Poolside villas prove the popular choice

Villas with pools are far more likely to appeal to holidaymakers looking for a European villa holiday than those without a pool, according to award-winning specialist villa tour operator CV Travel, who have been organising villa holidays on behalf of discerning British clients since 1972.

The company maintains the majority of its clients insist upon villas with pools, although houses that are situated right on to a beach are also among those likely to be snapped up quickly.

CV Travel offers villas with pools in Corfu, and the Greek Islands of Paxos, Lefkada, and Kefalonia, as well as in France, Italy, Morocco, Spain, the Balearic Islands, Portugal, and Britain.

Around 95% of the company’s overseas villas have pools. Included among the more unusual are an 18m pool with an exercise jet at the Umbrian country house ‘La Crete’, a restored ‘bassin’ with central fountain that makes an elegant pool at the French Provencal house ‘Clos St. Maurin’, and in Morocco, the artist wife of the owner of a residential palace, Verger de l’Etoile Filante, Marrakech, created the tiles that line the unusual key-hole arch shaped pool.

Many of CV Travel’s villas with pools are also built to take advantage of their location, for example the beautifully restored ‘Rou Estate’ on Corfu’s north east coast with a horizon pool, built on a sun-baked terrace beneath the stone houses that make up this small hamlet and appears to blend with the Ionian sea.

Second only to the popularity of villas with pools are houses that are in close proximity to water, such as `Apraos House & Studio’, a stone house and annex built inches above the shallow water of a long stretch of golden sandy beach on Corfu’s sought-after north east coast, and ‘The Harbour House’, Kefalonia, with swimming platforms along the waterfront in Fiskardo. In Italy ‘Porto Ulisse’, a Sardinian house built into the rocky shoreline has access to two virtually private sandy coves and Casa Delfino on the Lazio coast has a sea-water pool roughly hewn from the rocks.

“Villa with pools are our most popular properties” said a spokesperson for the company “and the ones that our clients are most likely to return to year after year, as once they find the `right house’, they are eager to return to it for future holidays”.

Full details of CV Travel’s villas with pools can be found at cvtravel.co.uk.