The Glamorous Truth About Preparing a Holiday Villa
- Sally & Marco
- Oct 2
- 2 min read
They say running a holiday rental is like living the dream: sipping Aperol on a sun-drenched terrace while happy guests swim in the pool and Instagram your oleander flowers. What they don’t show you? The frantic, slightly feral behind-the-scenes reality that unfolds in the week before check-in.
Take our villa. From the photos, it looks like something out of an Italian magazine: rustic stone walls, lavender swaying in the breeze, terracotta pots with geraniums. But let me tell you just one of the real stories of what it takes to get this "dolce vita" postcard ready for human consumption.
Nothing screams “welcome to your relaxing stay in Italy” quite like a hive of bees between the window and the shutters. Apparently, our villa has been running a sideline as a honey factory. I opened the shutters with my usual dramatic flair… only to find myself nose-to-nose with 4,000 very annoyed residents. Cue me trying to negotiate with them like some kind of apian diplomat:
“Listen, I appreciate your hard work, but the tourists have already paid. Could you not make your honey factory in our living room windows please”
They buzzed.
I called the Honey farm.
Apicoltura Colibazzi very kindly came with a home-made (very gentle) vacuum to move the whole hive. The bonus being we got to taste the sweet nectar of fresh honeycomb as I spent the
following week trying to get beeswax off the glass!
Anyone staying in the house having read this will now understand the hidden message in my cushion choice.
But here's the thing ... For all the bees, a fox leaving ‘gifts’ on the doorstep, a frog invading the pool, and a lizard who snuck inside and then forget the exit strategy, there’s a moment — right after everything is scrubbed, polished, and vaguely under control — when I step back and look at the villa bathed in late-afternoon sun. The shutters glow, the lavender smells gorgeous, the pool sparkles like nothing bad ever happened.
And when guests arrive, drop their bags, and say, “Wow, this place is magical,” I just smile and think:
If only you knew.
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