CV Villas reports ‘record-breaking’ year for trade sales in 2025

CV Villas has reported a “record-breaking” year for trade sales in 2025.

The specialist villa operator saw a 21% increase in agent bookings compared to 2024, with sales through the trade outperforming those that came direct.

Speaking to Aspire, senior business development manager Chris Etheridge said: “We finished 2025 on a massive high and, in terms of our growth, it was a really positive year.”

The brand saw a number of destinations “surge in popularity with the trade” last year, including Puglia, which is now CV Villas’ second-largest region behind Corfu. Portugal also finished 30% up compared with 2024, while Greece saw a 29% increase in bookings.

The operator is adding new product across these destinations, and also in Sri Lanka, which finished 2025 59% versus 2024.

Etheridge said: “Speaking to the trade, they love the affordability and the quality of our programme in Sri Lanka. We have many beachfront villas, all including daily maid service and full chef service.

“When you compare Sri Lanka and Greece from a price point, sometimes you can get a fully serviced villa with chef service and flights for the same price as the Mediterranean, if not a bit more. That price point is a major driving factor for our growth in business for Sri Lanka in 2025, and I think that will continue to thrive.”

He also hailed the “fantastic growth” of Above by CV Villas, the operator’s collection of fully staffed properties, which ended 2025 41% compared with the previous year.

Part of this success can be attributed to an increase in awareness around what a villa holiday entails. Etheridge said: “I think agents are having their eyes opened to a new and elevated villa concept. Pre-Covid, the villa concept within the trade was very much just flights and a villa, but now it’s so much more than that. It’s that resort experience in a private villa.”

Another factor that’s helped boost growth is CV Villas’ “non-traditional approach” to its business development team. Etheridge said he and his team are “deeply involved” at multiple stages of bookings from pre-departure to in-destination, and they “know our partners and our partners’ clients”.

He added: “I think that hands-on approach has been so important, as we’re not afraid to get stuck in. We work so closely with the agents and our villa specialist to make sure that we’re servicing our agent partners’ bookings correctly.

“As part of our onboarding process, we teach our teams the whole system so we can go into an agent, bring up our reservation system and make a change there and then, without the agent having to call our villa specialists.”

Looking ahead to the rest of 2026, Etheridge said CV Villas has “lots of exciting things [planned] to support the growth that has all been made possible by the support the trade has shown us over the past 12 months”.

This includes the launch of an unbranded website to help agents showcase the breadth of villas the operator offers, an initiative Etheridge described as “a first for the villa market in the UK to support the trade”.