What to Do When Your Villa Holiday Goes Wrong (And How We Fix It)
Last summer, a family arrived at their villa in Zakynthos to find the air conditioning wasn't working.
It was 35°C outside.
Here's what happened next — and what it tells you about how we handle problems.
The call (4:47pm, Saturday)
The guest called us: "The A/C isn't working. The villa is boiling."
We didn't ask them to email. We didn't tell them to wait until Monday. We called the property manager immediately.
The property manager (5:03pm)
The property manager answered. (If they hadn't, we'd have a backup contact — we always have two numbers for every property.)
He said he'd be there in 20 minutes.
The fix (5:35pm)
Turns out the circuit breaker had tripped. The property manager reset it, tested all the units, and gave the guests his mobile number in case anything else went wrong.
Total time from "there's a problem" to "problem solved": 48 minutes.
Why this is normal for us (and not for most agencies)
Because we only work with a small number of property managers, we have direct relationships with all of them. We don't go through a call center. We don't submit a ticket. We call them directly, and they answer.
If we worked with 5,000 villas across 40 countries, this wouldn't be possible. We'd have to route problems through regional offices, escalation teams, and people who've never visited the property.
Instead, we can call someone who knows exactly which villa you're in, what the quirks are, and how to fix things fast.
The problems we can't fix fast
Sometimes the problem isn't fixable same-day.
A broken dishwasher on a Saturday? The repair person might not come until Monday.
A power cut affecting the whole village? We can't do anything about that (though we can tell you where the nearest restaurant with working A/C is).
In those cases, we're honest: "We can't fix this today, but here's what we're doing and when it'll be sorted."
What we don't do
We don't:
- Tell you to "try turning it off and on again" without sending someone
- Make you wait until business hours on Monday
- Offer you a voucher for your next stay instead of actually fixing the problem
We fix it, or we find you an alternative, or we refund you. Those are the only three options.
What happens if the villa is genuinely not as described?
This is rare (because we vet villas before listing them), but it does happen occasionally.
If you arrive and the villa is significantly different from what we described — the pool isn't working, there's building work next door, the photos were misleading — we'll either:
- Move you to a comparable or better villa (if one is available)
- Refund the portion of your stay that's affected
- Full refund if the problem is serious enough that the villa is unusable
What we won't do is argue with you about whether the problem is "bad enough" to warrant action. If it's affecting your holiday, we'll sort it.
Why we tell you this now
Because one of the biggest fears people have when booking a villa (especially from a company they haven't used before) is: "What if something goes wrong and no one helps?"
So we're telling you upfront: things occasionally go wrong. Dishwashers break. WiFi drops out. Air conditioning units fail.
The difference is what happens next.
With BnbStay, you get a person who answers the phone, calls the property manager directly, and gets it sorted — usually within an hour.
That's the deal.