ADVERTORIAL
TenGoal talks to Ileana von Hirsch of Five Star Greece
Since 2000 you have been consistently recognised as leading your sector as the top specialist for Greek Villa Rentals by Conde Nast Traveller. How did you start and how has the market changed significantly over the last ten years? When we started, there were no upmarket Greek villas for rent – rich Greeks did not rent their houses out. At that time, all anyone knew were modest, three bedroom houses with terraces with three plastic chairs and table, a pre-formed pool, and a gas barbecue as a luxury. By renting our own houses out, over 17 years ago, Evi and I got the ball rolling. My house on Ithaca didn’t have a pool or a gas barbecue, but had a private marina, 6 beaches, a sailing boat and speedboats, eight members of staff and two village lads to turn a spit. It was clear that we had to start our own agency to create the much needed market which simply didn’t exist.
One of our earliest clients was Madonna, and after that, we were able to entice owners of the truly great houses to rent by saying, “Of course you don’t want to rent your beautiful house out, but if Madonna wanted it for two weeks, you wouldn’t say no, would you?” And that is how we started. Now, the market is a fully mature one, with new agencies springing up like mushrooms and beautiful, newly built houses coming in every year, and Greece is now one of the most popular upmarket villa destinations in the world.
How has Five Star Greece kept pace with and developed over this period of change? Our role has changed from that of pioneers to high- level curation and client guidance. I also believe in being at the forefront of innovation – we were the
first to introduce a yachting element to villa vacations so clients can combine a villa with a yacht – a sort of surf ‘n’turf, we were the first to encourage owners to present their houses with full staff and concierges to give clients the real Greek experience. We now focus less on bedrooms and bathrooms, and more on helping visitors to find their own Greece and create magical experiences.
What are the biggest challenges that you have faced along the way? Airbnb and Homeaway are usually considered to be the main challenge today, but our clients are those who want our taste, curation and inspection, and need our honest, expert guidance as to what will suit them – so these challenges have not had much impact on our business.
How does your approach differ to others in your sector? We focus very much on matchmaking individual clients to the right house and island – we don’t do online bookings at all and don’t present our villas on our website – we have a shop window and want to invite clients to come in and have a full consultation with us – we are not prêt-à-porter, we are haute couture!
Have you plans to expand out of Greece? We do get asked a lot about villas in other countries, or who is the equivalent of Five Star Greece elsewhere. Five Star Greece is a founding member of UltraVilla –
www.ultravilla.com – a free service which guides people to the top experts in any destination – our directory of global recommendations!
www.fivestargreece.com www.ultravilla.com
ileana@fivestargreece.com
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