The Thinking Traveller Reviews 1,200

Villa Michaela was just perfect in every way. From the staff to the location, everything was just amazing. The Chefs we outstanding and the quality of the food was above any restaurant. Thank you for such a perfect special week.

Great choice of villas. Excellent service both before and during our holiday.

We stayed with at a villa in Greece we booked via The Thinking Traveller. We had an excellent experience from enquiry through booking through to the final villa and onsite support. They provide a high touch, high thought service and are pragmatic and user friendly.

We loved our stay there, Gina and her son were the best!! The food was exceptional and the space of the villa fit our family perfectly! If there was a small downside it would be the lack of adequate laundry facilities and in some of the rooms, it would be great to have a larger bed and new mattress’s. We loved our stay and would highly recommend this villa

We rented two houses with the Thinking Traveller, one in Puglia last summer and one in Corsica this year. Both houses were lovely, furnished with taste and care, fully equipped. The house in Corsica (Casonu) had an amazing location. Both local teams were great and very helpful. Just a couple of details to improve the comfort of the interior: bedside tables in the bedrooms would have been handy. The living space on the ground floor is lovely but very small- the sofa is tiny and uncomfortable.

Great villa, breathtaking views of the sea and the volcano, great terrace with fantastic sunsets, great local support from Thinking Traveller
Unfortunately, not everything in the villa was working when we arrived, some things were broken and it took a long time till they where repaired, the included cleaning service could have been better

We loved our home in Puglia…just beautiful and a great escape. The concierge services, both before the trip and during the week, were excellent. We are a family of 7 and had great plans and flexibility. We are excited to do another trip soon.

We stayed at the villa DIETRO AL MURO, Aug. 9 to Aug.16, 2025. This was for a special celebration for our 60th anniversary, accompanied by our son and daughter in law. Arrangement, details with The Thinking Traveler were 5 star. The office was excellent in providing details, excursions and the local hosts were very helpfull for any of our needs. They even supplied a gift of local wine for our anniversary.
The villa itself is very modern in design, amenities were great. Pool outstanding. Overall the villa needs some love and care. There is only AC in the bedrooms, it needs AC in the kitchen and living room. The ladies found it too hot to cook in the kitchen, even with the fan on. The outdoor furniture is old and dated, cushions, sofa are stained and need replacement. The outdoor garden was a mess of weeds, so we did not partake of the herbs and tomatoes growing there. Unfortunately on our very last day there was a freak, very serious storm, heavy winds, rain and massive hail, that did a lot of damage to bamboo curtains outside, blew over 1 of the pool shade pergolas and damaged it. Our rental care received bad damage from the hail all over.
I hope the owner considers our comments in a positive way, to improve this beautiful villa!

Top notch villa rental company
Everyone we met and spoke to was really focussed on making sure we had a great holiday, that was properly tailored to our individual needs. Experts in their field from initial inquiry to visiting the villa. Excellent selection of villas - really high quality.

The Villa was as expected and the caretakers were extremely nice and efficient . We had a lovely holiday in a great place.

Wonderful from start to finish
Konstantina And Jami made our holiday.
Nothing was too much trouble everything was planned perfectly and without fault.
We are already planning on coming back with them next year

The whole experience of booking through The Thinking Traveller was excellent, from initially viewing and reserving the house to the concierge service they provided before and during our stay.

Great experience, great welcome. House totally conform to the description and pictures.

The conciergerie was not at the level expected, lots of mistakes were done with transfers, rates etc…we also had issues with breakfast timing and deliveries. When you rent a villa like this you need a service at a way better level.

We had a very pleasant time. However the people in charge of cleaning the house were not nice at all. Finally we had not enough towels at the pool

Amazing communication. The only villa company to ever use!

We used the Thinking Traveller as we wanted to take the risk and work out of planning and going on holiday. This was a huge mistake.
They claim to only work with the best villas, will find you the perfect area and have unrivaled local knowledge - in our experience this is completely false.

Do your own research don't trust these people and book a better villa in a better location for half the price on air BnB

We stayed at Casa Fernandez in Puglia

The villa itself was very basic and lacking some very basic amenities (including hot water for half our stay and all water for half a day or so)

The area itself was even worse, loud neighbors, no good local shops and no good nearby restaurants

Lastly the local knowledge was laughable, only excuse was maybe there were no good recommendations locally!

The Villa is located near Ugento. There is little to do in the local area and it felt very budget, think £300 per week holiday on the costa del sol. The biggest issue was lack of good shops lacking basic things like orange juice. When we ended up exploring further afield - Ostuni and Lecce the shops were much better. Ostuni and the coast from Poligano a Mare to Monopoli to Otranto on the North is so much better. We ended up spending most of our time here but it meant a daily round trip drive of around 3-4 hours which was pretty exhausting. The exact area of the villa was very strange, quite run down and some of the neighbors were very noisy quite late into the night. We did try going to a couple of places for lunch nearby, one was abandoned.... really you have to drive to Galipoli which is around a 90 minute round trip!

We did ask for recommendations and ended up one of the more local beach clubs for two days but it was grim. Plastic furniture in the restaurant, horrible deck chairs and no towels, just really low rent. The beach clubs and restaurants on the northern coast are so much better. We really lost faith in the local recommendations after this, the best beach club we found in the local area called Le Cinque Vele was not on the Thinking Traveller’ list....

You really had to try to get much out of the team as well. Generally when we stay at an air bnb the host leaves a list of places to go to, this is the best local supermarket, butcher, bakery, beach club, restaurant etc. - none of this from the thinking traveler you have to ask for everything they wont do anything pro-actively

The Villa itself looks good in pictures but once you get there its really terrible. Its tiny. The furniture is all incredibly low quality:

Rickety uncomfortable beds, no storage in any of the rooms, no wardrobes or drawers, very small kitchen, no baking sheets, (we had to get some to cook for our kids) uncomfortable small sofa in the living room which again is really small. Outdoor furniture was very limited and terrible quality, there was a kind of sofa but it was again rickety and uncomfortable, so really nowhere to sit or lounge in the evening to read a book etc.Sun loungers were really cheap and rickety.
Electrics were also a big issue, for some reason most plugs around the house wouldnt take a normal adaptor you could only use a Euro to USB plug in them. Strangely enough the only place you could plug in a normal adaptor was in the bathrooms?!
Hot water was an issue for the first week or so, lukewarm showers at best or just cold. It’s clearly 32 degrees outside so not disastrous but it is still nice to have a hot shower. After 5 or 6 visits they managed to get this working.
All of the water stopped working on our 4th or 5th day so nothing coming out of the taps, toilets wouldn't flush etc. we couldn't really leave so sat around all morning until it was fixed, by this point we had realized nothing decent locally so were planning to go up to Otranto but given its such a long way by the time the water was back on we didnt have time for the trip so really ruined our day.

The villa was in a really strange location and some slightly weird nearby buildings, one set of neighbors were really loud most nights.

On the positive side the pool was lovely and the kids liked playing in it, the BBQ area was also good and there was a good supply of wood. But on the whole it is probably the worst villa we have stayed in.

We did really lose it when the water stopped working and asked to leave. The Thinking Traveller were pretty unhelpful and the manager was pretty rude saying how pleased she was that it only took 5 hours to get the water working again! We were due to spend 3 weeks at the villa but came home after 2 weeks as I was due to be working in the final week and the villa really wasn't fit for purpose for this.

Finally when we got to the airport the car hire company they booked the car through proceeded to claim the hire car had been damaged which was completely false, we await the bill from them. Thinking Traveller again completely useless despite booking through them.

We have enjoyed Thinking Traveller villas for the last four years. They are always of a very high standard and are in beautiful settings. The only problem is having to leave!
The Thinking Traveller staff are amazing. They are responsive and well informed. You can always speak to someone who has visited the properties you are considering so can provide valuable insights.
This summer we stayed at I Bruzzi in Corsica. Stunning location, wonderful pool and contemporary and well equipped villa with thoughtful and welcoming staff.

Beautiful house. On hot days, the living room and kitchen lack air conditioning. The pool is very nice, but it's difficult to keep the water clean due to the high temperatures.

The villa was lovely and no complaints regarding the property. We asked little of Thinking Traveller, but they were not helpful with recommendations and charged close to double local rates for additional services. On the leaving day staff were around at 7.30am and we felt rushed out.