FOR THE NEXT two or more weeks, the place is yours. No handing in keys at reception (or mistaking your flexi room key for your Visa card), no "good morning" smiles, no queues checking in or out, no fire alarms going off at inopportune times, no maids knocking on your door just as you're stepping out of the shower, writes
TONY CLAYTON-LEA
Welcome to the villa lifestyle – you shop for your food, you eat what you want to cook, you buy the wine from the nearby vineyard and drink it with your friends and family. Your neighbours are not strangers, but real people leading real lives. Surrounded by locals, you have a prime opportunity to get a sense of where you are – its culture, its environment, its atmosphere. You look around you at the end of the first day, and you realise you never want to check into a hotel again.
You are not alone. Villa rentals – particularly in France, Spain and Portugal – have increased over 100 per cent in the past 10 years. According to Suzanne Quinn, managing director of Holiday Homes Direct (holidayhomesdirect.ie), an Irish-owned company which helps people find holiday rental accommodation, the majority of clients are families.
“A villa lends itself well to families because of the space and flexibility it offers them,” she says. “If you compare a villa to a hotel, it’s much more attractive for a family to choose the former. The other things that people like a lot are the privacy you can have, with the likes of a pool, and the fact that there’s more space for extended families or groups of friends.”
But there are negative aspects: for starters, there are the family photos that hang on the villa walls. For some people, a photo of little François clutching a rugby ball or Fanny brandishing a Lacrosse racquet is a no-no. You really don’t want to be reminded that you’re living in someone else’s house, do you?
Another flaw is the proximity of the owner. In the brochures or the website blurb, it will quite likely state that the owner “lives nearby”. Be careful to check out exactly what this means: within a mile or so is fine, but next door (in a small apartment, perhaps, crouched in a foetal position, grimacing, while you and your family are lounging around the swimming pool) means they’re within earshot. Which means, sadly, you can’t make negative comments about the bathroom tiling or the annoying message on the annoying answering machine. Two words, villa owner: go on holidays yourself.
QUINN ADMITS that villas aren’t for everyone. “Some people like having the facilities that hotels can offer. If you want to have a concierge or go downstairs and have breakfast, then maybe a villa holiday isn’t for you. Maybe some people have done the self-catering thing when their kids were a lot younger, and they’re now looking for a level of service that you can get from a hotel.”
What is the biggest bonus with this kind of holiday is the price difference. Prices vary from location to location, but there’s little doubt that on a person-per-person basis the savings can be huge.
Even with the cheaper package holidays, certain travel dates are restricted, whereas with a villa you can virtually pick and choose when you want to go, and for how long – and the locations can very often be more interesting.
“There’s no doubt that the travel industry experienced a bad year in 2009, but our own experience has been slightly different,” says Quinn. “We’ve seen an upsurge in the amount of traffic on our website with people booking their holidays. Our homeowners seemed a lot more nervous last year, and so there are more negotiations going on. Everyone is looking for a deal, and rates are being reviewed. On average, rates are 30 per cent cheaper than they used to be.”