Apparently booking a block of rooms in a five star hotel or renting a few villas will no longer cut it for corporate retreats or family vacations.
There are whole villages for rent in Austria, France, Italy, UK, Germany and Switzerland. The prices vary but the firm Rent A Village offers customization such as rebranding the street names after your top executives, etching your logo into the snow and hiring the villagers as entertainment beginning at $60,000 per night. All your event needs are managed by Xnet Event Marketing and while village rental might become the latest trend to emerge for destination weddings, Xnet expertise is mainly in conferences, incentives, product presentations and team-building activities. Past clients includes the likes of SAP, Hyundai and Siemans. The Rent A Villages are best for groups of 150 and up.
According to the FT, 2011 was all about 3GTravel, a travel industry term for multi-generational travel or big family getaways. So if you are looking for something smaller, the FT has a roundup of villages in the UK, France and Italy that includes fashion designer Alberta Ferretti’s Montegridolfo, near Urbino in Le Marche. Described as a medieval hill-top village, Ferretti explained, “Once I hit on the idea of a hotel, the decision to rehabilitate the whole village followed naturally.” However it is also possible to just rent a room in this village and not the entire village starting at €150/$198.