Booking your villa

The following guidelines are to be used in conjunction with our booking terms and conditions. Before making a booking, we recommend that you spend a few moments reading these notes to help you choose the villa most appropriate to your personal requirements, tastes and expectations. Please also ensure that the rest of your party members read them, as we cannot be held responsible for any misapprehensions you and your party may have regarding our holidays.

Choosing the Right Villa
Renting a villa can be likened to buying your own house – it is a very personal choice. Therefore, no one description will suit each individual. Standards differ from country to country, area to area, and what is considered extremely comfortable or luxurious in one country or region may not meet the standard for luxury in another country. With this in mind, we therefore endeavour to meet the challenge of trying to identify our customers’ requirements and to recommend properties without our customers actually seeing them. It must also be remembered that while we try to be as honest as possible in our descriptions, these are only our opinions. Equally, no Travel Expert dealing with customers at the end of a telephone can truly gauge the individual tastes and lifestyles of our customers. Customers may have expectations we are realistically unable to meet. Our Travel Experts will do their best to steer their customers into the villa they think is most suitable, but allowances must be made for the fact that it is a very personal choice, and one person’s favourite villa may not be someone else’s! If you have travelled with CV Villas before it is always useful to let us know. By identifying the type of villa and location of your previous stay, this may assist us with your holiday choice. In addition the price should not always be a guideline to comfort and standard. A simply furnished villa in a highly fashionable area will command a much higher price than a comfortable villa, well off the beaten track. No amount of text could ever cover every corner of each property or its grounds and surrounding area. Parents will have different requirements from those who do not have children. Equally, age is irrelevant; a young person might have mobility problems with steps and steep sloping areas etc., which may present no problem to a sprightly grandparent! Ours is not an easy task but we usually get things right. Please help us make sure that your holiday is a happy one by giving us the fullest possible information prior to booking your holiday home. Please note: Your accommodation price is confirmed based on the occupancy requested at the time of booking. Should the occupancy increase at a later stage, the villa price may change accordingly.


When to Travel
The climate and local weather conditions can vary and there are no hard and fast rules. An Indian summer in October can be hotter than a cool August. Ask the relevant tourist office for details, look up a reliable weather website or ask your Travel Expert for guidelines. Early season customers find their villa fresh from a major spring clean, gardens lush, green and colourful, the countryside at its best, locals revitalised after the winter and pleased to see you – and no crowds.

The high season usually brings with it the best weather, a lively ambience and everywhere open for business. However, high summer usually means more intense heat, which can result in faded gardens, bothersome insects, water restrictions, fractious locals and crowded restaurants and beaches.

During the early and late seasons, it is quite possible that some of the resort will not be open for business. Bars and restaurants may be closed, and some of the shops may have restricted opening hours.

The late season has an atmosphere of its own, a sense of relief is clearly felt by everyone after the hectic days of high summer. There are signs that a long season is ending, but plenty of compensations are to be found in the lack of crowds.

Weddings & Special Celebrations
A selection of our villas and hotels are perfect venues for a wedding celebration or event. Please ask for details of wedding planners and event organisers before confirming your booking. We have suggestions of suitable villas on our wedding villas page.

Ambience and Style
On the whole, the majority of our villas belong either to locals or to foreigners who love the location and have realised the dream of owning a house there. More and more these days, local owners are using the most up-to-date materials and furnishings in their villas. Older houses are passing into the control of younger members of the family, who are modernising them gradually. On the other hand, it is often the foreign-owned villas that display the traditional local touches that give a house its unique atmosphere, combined with the kind of comfort we are used to finding in, say, an English country house. Position is always a priority when we at CV Villas decide to include a new property on our programme. Almost without exception, our villas have superb views. Comfort too is a major consideration – there is always a sitting or living room, balconies and terraces are fully equipped for outdoor living. It must be pointed out that facilities are sometimes not quite what we expect or are used to. Guests should respect owners’ wishes to keep their property very much in their own style and tradition. Owners usually leave most of their personal possessions for the enjoyment of their guests, but locked cupboards containing private items should be respected.

Special Requests
Any special requests regarding your holiday that are not detailed on this website must be sent to your Travel Expert in writing at the time of booking. We will not be held responsible for any claims where written advice to include verbal requests for special requirements has not been received. Your requests will be passed on to our local suppliers but cannot be guaranteed, and therefore cannot be conditional upon the booking.

Special Needs
If customers have any particular concerns about their holiday home, or some of the party has special needs that are conditional to the booking, these must be raised with your Travel Expert, agreed prior to booking, and confirmed by the client in writing at the time of booking.

Mixed Groups
For organisers of groups of friends or family, please ensure that everybody’s individual requirements have been taken into account. Has everybody seen the website? If costs are being shared equally, is everybody expecting the same size bedroom? Who is going to occupy the master bedroom? If asking friends, how well do they know each other if they are to share a modest bathroom? When you, as group leader, call your Travel Expert it is your responsibility to keep all your party members up to date and informed (this includes secretaries ringing on behalf of their boss). The person delegated to book the holiday, should also ensure their ‘other half’, family or friends are kept closely involved. To avoid misunderstandings, we request that only the party leader calls and corresponds with their Travel Expert. All too often a local problem is not of our making, but one which could easily have been avoided if more involvement had been made by the party leader with all members of their party at the time of booking.

Multi-centre Holidays
Many of our guests choose a two centre holiday to gain the utmost from the many diverse cultures and regions which can be enjoyed. This can involve combining stays in villas and indeed hotels within the country or area, combining our flexible flight and car options. Our Travel Experts are well qualified to advise you on alternatives and can also recommend hotels that can be combined with villas. However, should you be considering a multi centre holiday, unless you already know the location and the villa personally, please think carefully before making a decision to change accommodation mid-holiday. Properties can vary in their standard, location and facilities offered, and the price of one villa may have no bearing on that of a simpler yet more expensive one in a more fashionable and sought-after area. After a happy week in one villa, often the subsequent villa does not meet up to expectations; especially if the ‘better’ villa is booked first! After a long, tiring day packing and unpacking, it is possible to regret the decision to move. Our Travel Experts will always endeavour to advise you, but please bear this in mind when booking.

Children
Whether travelling with infants or teenagers our UK sales staff will be pleased to make suggestions as to the general suitability of each villa. However, it is impossible for us to make absolute recommendations as the needs of every family are different and we will never advise that a villa is completely safe for children of any age. Unsupervised children are always at risk, whether at home or abroad and holiday relaxation cannot truly be enjoyed with excited and curious children constantly on the move. There is no substitute for vigilance. Most properties contain some form of hazard, hazards which may be taken for granted at home, but often seem to take on a different significance whilst on holiday. Properties are rarely single storey, located within a flat, fenced and lawned garden with a fenced off swimming pool. We will always endeavour to give the fullest possible information at the time of booking, but parents need to make it clear to us if they have any specific requirements.

Children of 2 and over are regarded as part of the maximum villa occupancy, irrespective of whether or not he/she sleeps in a cot. We do not recommend that cots are provided for children over 2 years of age.

Infants
An infant is defined as being under 2 years of age on the day of return travel.