushes you to one end or the other. Stay east around Jan Thiel and Willemstad for restaurants, culture and nightlife. Stay west toward Westpunt for the best beaches and the quiet, wild side of the island. Both are good advice, and both mean choosing one and driving a long way for the other.

Blue Bay sits between them. From the resort gate you are close to the airport, close to Willemstad, and pointed at both halves of the island. Head east for the city, the Handelskade, the museums and the restaurants. Head west for Grote Knip, Cas Abao, Playa Lagun and the beaches people put on postcards. Neither is a day-long expedition. For a first visit to Curaçao, or for anyone who wants to actually see the island rather than one corner of it, that central position is the single strongest argument for staying here.

What Blue Bay actually is

Blue Bay is a gated resort, not a hotel. It covers a large stretch of coastline with an 18-hole golf course running through it, a private beach, several restaurants, and around a thousand properties ranging from villas to apartment complexes. You drive in through a manned gate. Inside, it is a residential community that happens to have a beach club and a golf course in the middle of it.

That has practical consequences worth knowing. It is quiet in the residential sections and busy around the beach. It is safe, and it is the kind of place where families let children walk to the pool on their own. It is also a working resort with ongoing building activity in places, because it continues to grow.

The six locations we manage here, and how to choose

Not all of Blue Bay is the same, and the difference between locations matters more than the difference between individual apartments.

The Shore is the only location on the resort with direct private beach access. A locked gate leads straight from the complex onto the sand, and you need a key fob to pass through it, to enter the buildings, and to use the lifts. It is a gated complex inside a gated resort, with its own infinity pool. If security and getting to the water without walking round are what matter to you, this is the one.

Blue Emerald Ocean Suites sit directly on the beachfront in three buildings, closest to the water at the green building. There is no private gate here, so you leave through the front door and walk about a minute round to the main beach entrance. The trade-off is space and views: these are large apartments, several with panoramic balconies looking straight down the coast.

The Ridge is the most luxurious property we manage, a three-bedroom penthouse with its own private infinity pool on the balcony, behind its own gate within the resort. It sleeps six.

The Breeze is the newest of the complexes, a few years old, with four pools arranged as two sets of stacked infinity pools.

Triple Tree is a compact one-bedroom apartment on the fourth floor, small inside but with some of the best oceanfront and sunset views on the resort.

The Garden sits furthest from the beach, roughly a three to five minute drive.

The beach, the golf and everything else on site

Beach beds are free for guests at every Blue Bay property we manage, every day of your stay. The palapas, the larger thatched huts that give proper shade, are rented separately if you want them. Brass Boer on the pier rents waterfront huts with hammock nets strung over the water, and will bring food and drinks to you all day, which is what we suggest to guests celebrating something.

The beach itself is not huge, but there is plenty of shade under the palm trees and the water is calm and clear.

For food there is Brass Boer on the pier, Lemongrass, the Blue Bay beach restaurant, Bayside at the boutique hotel which serves breakfast, lunch and dinner, and an Italian pizza truck that a lot of guests order from and carry back to the apartment or down to the beach.

The dive shop on the beach rents SUP boards, kayaks and snorkelling gear, hires out dive equipment to certified divers, and runs guided dives. The golf course is 18 holes and open to everyone: no handicap certificate needed, a polo shirt is required, and a cart is mandatory. There is a driving range, and a World War II museum on the resort that runs tours by advance booking.

What you get from us

Every apartment is stocked with more than the usual basics before you arrive. Salt, pepper, olive oil, a week's toilet rolls, shampoo, conditioner and body wash in every bathroom, kitchen towels, dishwashing tablets, bin bags, and espresso coffee for the first few days. Every apartment has both an espresso machine and a filter coffee machine, a kettle, a blender, a dishwasher, a washing machine and hot water. You will not spend your first evening in a supermarket buying olive oil.

Our office is on the Savaan, about five minutes from the resort gate, and we are reachable around the clock for anything urgent. We manage a deliberately limited number of apartments so we can answer quickly and keep them properly maintained, rather than running a portfolio too large to look after.