The rise of booking sites featuring rooms within houses highlights a trend for an ever-increasing percentage of travellers to seek out ‘living in the community’ accommodation. The villa advantage is a luxury 4, 5 and 6 star alternative

Villas with expansive views. Villas with a long history. Designer appointed interiors form part of the villa advantage.

Villas with enclosed walls suitable for families. Staff attending to your every need during your villa stay. Generously sized communal rooms and stylish bedrooms top off the list.

Location advantages

Large hotels require space and easy access. The villa advantage places you right amongst locals’ houses, temples and daily life. Just outside your front door, children will be taken to and return from school. Women will pick roadside flowers and carry small baskets of them to the temple. Dogs and monkeys bark alongside peacocks. Squirrels and birds awaken you with their games and song.

You meet and make friends with the local shopkeepers. As you buy your favourite pineapple, soursop, passionfruit or banana for a day trip. Your day will start with the sound of sweeping, locally dubbed ‘the National Job’. Whether by gardeners, shopkeepers or the house next door sweeping leaves occurs daily.

Escape with purpose

Perhaps you backpacked in Asia in your 20s and have now worked for 3 decades. You decide to return and visit the old places to see what has changed. Someone mentions Sri Lanka, which you had never considered. Locals welcome tourists with the Sri Lankan smile.

Your villa experience affords you colonial lifestyle which is long forgotten in other parts of the world. In Sri Lanka, ancient machinery creates Dilmah’s famous tea. Liptons may be foreign owned; but the plantations and factories are locally operated. Your villa set in the midst of steep hillside plantations turns back the hands of time. It is one of the secrets of Sri Lanka’s ability to relax its visitors.

Beachside villas open your soul to the joy of sunshine without leaving home. You may wish to overlook the beach from a location just a few hundred metres away, or relax in an infinity pool above beach sands of your special beach. A large hotel footprint simply cannot compete with a luxury colonial beachside villa.

Dine without cooking and washing up

Travelling with your tastebuds is an obsession for some. Whether you’re are a foodie or not, enjoying home cooking in an exotic tropical setting is always special. The villa advantage is that staff quickly get to know what you like and when you want it. Favourites could be anything from traditional pancakes for breakfast, a fusion incorporating roti for lunch or fresh shakes or seasonal fruit smoothies.

If you like it hot and spicy, Sri Lanka will become your second home. Its curries are spiced with chilli, black and white pepper and a host of spices. Vegetarian options are easy for Sri Lankan villa cooks who have been doing them since childhood. The abundance of fresh fish makes it a must for many travellers. But this is your villa.

You have absolute discretion over all aspects of your tropical stay.

Regardless of what you enjoy on your personal menu, you never actually have to enter the kitchen. Meals appear, dishes are silently removed and washed up. You eat your fill, but do no washing up – in your own tropical colonial villa!

Soak in the tropical climate in lush gardens

The tropics enjoy a vegetation advantage over cooler climates. Things just grow! You don’t have to do much to make them grow; overnight they shoot up 20 cm. The flowers of the tropics are lush, abundant and every colour of the rainbow. Water lilies and lotus float silently, whilst orchids adorn trees overhead.

Tropical flowers are huge when compared to their sub-tropical counterparts. A single red bloom stands out because of its sheer size. Mass plantings in gardens provide a year-round visual feast. Blooms from exotic species which bloom occasionally add interest to expansive gardens.

Forgotten by many is the vegetation that forms the basis of Ayurvedic medicine. Fruits, barks, seeds, roots, leafs and flowers provide oils, powders, potions and poultices. The plants, vines, herbs and spices exist in every garden. Your colonial villa’s garden is in fact the Sri Lankan medicine cabinet and food basket. You’ll find coconuts swinging overhead. Avocados, mangos, starfruit, lovi-lovi, pineapples, soursop, bananas and jumbo are found in most gardens. Some are there by design, some by accident as monkeys, squirrels or birds drop seed from nearby jungles.

Without the gardener or villa staff guiding you around the botanical beauty you will most certainly miss the greens which appear in your curries, omelettes and salads. You’ll walk right by cinnamon, nutmeg or clove trees. Black pepper, vanilla beans and passion fruit hang onto trees or frames.

The villa advantage allows you a holiday that is unique and special in many different ways. Booking your villa is the start of an experience that will last a lifetime. Tropical luxury surrounds every waking minute. Every sense of the human body is engaged in the opulence of the experience. The sights, sounds, smells, feel and energy of Sri Lanka quickly becomes a cord that connects you, not only with the island and its people, but with its very heart and soul.