www.secludedbalivillas.com was founded by us, Rene and Tom Springall at the beginning of 2013.  As itinerant expats, we had nowhere that we called home.  We both loved Bali and after several trips here in 2005 we decided to buy our own villa here, just after we had with our first daughter, and so we decided to name the villa after our daughter (Villa Talia Vashti).

Initially we just used our villa only for family and friends, but we invested a lot of time training the staff to provide our expected high level of service (Rene has a degree in hotel management, and had worked at some of the top hotels in Asia) and also to make the villa totally suitable for us as a family, but also for us to be able to enjoy with friends as well.

In 2006 we decided tentatively to offer our wonderful villa to others to rent, and were amazed at the response – loads of people came and stayed and everyone absolutely loved the villa – it was a total revelation to us. The following year we were blessed with a second daughter, who we named Kalisha. We realised we were in trouble now though as she was bound to be jealous that her sister had a villa and she did not.

Rene had always loved the cool of the mountains, and we were lucky enough to find an amazing villa near Ubud, which we had to totally renovate which we named after our second daughter (Villa Kalisha). Since then we have bought two more villas, and although we stay often at the villas, increasingly they were booked, and so we stayed at other villas. 

Almost always though other villas were not like ours at all – even if they seemed to be in the advertising.  Breakfasts were often disappointing – just bit of cheap toast and local jam with some instant coffee and UHT milk. Staff basically cleaned the villas, but did little else, and most of all almost no provision was made for families at the villas and there was rarely any of the personal service and help in arranging trips and activities that we experienced at our own villas.