KICK BACK IN A VILLA OF YOUR OWN

For all the laid-on luxuries of hotels, there will always be travellers who prefer the unstructured freedom of a villa, with all the space, flexibility, good value and uninterrupted privacy it can bring. In pandemic times, villas are more popular than ever among those seeking “bubble holidays” – an ongoing trend as Covid uncertainty continues. The pool-villa specialist Vintage Travel (01954 261431; vintagetravel.co.uk) reports villa bookings to its top destinations of France and Greece up more than 40 per cent on pre-pandemic levels, and the company has added 13 new Mallorca properties to its portfolio to meet soaring demand for the Balearic island, now in third place.

One growing trend among villa companies is to offer guests services, combining the pros of a villa holiday with one of the benefits of a hotel stay. They might included spa treatments, dinner for 12 cooked up a local chef, or a fully-crewed yacht charter. High-end companies such as the Luxury Travel Book (020 7586 5342; theluxurytravelbook.com) and the Thinking

Traveller (020 8131 3308; thethinkingtraveller.com) take an anything-is-possible approach to arranging special, one-off experiences for their guests – with levels of personal service that could rival any hotel concierge.

Another effect of the pandemic, says Italy specialist Merrion Charles (00 39 39215 51464; merrioncharles.com), is that people are seeking ever more exceptional places to take over for memorable holidays. “Fixers” such as Charles, and the Ibiza insider Serena Cook (00 34 9711 97867; deliciously sortedibiza.com), can unlock the doors to all sorts of magical abodes, from palazzos to privateisland retreats.

Villas can also open up entire destinations still under the tourism radar, where hotels have not yet become established. Rustic regions such as Istria, quietly becoming known as the “Tuscany of Croatia”, and islands such as Sardinia’s La Maddalena archipelago, or Sicily’s Egadi islands – perfect boltholes for a far-fromanywhere fly and flop.