A luxury villa rental service that built its business selling direct to customers has started working more closely with travel agents over the few months to reach more high-end travellers.
Villa Collective, which contracts directly with villa owners, has always worked with the trade, but it has not actively courted travel agents – until recently.
“We have worked with travel agents almost on an organic basis – they found us through my personal network without us really pushing it,” says founder Nick Cookson.
“I have built the business on direct-to-customer largely through my own network and various other marketing channels that we use; however, last year, we made a conscious effort to start engaging with the trade more.
“I think it is very important, especially at the level we operate in the market, because the really high-end clients tend to use their local travel advisors, but the local advisors need a destination specialist to create the best experience for their clients, and that’s where we come in.
“It is very important to add a good trade-focused strategy into the mix as well as having direct customers.”
Nick describes accommodation-only Villa Collective has a ‘high-touch, high-service’ villa rental company, which operates at the top-end of the market, focusing mainly on larger, exclusive properties. It also provides other elements such as transfers, chefs and experiences such as wine-tasting and even sound-healing.
While the majority of its 280 villas are in Greece – where the company was born, in Corfu – it has recently expanded to other destinations, mainly due to requests from loyal clients for different locations.
It also launched beachfront villas in East Kenya last year, which Nick says ‘went quite well’, and it is also expanding into other Greek islands, including several in the Aegean, which is less well-known in the UK than the Ionian.
To support the expansion, Nick said the company is looking to work with more agents, including those with their own ATOLs to package his villas with flights.
“The most important thing is to let agents know we are open for business,” he said. Last year, Nick attended his first trade shows to ‘meet agents face to face and make connections’.
“But, probably the most important element of working with the trade is having the technology set up to make it quick and easy for them to work with us,” he added.
“We already have unbranded links, so when agents reach out to us, we can share links that they can share directly with their clients, without clients knowing it has come from Villa Collective.”
Agents shouldn’t be concerned about Villa Collective poaching their clients, adds Nick. “Once they come to us with an enquiry and log the name of their client, if the client was to come direct, we would still share the commission with the agent.”
Villa Collective works with a range of ‘mostly small independent agents’ but Nick says he is open to working with ‘whoever has appropriate clients for our villas’.
“I don’t want to close any doors. Just looking at the agencies we have worked regularly with, they tend to be the more boutique agencies, but that’s not to say we wouldn’t be open to working with some of the larger agencies,” he adds.
He says he wouldn’t rule out his properties being included in UK tour operator programmes ‘further down the line’, but this isn’t something he has pursued to date.
Villa booking trends
“The biggest trend I can see if the lack of booking trends!” says Nick. “These days, you just don’t know when bookings are going to come in; you have to be prepared to for the phone to ring at any point.
“It goes in waves – customers definitely book along the same lines. It’s increasingly erratic since COVID, I would say, and often dictated by world events.
“The last few months have been slow, coming off the back of a record month in January.”
Multi-gen travel
He says Villa Collective is seeing ‘a lot of ‘multi villa bookings’ with clients booking either two adjacent villas for the same week, or different villas in consecutive weeks. “That is something that is building up, year on year,”
However, Nick says multi-generational travel, which was ‘a big thing’ post-COVID, has tailed off over the last few years. “It’s not the trend it was after COVID…. but what works really well is where you have estates where you have multiple villas but one place where families can dine together when they want to.”
Destinations
In terms of destinations, Greece has enjoyed ‘a strong decade’ with global demand, and the quality has improved, says Nick.
“Greece is still very popular, but this year it might have been slightly affected by the geography. Even though we are a long way from the Middle East, when customers have a choice, some have decided to book in Western Europe this year.
“Having said that, we are still enjoying a good year.”
Time of year
August isn’t as popular as it used to be, July seems to fill up first – and even late June, partly because it’s a popular time for the US market to travel, says Nick.
“People assume August is too hot and too busy, but actually, there’s not a lot of difference between July and August really. On the other hand, the Greeks do have their holidays from mid-August, so that fills up the islands a little bit.”
