Exceptional VillasReviews of exceptionalvillas.com

DO NOT BOOK WITH EXCEPTIONAL VILLAS – MISLEADING, UNHELPFUL, AND INDIFFERENT TO SAFETY We booked Little Bay View House through Exceptional Villas, and it turned out to be one of the worst travel experiences we’ve ever had. The property was dangerous, dirty, and completely misrepresented — and to make matters worse, Exceptional Villas, and specifically our contact Gwladys, were utterly unhelpful when we needed support the most. We stayed only one night, and even that was too long. I was injured when a bathroom door collapsed on me — a shocking and serious safety issue. The home was filthy, with cheap, flimsy furniture that was barely usable. I’m only 5 feet tall and 100 lbs, and even I felt like the chairs and beds were made for children. The property was also not secure — you couldn’t lock both sides of the “villa,” and the advertised “beach access” was a complete lie. The listing was full of misleading information. When we contacted Gwladys at Exceptional Villas for help, she showed zero empathy or accountability. Despite the injury, the unsafe conditions, and false advertising, we were met with dismissive replies and no attempt to resolve anything. They refused to offer a refund, refused to take any responsibility, and made it clear they could not care less. Exceptional Villas is anything but exceptional. Their customer service is nonexistent, their listings are deceptive, and they abandon clients the moment there's a problem. We felt scammed, unsafe, and ignored. Save yourself the risk — book with a company that actually supports their clients and vets their properties. **Since I can’t reply to your comment: the “partial” refund wasn’t even 1/3 of the cost of what we paid when we only stayed one miserable night AND it was issued to us then taken BACK. FRAUD and MISLEADING

We booked villas in Amalfi Coast and Mykonos through Exceptional Villas for 10 guests in June of 2020 for our June of 2021 holiday, like most other people in the world, due to the covid pandemic we had no choice but to postpone our stay to 2022. The Exceptional villa team was very accommodating about helping us reschedule our stay and honoring our deposit to be transfer to our 2022 reservation. On April 20, 2022, Exceptional Villas received our final payment, and everything seemed to be accordingly as agreed on our contract. On June 9, 2022, exactly 15 days prior to our departure I received a phone call from Linda Browne from Exceptional Vilas to informed me that our reservation for Villa Hayworth in Mykonos had been cancelled by the owner of the property. We wasted no time and proceeded to look for a suitable alternative, of course due to the proximity of our departure and being high season in Mykonos left us with very few choices to accommodate 10 adults. At this point we had already committed and prepaid for multiple reservation to restaurants, day clubs, etc. that were located on the south side of the island near Villa Hayworth. Unfortunately, most of the options presented to us were far from the places we had planned on visiting and presented transportation challenges and additional cost. After reviewing our few options for villas closer to our desired location the only option was Villa Filia, which also goes by the name of Villa Diorama. We were relieved that we had a place to stay, and Exceptional Villas proceeded to make transportation arrangements and offer us a credit for our inconvenience for the transportation cost. On June 24th we departed to Italy, and we had an amazing time at Villa Ferida, named Villa Mida in the Exceptional Villa website. Villa Ferida was amazing, well beyond our expectations but unfortunately that was not the case once we arrived at our Villa in Mykonos. As soon as we drove in, we started to notice that the surrounding areas of the house didn’t quite look as advertised. The villa is described as a 5-bedroom ensuites but to be honest it should be listed as a two-bedroom villa. The other three bedrooms were detached rooms that resemble a low budget hostel. The bed mattresses were hard like a box spring mattress, there was mold on the walls, the bathrooms were not clean, and the rooms had a terrible smell. We called immediately and share our concerns and photos with the Exceptional Villas representative, Sean Walsh. The only solution presented to us by the Exceptional villas team was to speak to the local manager of the property, which had every excuse in the world about how ridiculous our concerns were for a villa that cost 15,900 euros for six nights. We decided that the villa was not suitable for our group and proceeded to book a different accommodation. The experience was terribly disappointing, embarrassing, and super stressful. We found a suitable accommodation at a much higher cost and managed to enjoy our time in Mykonos despite our terrible experience. The Exceptional Villas team didn’t follow up on our stay and only responded after I sent them an email expressing my disappointment. I was informed that we didn’t allow them to rectify the issues and of course we are not entitled to any refund. My biggest disappointment with Exceptional Villas service is the fact that they pride themselves on saying that they inspect the properties on their portfolio, well I doubt that very much based on the conditions of Villa Filia “Villa Diorama”, which was less than exceptional. I’m surprise that both villas, Hayworth and Filia remain on their portfolio despite such unprofessional service and awful conditions.

We had communicated regularly with Exceptional regarding a holiday booking to Barbados for the month of November and been assured that the villa we had chosen was available. Off the back of this reassurance, we made all the necessary arrangements, only to be told 10 days before travel that the property was no longer available. Surely, it should be standard practice to reserve accommodation prior to final confirmation?! Deeply frustrating and disappointing experience.

My girlfriend and I were scheduled to go to Turks & Caicos for a romantic week away TOGETHER! Her Aunt suddenly passed away so my girlfriend couldn't make the trip and this company did absolutely nothing to help us with this issue. I can't believe people are so caught up in money and could care less about what really matters like being with family in times of crisis. If I could have I would have given them no stars. This is my second time in a year using Exceptional Villas and I can assure you after this experience I will NEVER use them again. I would absolutely not recommend booking anything with these people because clearly all they care about is money.

They are nice people and their response times were reasonable. But the payment experience was completely unacceptable. You have to wire funds to them and they make it sound easy and like everybody does it. But wiring between the US and Europe is not routine. My funds went "missing" for nearly two weeks and nobody knew what was going on, and I was in jeopardy of losing my reservation. After a LOT of legwork and dealing with banks on my end, it turns out that those funds have to go through a London intermediary bank and then to their Irish bank, all on bankers' hours and timeline. All along, I could have just booked my villa through a US agent and payment would have been much simpler and direct.