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bonitaspringstravel.com
Call us to book your Dream Vacation! 239-603-6040
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To learn more:
bonitaspringstravel.com
Call us to book your Dream Vacation! 239-603-6040
We have been awarded Best of the Gulfshore for 2023
5 Star Google Reviews!
Transcription:
Greg Shuss 0:00
Welcome to dream vacations with Laurie and Greg Shuss. If you love to travel, our team of travel advisors are here to help you plan that special vacation. Whether it's a cruise or tour, a resort or even a luxury villa, we bring the best vacation experts on our show. So sit back and enjoy today's podcast from dream vacations.
Charlie McDermott 0:26
Welcome back, listeners, Charlie McDermott, co host producer of the show. And we talk about dream vacations. I'm always dreaming about recording these episodes, guys, because I'm always just learning about these new places, destinations, types of trips, things I wasn't even aware of. So I've got a long list, long bucket list. My bucket list went from 50 to 89. And that's all because of you guys. So thank you very much.
Greg Shuss 0:55
That's the least we could do, Charlie definitely.
Charlie McDermott 1:00
So once again, you have a guest with you today. Who would you bring along?
Greg Shuss 1:04
We have Steve Lassman. Steve is the vice president of Villa product and agency relations for World Travel holdings, dream vacations is part of World Travel holdings, and so is villas of distinction. And Steve is here to talk about that today.
Charlie McDermott 1:21
Very cool. Well, welcome, Steve, how you doing?
Steve Lassman 1:24
I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. It's always a pleasure to talk about the wonderful world of villas. so fire away and let me know what you want to talk about.
Charlie McDermott 1:35
Awesome. Well, I'm going to start with the first question is just give us an overview. You know, how did the villas of distinction come about? And what makes them that unique vacation spot, Steve.
Steve Lassman 1:50
So villas of distinction was actually started back in 1988, by a gentleman by the name of Robert, we actually purchased it in 2007. So we've owned it since 2007. And it's very interesting, because it's a very different animal than the one we bought, when we bought it, which is kind of an odd bring this forward to and I make this comment. When we bought it, there was like 30,000 villas around the globe on this website. And there was no rhyme or reason to how these villas were brought in. They just happened to be there. And the philosophy of you know, Robert, when he when he put this together was people want to see a lot of product. So more was better. When you look at the villa world today, you know, at the Airbnb and the VRBO's and these do it yourself sites, they all think more is better. Well, the first thing we did when we purchased the company is we reduce the inventory significantly. Why? Because, as Greg and Laurie will tell you, we're known for having a very small curated product of luxury villas. So we have just over 3300 villas, in 52 destinations around the globe, that are all fully vetted, fully inspected, and fully guaranteed for their luxury. You know, these other Villa companies out there think again, more is better. We just don't aspire to that. So when we purchased it, we dropped about 30,000 villas right off the books right off the bat. You just can't physically you physically think about it. Think about trying to go and visit 30,000 villas a year. It's impossible unless you have a team of you know, 400 Laurie and Gregs running around the world to look at these. So we just were like, You know what, we're just not going to get into that world. So what kind of makes us different? Because I know you asked that question. And I have a tendency sometimes because I love my product. But I love what I do, to kind of go off on a different tangent, so feel free to rein me in like a cowboy with the lasso and bring me back. You know, what makes us different. What makes a villa vacation different is, number one is the value that a villa creates, and the experience that that you can create with a villa. So we kind of call ourselves we're not a villa rental company. We're a villa experience company, which is why it's a great fit for travel advisors, you know, like Laurie and Greg, because they're not a cruise booking company. They're not a land booking company. They're a vacation experience company. They're listening to the guest or their client, what is the experience you want? And that's what we can talk a little bit more about if you're interested about what we do. But that's really what a villa vacation is different about. It's the value it creates, because you know, if you're going away with three, four or five couples or you're going away with your entire family, instead of everyone getting either squeezed into one bedroom, or everybody getting a different room, maybe on different floors in the hotel, maybe you got connecting rooms I know as parents sometimes you have angst over Oh, we got to have connecting rooms, I'm sure Laurie and Greg can tell you, you know, always guaranteed connecting room, it's not always easy in the hotel world. You know, this gives you a way that you can be guaranteed that everybody's under one roof. You have your full kitchen, which we can talk about why that's great. A media room, your own private swimming pool. So it's really, you're paying the same cost for a villa that you would in a luxury resort. And what we like to say is you're getting the living room, the dining room, the media room, the kitchen, the private pool, complimentary. So that is tremendous.
Charlie McDermott 5:32
Yeah, yeah.
Greg Shuss 5:35
We were very fortunate because we had a client come to us recently and said, they were going to Mykonos, Greece. And they were looking for a place with four couples, and they had tried the hotel thing with other trips, and that didn't really work out for them. So they were looking for some kind of property that that they could use for two weeks, that would have a couple of things that were on their list, like a pool, they wanted to make sure it had a big kitchen, they wanted to make sure it was comfortable enough and also access to allow the sites around there as well. So I called villas and spoke to one of the folks on Steve's team. And they found a villa with five bedrooms, it had an infinity pool, it had housekeeping service every day, a private chef, and it just hit all the items this client wanted, and they had the most fantastic time. And guess what, they're coming back and booking more and more vacations with us.
Steve Lassman 6:37
That doesn't surprise me.
Charlie McDermott 6:43
So what type of villas what kind of the what? And the where Steve? You know, where can listeners expect to go and what types of villas are there?
Steve Lassman 6:54
So, you know, like I mentioned, we're in 52 destinations around the globe. So you can do Europe, you know, Italy, France, Greece, Spain, Portugal, as an example, the Caribbean, which is also very popular, obviously, for people looking to escape the cold, Mexico. We're also in Central America, the South Pacific, Southeast Asia. And then we have a domestic product, where during COVID, obviously a domestic Villa vacation was very, very popular. And we're pretty much you know, East Coast, West Coast. And when I say East Coast, West Coast, that's including, you know, the ski areas of Colorado and Utah and Montana and New Mexico. We have a little bit of product in the Tennessee mountains up into into Branson, Missouri, and we're constantly expanding our product, we're never going to be more than I put a cap at about 4500 villas, because I think that's about as doable as we can. So we add, we delete, we add more destinations, we delete some depending upon, you know, a lot of different factors. As far as the villas themselves, you know, we have villas from one bedroom apartments, all the way up to 25 bedroom estates. I mean, you can go from, you know, a small group, you can do the key elements of a villa vacation or the following one, it's usually family and friends going away. As friends going away, or what's really on the rise is celebration travel. So people celebrating a 50th wedding anniversary, a 50th birthday, a 60th birthday. And what makes that even more special about doing it in a villa. I did a friend of mine 60th birthday. Now, you could certainly do it at a resort, and you could probably do a lot of the things maybe that we could do. But you're doing it there with, you know, hundreds of your closest strangers. You know, we're all gasping around looking what's going on at the beach? What's going on? Yeah, you really don't have that privacy. So I did this for my friend. Like I said there were 20 people that went away. They had a 14 bedroom villa. They had a full staff, as Greg alluded to earlier, a chef, a butler, a laundress housekeeper who met you know, so you can have a full staff that will take care of all your needs. I love when I have a laundress because you can pack less which way with a carry on versus doing a check bag which a lot of the airlines obviously charge you for it. So you can bring less clothes and just have them washed every day. And I will give you a tip if you ever have anything that you cannot get a stain out of go to Jamaica, I don't know what those laundresses do in Jamaica in the Caribbean, but they can get any stain out that's possible. So moving further along for this particular gentleman, he was in the Dominican Republic. They liked to smoke cigars. We bought a fresh cigar roll or to the villages rolling fresh the guards. We did spa treatments at the villa. We had a live band at the villa. We did another experience where we had a client celebrating grandma's 95th Birthday. A reggae band in Jamaica with a videographer, video taping the entire event. The sky is the limit. As Greg and Laurie know we try to get into the mind of the guests and say, Hey, Charlie, you're going away, you're going to celebrate this special. What is it that you want to experience? You want, we will make it happen. As long as it's indigenous to the area, and it's legal, we will make it happen.
Charlie McDermott 10:30
So let's get into that. So you mentioned the infinity pools and massage and things like that. Let's go to extremes, you know, what, what are the most popular? And then let's go the other extreme, like the big extravagant if I can use that word, you know. Yeah.
Steve Lassman 10:48
So you know right now, which is due to obviously the pandemic in Europe being closed for almost two years. Italy is just off the charts. It's unbelievable. If we had more Italy villas, we could sell more of them. As you know, obviously the two big areas that people know about in this country are Tuscany and the Amalfi Coast. Absolutely stunning, beautiful. And it's about again, what is it the experience do you want to have a lot of people go to Tuscany, they'll use their Villa as kind of like a home base. And as Greg mentioned, you know, do these day excursions go up to Florence for the day, or just stay at home and have a cooking class or a sommelier come in and do a wine tasting at the villa. So Italy, and as Greg mentioned earlier, Mykonos, Greece are both very, very popular. Now looking at other destinations in the world, you have the Caribbean, always very popular Mexico, specifically the Riviera Maya region, and Los Cabos very popular depending upon what part of the country you're in. So obviously, if you're on the West Coast, Los Cabos and Hawaii, you know, tend to be more of the requested destinations versus East Coast, most people are going to Europe, people are going to the Caribbean. Now there's a wide range of what you are talking about. So, for instance, to give you kind of the value, so if you wanted to go to the Amalfi Coast, there is a villa on the Amalfi Coast, which I've stayed in, actually for my big birthday. It's called Villa week up, though a week sits outside the town of Sorento. Okay, it's a four bedroom villa. Your view every night is watching the sun go down over the island of Capri. I mean, this doesn't get any better than that. So, you know, working with Charlie, I've been working with Greg and Laurie, maybe working with you, Charlie, but what, what I would do is, you know, you fly to Rome, if you've never been to Italy, do a couple of days in Rome, which they could set up. Then take the train to Naples. When you get to Naples, we'll set up for a private car to pick you up. They'll do a private tour of Pompeii. Like your way towards the villa, but we'll have you stop at a little place called cantina del Vesuvio, which is a little little wine, winery and olive oil, where the wine grapes come from the the grapes are grown in the ashes of Mount Vesuvius. So it's a little bit different taste, have a nice lunch with a wine tasting, make your way to your villa. Now you're going to be tired from traveling all day. So as he mentioned earlier, we're going to bring in a private chef to cook dinner for you, of course. So now all of that now, I'm not going to talk about you know, the excursions because that's all dependent upon what people want to do. But let's just talk about that four bedroom villa, that four bedroom villa, on the Amalfi Coast, in the height of season during the summer, is less than $22,000 for a week. Okay, so it's a little bit more than 5000 a bedroom for the week. Now, let's go even a different route, let's talk. So you can go to a fully staffed villa, let's use the Dominican Republic, because that's where you're gonna get your greatest value. Where if the villa is absolutely stunning, you could go for a week in a stunning villa, you know, in a beautiful gated community in the Dominican Republic for you know, about 14 to $16,000 for the week. And the average cost for food and beverage with a chef preparing this for you is about $40 per person per day. That's for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and your drinks $40 and drinks. You can't you can't go out to a hotel, anywhere in the Caribbean. For $40. Yeah, yeah. So the value is it now you said let me go to the extreme. Let me go to the extreme for you. Okay, so we have, we have a couple of villas that I'll use as my extreme examples. So we have a villa in St. Barts, that is, absolutely, if you want the best of the best. It's just one of them. It's called Villa embrace. It sits up in the mountains of gustavia. You know, right out of the main town. It's a 12 minute walk into the main town. It's a six bedroom villa sits up on the hill, to infinity pools on the first floor and second floor. The third floor is the master with just a beautiful view. And then it's got everything you could well imagine. Okay, that would it offseasons gonna run you about 30,000 a night.
Charlie McDermott 15:41
A night. Right? I love it.
Steve Lassman 15:45
I have another one like tranquility, which is in on the beach, Grace Bay in Turks and Caicos, a 12 bedroom villa that you know, comes depending upon if you take all 12 bedrooms, you could have two chefs three Butler's five housekeepers. That one is in the range of about 35,000 a night and low season as well right on the beach. Now, if you want to go over festive, that Ville embrace is a half a million dollars a week. So if you want the over the top crazy, we've got it. But if you've got like, like you, Charlie, like me, like Greg and Laurie, and probably like, 95% of the listeners on this podcast, I mentioned the earlier ones where you know, you can go away for a very, very reasonable price.
Charlie McDermott 16:31
Yeah, I'll say, Wow, and the fact that you've got all that space and the amenities, you know, I, I've been to my share of resorts and it's a hotel room and like you said, you know, I, we Barb and I went to one recently, and it was there was a big wedding party there, you know, they like took the place over, like, couldn't get it. We got a cocktail, right? Yeah, yeah.
Steve Lassman 16:56
Your private villa. And you even think that you're thirsty. I guarantee you, if you have a butler, he's gonna you're gonna turn around, and he's gonna have a drink in his hand for you. Just because you thought you were thirsty. It almost reminds me of the Seinfeld episode, where you have to buy the little thing at tick, Dax. Because you want to hear the butler coming. So cocktail. But really, the sky's sky's the limit. I mean, Charlie, I mean, it's really, we have villas from, you know, clients can go away, you know, for as little as $250 a bedroom a night, you know, up to what I talked about, you know, 1000s and 1000s.
Charlie McDermott 17:37
So, so how does someone make that happen? And you mentioned the excursion. So is that, is that something that? I mean? Hey, let's use Tuscany make some yes, that I have no idea what I should see and when I should see it? And is that all part of the program?
Steve Lassman 17:54
So what would happen is, you know, we work with travel advisors around the world, like, Greg and Laurie, so you would go toGreg, just like Greg was mentioning earlier about his clients making us they would contact us we would find out, you know, what is it you're really looking for? You know, with regard to the actual villa, how many bedrooms do you need? What type of sleeping arrangements? Do you want to pool? Do you not want to pool? Do you want to be close to town? Do you want to be away from town? Do you want to be closer to the water? You know, so get all the things that, you know, Greg's gonna ask you to keep mixing the two of you up, we do ask you all the quiet you look great is gonna ask you all the questions about the actual place that he's going to start getting into will tell me a little bit about the experience. We want to know that so we know which Villa to select. Once we select the villa and you make your deposit. Then once final payment is received, Greg works with our personal concierge, we offer a personal concierge, every Villa that's booked, and they will either work directly with you, or directly with Greg and you whatever the three of you decide, we try to be as flexible as possible. So if you want to work together as a team, where you just, you know, Greg says, Look, just work with Charlie and just keep me in the loop. We can do that as well. And then our Concierge Team will say, okay, so if you haven't been there, you know, we suggest the following. We suggest, you know, are you going to be going to Rome First, well, then great. And I'm sure Greg would recommend take the train to Naples and pick you up with a private driver will take you to Pompeii as an example I was using. We'll get you a private guide. You want a private guide booked in advance, you don't want to show up to Pompeii, because it's gonna be 100 people in front of Pompeii going, you want to guide you want to guide you want to guide that's not the way to see, okay, you want a guide that you know, is professional, we vet all of those services as well. So we make sure that you're with a professional guy that knows the history knows everything. So you're gonna walk out of there going that was fantastic, you know, then we'll arrange Do you want to stop for lunch at like cantina del Vesuvio. When you get to your village, do you want to have that shift the first night? On day two, would you like to do a private yacht tour up and down the Amalfi Coast? Is that something you'd like to do? If you do, we're going to recommend that you stop for lunch. One of my favorite places is a little place called Maria Carrozzeria. It's right on the coast of Murano. It's 135 year old family run Italian restaurant. That is absolutely incredible. And we would stop there, you'd have your your fantastic lunch, you finish it off with the best lemon cello you ever had, get back on your private yacht, and they'll bring you back to your villa. That night, you can either go out to dinner, we can make arrangements for you to go out to dinner and one of the restaurants we would recommend, or if you want to dine in with a chef, you can do that. One of the things that we did that was great. There was for couples, the ladies who are all good cooks, wanted to go to the local store, and make dinner for everybody one night, which was fantastic. What made you just want to go down and sit by your private pool, you know, and just sit drink cocktails and watch the sun go down over Capri. The key thing is in all of this trolley, what is the experience you want to have? staying in a hotel, and I'm not trying to you know, say anything bad about a hotel, your experience is is is much more limited because it's out there and they're geared towards satisfying 100 guests, 200 guests, guests were with with Greg and Lori, when you're going into villa, we're focused on making sure Charlie and whoever's with Charlie, that you're the most important part of the state. Yeah, yeah. It's like the old days when he used to have Robin leach used to come on and go, you know, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, you know, we create a villa experience. So it's like the lifestyles of the rich and famous.
Charlie McDermott 21:51
Greg, and Laurie, what's your favorite Villa experience? Well, first
Greg Shuss 21:56
We have not been able to stay in any of the villas of distinction. But we've sent clients on villa vacations. In fact, we had some clients at a villa. And we had arranged a private car service to get them to the airport. We did not work with Steve's concierge group, unfortunately. And that was a mistake, because they started to text us about 330 in the morning saying our flight leaves in an hour. And the car service has not shown up, what will we do? So, in the morning, I'm panicking. What am I going to do? The housekeeper that was in the villa said, Don't worry, I'll call somebody. He showed up got them to the airport and everything worked out great. So thankfully, even the staff that were that they hire inside these villas came to the rescue. So I'm hoping someday we can go to Australia. That's kind of our next. Steve, are there villas there?
Steve Lassman 23:01
We don't currently service that. I do want to point out one thing. So your your listeners do know, we also have a 24/7 hotline. So when you're in our villa, as as he mentioned, we asked not only do you have staff, but we also have boots on the ground and every destination we serve. And we have a 24/7 hotline in North America. So people are never on their own. So when you compare us to, you know, like an Airbnb or HomeAway, because I'm sure there's people on this podcast are going, you know, I could do it myself. Well, let me tell you a couple of big differences in a little time that we have. Number one, we vet all of our villas, they don't even they don't even hide the fact that they've never stepped foot in one of their villas, okay. We're all about the personalized experience. If you book with one of these, do it yourself sites, they do offer some experiences, but they're pick from a list not here's what we here's what we can offer to you. It's pick from a list. If it's not there, it's not there. More importantly, is the financial integrity of the organization. We are bonded and insured financially. You are paying a homeowner that you don't know on these Do It Yourself sites. And furthermore, I will tell you this in 2017, when the hurricanes hit the Caribbean, we were the only company the only Villa company that said, No worry, we got your back. Here's a full credit go wherever you want. All these other companies said, Did you buy insurance? Because if you did, you need to file it. And if you didn't buy insurance, you lost your money. So that's a reason why, you know, it's Greg and Laurie, we use a company like ours as well as other travel advisors. Because you know, we stand behind what we sell. We have the financial integrity, you know, and we just really stand behind the guests.
Charlie McDermott 24:44
It's tough. Wow. Steve, you came locked and loaded. Holy cow.
Steve Lassman 24:50
When you when you get me talking about this product I could talk for you know, another 45 minutes
Charlie McDermott 24:57
but I know you've got to move on. Greg and Laurie, anything else that we should add before we end this episode?
Speaker 4 25:07
I think that our customers need to understand that going with the villas of distinction is really making an investment in a successful vacation to be able to pick the product they want, they're going to have all of this service at their fingertips. They have us to help them through it. And it is an investment they're making in a guaranteed fabulous vacation.
Steve Lassman 25:33
And I'm going to add one more point before you sign off. So we normally give Laurie and Greg in their their agency, a $200 concierge credit on every booking that they make with us. Anybody that's listening today, Greg, or or if they mentioned this podcast and they came to you. We'll I'll double it for them. Okay, so anyone who's listening will get a 400 dollar concierge credit.
Unknown Speaker 25:58
Thank you. Wonderful, terrific.
Steve Lassman 26:00
You're welcome.
Charlie McDermott 26:03
Steve, this has been awesome.
Steve Lassman 26:05
It's my pleasure. Yeah, I wish I could get more exciting my product.
Charlie McDermott 26:14
All right, well, well, we'll have to get you on another episode because because I'm sure like you said there's a lot more you want to cover. So, but this was great. Best of luck there. And Greg and Laurie. I'll see you in the next episode.
Greg Shuss 26:26
Very good. Thank you.
Steve Lassman 26:28
Thank you, Charlie. Thank you, Greg. Thank you. Alright, it's been a pleasure being with you. Take care guys.
Greg Shuss 26:35
Thanks for listening to dream vacations. To learn more about our travel business. Go to Bonita Springs travel.com Or you can call us at 239-603-6040 Again, that's 239-603-6040 let's make your dream vacation com