Posts Tagged ‘luxury villa rentals’

Miami: Your autumn pick-me-up

Tuesday, October 8th, 2013

It should come as no surprise that travelers often cite fall as the best time of year to experience Miami. Although much of the country begins to cool down in the month of October, the average high temperature in Miami sits around 85 degrees (approx. 30 Celsius). With tourist season long past, there’s also more freedom to enjoy the true Miami lifestyle (think ample beach space). If you’re still planning your fall Miami getaway, Villazzo still has some of its signature VillaHotels available.

Featured:

1. Book Villa Azza (above): A modern and tropical waterfront escape on Palm Island (starting at $5,700 per night)

(more…)

Book Your Villa Hotel This Summer Before it Gets Too Late!

Monday, July 8th, 2013

Villazzo is proud to announce another successful Summer Season. Our Private Hotels, in Saint-Tropez, Miami and Aspen continue to redefine the luxury travel experience.   Our top properties book months in advance, but a few select dates are still available at some of our finest resorts.

Showcasing 25 exclusive retreats, Villazzo has come to define excellence and exclusivity.  Our concept is simple. Offer our clients a complete five-star hotel experience with one exception. At Villazzo, you are the only guest.

From our Management staff to Personal Trainers and Private Security, Villazzo overlooks no detail to make your stay extraordinary.

Book Private Villas Online  Or Contact us today and find out why private is better.
1-877-VILLAZZO

ZDF – HALLO DEUTSCHLAND

Wednesday, May 1st, 2013

Luxus und Laessigkeit in St. Tropez

TLC – FOUR HOUSES

Tuesday, January 1st, 2013

Miami Beach In October: Fashion, Wine, and the Prelude to Luxury Villa Rental Season

Saturday, September 4th, 2010
Fashion, wine, and the prelude to Luxury Villa Rental season make for a great Fall South Beach getaway.

As the summer season draws to a close, that doesn’t mean all ideas of vacation need flee until winter. In many locations, as seen in St. Tropez, autumn is the perfect time to visit. Usually you will find less of a crowd and, in the case of Miami Beach, some great events to help pass the time when you’re not whiling away the hours poolside at your luxury villa rental. In October alone, the city of Miami is hosting two great events that shouldn’t be missed if you’re vacationing there at the time. In fact, they’re pretty great reasons to plan a jaunt to Miami in October, even if you had no prior plans to visit. (more…)

Luxury Villa Rentals in St. Tropez Exemplify High-class Vacationing

Monday, July 12th, 2010

In perhaps the most exclusive resort destination in the world, luxury villa rentals define the epitome of privacy and luxury for the rich and famous.

Over the years, the glittery French resort town of St. Tropez has become synonymous with sun, beauty, glamour and all the good things in life. The quaint medieval town set on a bay has been drawing the world’s who’s who for decades with its sandy beaches and cloudless skies. Even before becoming known as St. Trop (trop being the French word for “too much”), this village was called the Montparnasse of the Mediterranean, because of its appeal to artists and writers. Illustrious personalities from Paul Signac and Matisse to Colette, Anaïs Nin, and Françoise Sagan, were all drawn to the beauty and isolation of this place. For as popular as St. Tropez is, it is still just as hard to reach. With the exception of the peak summer season, which draws millions of vacationers, St. Tropez remains a quaint, sleepy town for the remainder of the year. And while there are plenty of luxury hotels in and around the center of town, St. Tropez is the kind of place you can best experience by staying in one of the luxury villa rentals that dot the surrounding area—some with all the amenities of a five-star hotel—that offer great access to the beaches and hotspots that make St. Tropez so popular.

St. Tropez has come a long way since it first became known internationally as the place to be. That distinction came thanks to a pouty-lipped Brigitte Bardot who arrived in town to film Roger Vadim’s And God Created Woman–after which nothing was ever the same for St. Tropez again. Suddenly the sleepy fishing village was catapulted to the top of the Côte d’ Azur’s hot list and the rich and famous began descending en masse, especially during the high season months of July and August. The fact that the village was (and still remains) both remote and isolated only served to make it that much more popular and exclusive. Today St. Tropez remains a gorgeous place to vacation in a luxury villa rental with much to keep you entertained.

Beaches

Days in St. Tropez are best enjoyed at one of the area’s exclusive beach clubs, like the famed Nikki Beach, or by the private pool offered in many of the luxury villa rentals in the area. Many of these pools feature “vanishing edge” designs that appear to blend directly into the Mediterranean Sean. Remember —  reservations are mandatory at most of the beach resorts. Many of the area’s best beaches, found along the Baie de Pampelonne, require a drive from the town, but head west from the city center and there are others that can be found within a reasonable walking distance. Other beaches you might want to try: Bouillabaisse Beach, Plage des Graniers, Salins Beach and Caneliers Beach.

Eating and Nightlife
Aside from beaches, shopping (both luxury stores and the open air markets at the Place des Lices), and wandering around the charming city center, a vacation in St. Tropez would not be complete without ample good food and great nights on the town. Try Café de Paris for delicious sushi and sashimi or Caprice des Deux for traditional regional fare. Great dining experiences can also be had at Leï Mouscardins, Château Hôtel de la Messardière, La Bouillabaisse and Café Senequier, which offers great breakfast options.
The nightlife in St. Tropez usually gets started around 11pm and mainly consists of exclusive nightclubs and private parties. From the legendary Les Caves du Roy and the cash-only Voile Rouge Beach Club on Moorea Beach to the hip Brasserie des Arts (open to 3am in the summer) and the Papagayo Club, St. Tropez is a celebration of wealth and celebrity status when it comes to getting your groove on at glamorous nightspots filled with people to watch and ever-flowing champagne.
St. Tropez and its luxury villa rentals offers a chance for a once in a lifetime vacation filled with white sand beaches and endless nights. This is a spot that mixes natural beauty with glamour and excess—the perfect elements for the town’s official sports, the de rigueur activities of people watching, celeb spotting and sun worshipping. But then, surrounded by such beauty, both natural and otherwise, how could one really think of doing anything else?
Image Sources: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6

Can You Really Trust Luxury Villa Rental Companies?

Wednesday, July 7th, 2010

Luxury villa rentals in St. Tropez, Marbella, Miami Beach, and beyond offer the privacy and exclusivity that you cannot get from even the most expensive 5-star hotel. But is the risk of picking a “luxury lemon” worth giving up on a reliable luxury hotel experience?

Wherever there is sand, sun, and sea in the world, you’re bound to find a crop of luxury villa rentals to choose from. Whether it’s St. Tropez, Marbella, Miami Beach, or Ibiza, you can always find a huge selection of amazing rental properties that span traditional to contemporary architecture and that will put you in the middle of the action and nightlife as well as the middle of nowhere. For those who have a already made a few trips to these exclusive vacation havens and have tried out a few different hotels, the prospect of having their own private luxury villa seems like the next logical step in experiencing the ultimate luxury vacation.

However, with luxury villa rentals, there is always an unknown quantity — or, more specifically, an “unknown quality.”

Luxury villa rental companies are notorious for showing only the best aspects of the luxury villas they list. Sure, they might show a bunch of photos of a villa’s pristine pool, charming terrace, and well-appointed master bathroom. But they fail to show how the plasma TV doesn’t work, or how the villa’s wall that faces the seaside is crumbling, or how the bathroom hasn’t been renovated for 25 years.

I recently read an article about “how to choose a luxury villa rental in Tuscany.” The writer told a hilarious yet tragic story about how once he had chosen a majestic Tuscan villa to stay in, thinking that it would be a single-family luxury vacation rental. When he arrived, he was dismayed to find out that the villa, “had been carved up into apartments with thin dividing walls.” He paints a miserable Tuscan vacation in that villa, saying, “One doesn’t go to Italy to be woken by renditions of Take Me Home, Country Road – at 6am, in German.”

Oh, the horror!

This writer’s article, as well as many others who write about the luxury villa rental market, go on to list all of the due diligence required to ensure that what you see is what you get when choosing a luxury villa rental. In order to ensure a high quality villa rental, writers suggest so much comprehensive research and scrutiny over a property that you would be completely exhausted by the end of the search! Some writers suggest finding a contact in the city that you want to stay in and paying them a small sum of money to independently check out the villa rental you are considering. Another writer suggests that you “pack a small tool kit and a cache of batteries in various sizes (for TV remote controllers, torches and the like; never presume a villa’s inventory will be complete).”

Who is going to pack a tool kit for a vacation in a luxury villa rental?

The only way you can truly assure yourself an amazing villa vacation experience that lives up to your expectations is to work with a luxury villa rental company that visits and hand-selects the villas that it offers. If you use this criteria to select luxury villa rental companies to work with, you’ll find that there are very few of them in the world today who can vouch for the properties that they list on their websites.

For example, Wimco Villas, which is one of the largest luxury villa rental companies in the industry, offers this vague explanation in the “About Us” section of their website: “Each [Wimco] staff member is required to visit several of our vacation destinations each year and familiarize themselves with the villas and hotels there so they can serve you better.” How many is “several,” exactly? Which villas listed on their site have been visited and inspected, and which ones have not?

Other luxury villa rental sites, such as Jetsetter, use a small logo on their property pages to show prospective clients which of their properties have been checked and visited by a staff member and which have not. This is a much more transparent way of finding luxury villa rentals that you can trust to live up to what is posted on a website. Of course, it also limits the number of “safe” luxury villa options to choose from.

However, smaller, ultra-exclusive villa rental companies, such as Villazzo, guarantee their entire list of luxury villa rentals. Companies like these hand-select the properties they offer, and usually maintain an office in all of the vacation destinations where they offer luxury villa rentals. This is by far the best way to find the luxury villa of your dreams, since you can be assured that the villa has had a thorough walk-through and is determined to be a property that lives up to the high standards of the company that lists them on their website.

So, the next time you go in search of a luxury villa rental online, remember to look for a company that offers the best guarantee of quality, and the largest selection of luxury villas that have been hand-selected and approved. Stick to this approach and you can be assured that you won’t have to bring a toolbox with you on your next vacation!

ELITE TRAVELER – VIVA LA VILLA

Saturday, September 1st, 2007

With residences in Miami, St. Tropez, Courcheval, Paris, Marbella and Aspen, the Villazzo residence club experience offers guests a general manager and full hotel staff (including child care, chef, bartender, masseuse, maid service and more) in what would traditionally be a villa rental package. Hotel style decor and amenities (like Bulgari toiletries and a business center) create an experience like being ˝the only guest in a private boutique hotel in the best locations, ˝ according to Villazzo VP Thierry Morali. (more…)

FLAIR – FIVE STAR LIVING

Sunday, July 1st, 2007

Five Star Living

Three concepts; extraordinary properties, outstanding accessories, and exceptional service made Villazzo. In 2002 Christian Jagodzinski founded Villazzo and developed a new hotel concept bringing the five-star hotel experience to hotel-quality private residences, in some of the most desirable holiday locations worldwide; St. Tropez, Marbella, Miami, Aspen, Courchevel and Paris. The result is a place that guests don’t have to share with anyone, that combines all the advantages of both villa and hotel, without the disadvantages of either. (more…)

SQUARE MILE – MANSION MAN

Friday, June 1st, 2007

Sarah Modlock meets Christian Jagodzinski, founder and chairman of Villazzo

The British are not known for speaking up when things are unsatisfactory. To avoid creating a scene, we prefer to stiffen our upper lips, and our G&Ts, whilst turning a blind eye to the most elephantine of problems. On this basis, it’s safe to assume that if Christian Jagodzinski had been born British then his company, Villazzo, would not exist.

“It all stemmed from my own experience as a disappointed client in the luxury travel industry,” he explains. (more…)