When my wife Lisa Grassi-Blais and I chucked our lives in Canada to open an all-inclusive villa and tour company in Abruzzo Italy, we were pretty sure it was going to work, but the truth is, falling flat on our faces was always a possibility.
It was a nerve-wracking time for us, but we’re happy to say that from the minute we opened Villa d’Abruzzo in 2016 and started showing guests the wonders of our Italian region 90-minutes east of Rome, business has been great.
In fact, by the second year, we were getting more booking requests than we could accommodate. It was a good problem to have, but it created another question we had to answer: Do we expand or not?
It’s actually not an easy question. On one hand, if there’s more demand than you can meet, you grow your supply and make more money. Right? Econ 101. On the other hand, expansion requires more management, which would mean more work for Lisa and I, and we didn’t completely change our lives to work like dogs. A slower pace of life was our goal. On another hand, we had a great core of young staff with capacity for more work, ready and willing to take on more responsibilities. On yet another hand, did we want to invest more in Italian real estate? It’s not an almost guaranteed investment, like in North America.
There were other hands too, but four hands are already too many, that’s a cheap, hackneyed analogy, and you get the point: We were torn.
Lisa and Jake at our Christmas Party in 2023.
So, we did what we’ve always done when we’re not sure what to do, we moved slowly.
The question of what kind of expansion needed to be answered first, and that one was easy. The demand was for our existing product, so no need to re-invent the wheel, just get another wheel. We decided that if we expanded, it would be to a similar, close-by location with the same all-inclusive, one-week tour package in an intimate setting people were demanding.
Where to expand to was next. The most obvious place was an old Baron’s Estate down the road from our villa. Nobody in the family that owned it lived there anymore. With the help of some local people, they were running it as a bed and breakfast. By 2018, when we had more bookings than we could handle, we would use it as overflow space and we were their best customers. I approached one of the owners to see if there was interest in collaboration. There was some preliminary discussion, but that was it. The next year, they stopped running the bed and breakfast altogether.
Throughout 2019, we looked at a few properties in and around our town of Torre de’Passeri, which is 30 minutes inland from the Adriatic Sea in the foothills of the Apennine Mountains. Some were too small, some didn’t have enough outside space, and some were too big. Some were too much of a project too.
That was a big one. We’d taken our Villa from a rundown, half usable place to beautiful from 2013 to 2016. It was cool, but we weren’t interested in taking that emotional and financial roller coaster ride again.
Then Covid hit and we thanked our lucky stars that we were not opening a second location during a pandemic that sucked away 100-per-cent of our 2020 income and 85-per-cent of our 2021 income. That would have been a train wreck crossed with the dumpster fire multiplied by a MAGA Rally.
In 2022, bookings bounced back in a big way. To accommodate demand, we started our season in mid-March instead of early April and finished in mid-November instead of late October. We decided we would think of expansion again if our 2023 and early 2024 bookings were strong. In 2023, we started even earlier in March and ended in the second week of December. It was our longest and strongest year while bookings for 2024 piled up.
Expansionary ideas were back in our heads. So, in early 2023, we started looking again to see if anything might fit.
We approached a couple that owned a very nice old country property that had been converted into nine lovely, rustic holiday rental apartments. They’d told us they were tired of running their business and if we were ever interested in taking it over, they would be delighted. That resulted in four months of inexplicable and needlessly complicated exploratory talks and nothing else.
Then a funny thing happened.
There’s a profession in Italy called commercialista. It’s half accountant, business advisor and lawyer. The other half, in polite terms, is governmental and regulatory liaison, or, in my terms, dealing with the endless screwy bureaucratic garbage and nonsense thrown up in your way as if these officials feel their jobs are to make businesses fail. Anyway, we have one of these professionals. His name is Francesco Volpe, and he’s a godsend for us in many ways. I’ll write more about him in a future blog.
Last June, Francesco called us and said, “What about the Baron’ Estate?” We said we talked to them years ago, and they aren’t interested.
“Well, they are now,” Francesco said.
Turns out, he heard through one of the grape vines that surround our town that the family that owned the Estate were ready to sell it or rent it or at least try to do something with the beautiful property. He called them and set up a meeting.
A few weeks later, we met the family, they were reasonable and things started rolling. Over the summer and early fall, we did our due diligence, so did they. It looked good, and they were ready to proceed.
It was decision time for us.
L to R - Jordan, Luca, Eva, Lisa, Some Very Handsome Guy
By this time, our core staff were really ready for more responsibility, so we’d formed an executive committee of house and admin manager Eva, tour and transportation manager Luca Santovito, sales and communications Jordan, Lisa and I.
We did a business case for expansion, listed pros and cons, and debated. When it was time to vote, we gathered in our Villa’s wine cellar. The vote was called. Yea to expand, nay not to expand.
Five to zero in favour.
So, we did want we always do when we make a decision: We moved fast and decisively.
We negotiated a rent-to-own, five-year contract (sort of like a lease) with purchase and renewal rights. It was signed late fall. Works to turn the Estate into a proper vacation property are well-underway. We are well ahead of our March 1, 2024 target date.
It’s an exciting time for us and our team.
Next Sunday, I will post a blog detailing the works we are doing to the grounds and building. It’s going to be a really beautiful place, and we hope you come see it.
To that end, don’t forget, we are running an “early-bird booking” discount right now. Prime dates are already filling up rapidly, so if you are interested, click here - https://www.amazingabruzzotours.com/book.
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