Booking a family villa holiday
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Villa holiday links
- Villa - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A villa was originally an ancient Roman upper-class country house. Since its origins in the Roman villa, the idea and function of a villa have evolved considerably. - IBIZA VILLAS to rent - Cheap Villas in Ibiza - Villa Rental 2011 - Love Ibiza 2011
For the ultimate Ibiza holiday nothing compares to renting an Ibiza villa and living the good life in your own private pad
Holidaying (or vacationing if you're stateside!) together can be as stressful experience for families, particularly when traveling with young children. Long drives and air travel can be particularly 'problematic', especially when you have young excitable or bored children (which is worse?!).
Furthermore hotels don't always offer best environment for stress reduction on your family holiday. Problems with sleeping arrangements, meals and keeping track of the kids in the often crowded hotel facilities can all add to the stress factor.
Its these reasons among others which have contributed to the increased popularity of holiday rentals for families rather than package hotel holiday options.
Renting a villa, holiday home, chalet or cottage gives you many of the comforts and convenience of home, away from home, meaning as parents you have more chance of keeping control of the kids, managing moods and enjoying some quality family time.
Here are some of the benefits:
Cook your own meals- no problems with dietary requirements or keeping order in busy hotel restaurants
Swim in your own pool - most hotels in europe don't have lifeguards on duty by the pool so you need to be constantly keeping an eye on the kids. This is made much easier by staying by your own private pool
Set your own agenda - rather than following meal times, bus times, pool opening times etc set by your hotel with a private villa you can make your own timetable, get up when you want, eat when you want- this is a big advantage when dealing with demanding children.
Where to go?
The most popular destinations for family villa holidays typically have one or more of the following characteristics:
- Sun
- Beach
- Skiing
- Entertainment (i.e. disney!)
With the boom in the holiday rentals market in the past decade you can rent holiday accomodation pretty much anywhere you can book hotels these days but some of the most popular destinations are:
USA - Florida (Orlando in particular), Los Angeles & Las vegas
France - Lots of lovely chateauxs available for rent and some lovely villas on the Riviera
Spain & The Balearic islands - Long hot summers make the south coast of Spain, around valencia and the Balearic islands (Ibiza, Formentara, Majorca, Menorca). Holiday lettings have a choice of about 8,000 holiday properties and villas in Spain to rent.
Eastern Europe - an up and coming holiday rental hotspot, again great weather in Summer, Ski in winter and far lower prices than western Europe make this an appealing area for family holidays.
How to book
You can book holiday villas either direct from owners (Owners direct is a good site for this) or using villa holiday agents who can book either your villa only, your villa and flights, or arrange your whole holiday.
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I would like to go on holiday to a Villa
Well written and easy to follow - thanks so much for this solid info.
I would add a few words of caution. Increasingly there is a lot of fraud happening in the self-catering holiday rentals market. So always remember only transfer money to a bank account. NEVER do a wire transfer using western union or any other kind of service. Paypal is also good but they have very high charges so many property owners dont accept it especially in Europe.
Communicate quiet a bit and get a feel for the person you are dealing with. If it sounds fishy ...it more than lightly is fishy. Ask to be put in contact with other renters who stayed. Preferably renters from your own country.
Use the big sites like
ownersdirect.com
holidaylettings.co.uk
holidayhomeland.com
holiday-rentals.co.uk
daltonsholidays.co.uk
Be carefull if you are using small regional sites with only 10's of properties. It is easy to fake a site which has only 100 properties and this is increasingly happening. There are many cases of fraud where many people paid deposits and then the full amount to find that either the property didnt exist or the owner of the property had never been in the loop. This is easy to do for a small site but much harder for a big one. Holiday rentals are at least 70% cheaper than hotels and a much more enjoyable experience ....but be careful.
I have been using the above listed sites for the last 10 years and so far thankfully have never had a problem.
I hope this is informative
One thing i forgot to add is that if possible book directly from the owner of a property and not through an Agent. Agents have to charge VAT which is aprox 20% in most European countries and their commissions are anything from 25% to 50%. Better to have that money in your pocket to enjoy a nice bottle of wine.
excellent advice, thanks for your contribution Tom
Thanks for the great post. I spent my last holiday at Torrevieja, Spain. My family rented a beach front 2 bedroom apartment through loslocosbeach.com. It was quite cheap and had most of the good features. It was a self catering apartment and the other arrangements are well taken care of. I would recommend Los Locos beach,a great place to be at on your holiday.
This is how.
Best of all, you don't have to put up with large all sex parties waking you up in the early hours.
Very good summary for holiday rentals
glassvisage Level 6 Commenter 2 years ago
That would be great to have that kind of control over you vacation and the activities you participate in! Nice to be able to cook your own meals... Sometimes too much eating at restaurants isn't too great for the bikini areas :(