It’s sometimes easy to forget how different American English and British English are. Sometimes less so. Because I book my villas to both English and American guests, I’m frequently reminded of the differences. Little things cause problems. For example, the terms ‘self-catering’ and ‘villa’ instantly communicate essential holiday characteristics to British guests, but are devoid of such meaning for my US guests. I will be mid-booking and suddenly find myself...
I can’t quite believe it is February already! Just where did January go? For me, it disappeared under a flurry of bookings. Having just come out of a busy festive period, we are now almost fully booked for Christmas and New Year 2015. So I hope this post works as a rallying cry for all my regular guests – please, if you want to spend the holidays in Florida in...
Our resident thrifty creative, my sister Sonya, has been busy renovating some bedrooms for our property owners again and I thought I’d share some of her handiwork here. Sonya’s really crafty but she’s also really into keeping costs down to an absolute minimum for our villa owners – we want them to get the most return for their investment without having to spend silly money on expensive refurbs. Sonya is...
Universal Mardi Gras is a 16-night party featuring a dazzling parade, Cajun food and live concerts from some of music’s biggest names. If you’re going to be in Orlando between February 7 and April 18, it’ll be well worth checking out Universal Orlando for some extra-special Mardi Gras party atmosphere on selected nights between these dates… Sign up here to get first notice about the acts who’ll be playing across these special 16 nights. And to really...
We host some amazing and inspiring people in our villas. Not least this group of college friends who now reconnect regularly – thanks to the power of Facebook and the Central Florida Tough Mudder events. If you’re not familiar with the Tough Mudder concept it’s an opportunity to raise funds for the Wounded Warriors charity through 12 miles of teamwork and running with military-style obstacles thrown in. And when we...
We’re at peak season for pool heat at the moment. Here’s 5 hacks to help you get the most out of it during your stay at an Ellis Exclusive Villas holiday home. 1. Book before you go With any Ellis Exclusive Villa, pool heat is ALWAYS charged as an extra. It’s worth thinking about whether you want it before you go because it takes a little while for the pool...
2014 has been a big year for Ellis Exclusive Villas. We’ve been busy putting in place new booking software, renovating houses, creating a new website and launching this blog to name but a few of our activities! We hope that 2015 will be the year that these investments begin to pay off and create a much smoother and seamless holiday planning and booking service for all our customers. With these hopes...
I’m always surprised just how much creativity and ingenuity is required in the day-to-day life of a property manager. That’s one of the reasons we enjoy our work so much here at Ellis Exclusive Villas – not one day is the same. Part of our job is to keep the properties top notch so that we make sure that they are going to attract the most bookings. Repurposing an under-used room into...
At dawn today, the Orion rocket was successfully launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida – heralding (so we’re told by NASA) a new era in American space exploration. You can see the launch here: Elsewhere in Florida great things have also been launched into cyberspace: my new website! After years of hard work (no, really), a very steep learning curve, and many, many lessons learned, we’ve finally gone live with my...
