PROS
- Villa is well relatively proportioned, with a large and well stocked kitchen and a large pool.
CONS
- There are 2 double/en-suite bedrooms and a single bedroom in the main house. The 4th bedroom is underneath the villa (sub-level with no views) and the 5th bedroom is an outhouse approx 20m from the villa by the entrance gate.
- There isn't much of a sitting/family area and the TV has a few basic channels. This area of the house is very uncomfortable.
- There are a few hidden fees which you are made aware of after booking. Main ones being a 50euro late check-in (even though the agent was 10mins late and unsure of what everything was, at one point setting off the house alarm), and 50euros if you decide not the take a weeks worth of rubbish to the local dump. 120euro or early check-in and late check-out.
- There is a 100euro fee for a 3.5hr mid week clean which seems excessive even by London standards. Furthermore the cleaner acts as a spy, reports back to the host who then messages you with what you should and should not be doing.
- The Villa has camera's so there is no real sense of privacy (coupled with the spying cleaner)
- The bedroom airCon units are all controlled by a central unit. So all bedrooms are either on at the same temperature or all off.
- The Kitchen and dining room has no AirCon
- The sub-level bedroom has a terrible smell of sewage
HOST COMMUNICATION
- The host started off with great communication. However mid-way into our stay when we voiced a few of our concerns she became very defensive and a little aggressive. At one point actually saying "you can leave earlier if you like". We found this to be quite a low point by what Airbnb has awarded as a Superhost. We were travelling in peak season with 2 small children so a response like this was very disheartening.
IN CONCLUSION
We hire out a villa every summer for our extended family vacation and although we made the most of our stay in Puglia neither the villa or the host were as we expected or to our usual standards and we would never return to Villa Flora. The description of the villa on Airbnb is very sugarcoated.