Big family holiday - villa ideas

[Thunderboxskin]

Hi,

I was looking for some holiday suggestions. We want to plan a big family holiday in a few years time august 2025.

There will be 12 people approx going with 4 children under 10 in that number. Has anyone got any good recommendations for villas for large groups? Or any locations that were really enjoyable for big family holidays.

Ideally a car would not be required.

thanks!

There are companies that just provide villas and you can search by party size. James Villas, Villa Plus, etc - just Google. Where is really up to your party, what they like to do, whether they want a town nearby, a beach location, culture, etc.

I've booked through villa plus before but you never know what other people have enjoyed or thought was a good company to book through.

Where do you want to go? We have used James villas before and they were fine but spendy. You need to work out how many rooms you need and work from there. EG 12 adults, is that six couples? Are the kids going to need their own rooms, or go to somewhere like Martinhal and get a couple of villas between you.

So it's in the very initial planning stage and are thinking of Spain, Turkey and Greece (as I said I just wanted to see where other have gone and enjoyed too potentially get further ideas). We would need minimum 6 bedrooms, 4 couples and 2 bedrooms with 2 kids each in them.
I had seen that the likes of villa plus have villas that are next to each other if we couldn't get one as one group.

I heard Bulgaria was an OK holiday destination too, however, I only know one person that's been so that may be a red herring.

What is your budget? I can recommend an amazing villa (6 bedrooms all en suite) with pool and access to the sea in Mallorca but if you're looking at summer holiday time it's not cheap.
We found it on air bnb and there are lots of fantastic places on there suitable for large groups.

We used Solmar Villas this year. Had a good experience. Not sure about big size as there was only three of us.

Found a lovely one in Mallorca, wasn't crazy money (not in school holidays) either. Was on booking.com. Up in the north.

We do this every other year, we've been to Turkey (cheap but absolutely awful experience), Spain & Portugal (love both places but found villas are really expensive compared to other countries), Greece & Cyprus.
We've stuck with Cyprus for the past 8 years now as we all absolutely love it and have booked again for August.

Villas everywhere will vary massively depending on your budget.

Annecy in France.

@givememarmite we don't have a strict budget planned out at the moment. More looking at places I've mentioned up thread and different accommodations and get rough costs together and seeing which is most popular with the group and going from there. Unfortunately we would have to go in August as 3 out of the 4 kids would be in school and one of the adults is a TA so can't take holidays at other times. Quite happy to hear your suggestion though.

@Dollydea I was leaning more towards the Spain or Greece idea as I think they would be cheaper than other places such as Italy but would still be nice and as you mention run less of a risk of disappointment which possibly Turkey may be. I will add Cyprus to the list though thank you!

I will have a look into the other suggestions as well, it's helped widen the idea net and its useful to have first hand experiences from others.

can you please let me have the details for this? sounds great

@Thunderboxskin and @ashamed222 I've messaged you both

@givememarmite thanks for sharing 😊

Thankyou so much for messaging The villa you recommended looks amazing but I cannot see availability or prices. I have emailed them but no response .
Did you book via the website?

@ashamed222 we booked via Airbnb the first time and then directly with the owner after that. I can't send you a link on Airbnb though as it just links to my booking there. If you put the name of the villa in though you should find it there then you can see availability and prices (it's roughly €1k per night)

We've used Jet2Villas in Cyprus. Would definitely recommend.