36-Year-Old Broker Rents Luxury Villas to Tech Billionaires, Celebs

• 36-12 months-previous Elpida Kennedy commenced out in the hospitality company as a restaurant hostess. 
• Now, she manages a non-public portfolio of luxury villas in Greece that charge up to $25,000 a night time.
• She gave us a guiding-the-scenes search at how she designs elaborate holidays for the top 1{0b5b04b8d3ad800b67772b3dcc20e35ebfd293e6e83c1a657928cfb52b561f97}. 

Elpida Kennedy started in the hospitality company when she was 17 several years previous, functioning as a hostess at a hotel cafe. 

Just about two decades later, she’s the CEO of her very own firm, The Kennedy’s Group, a luxurious hospitality business with dozens of rental attributes in Greece, Mexico, and Costa Rica. 

Classified by 5, six, and seven-star attributes, Kennedy’s multi-million dollar villas are not your standard family vacation rental — and you will not likely obtain them on Airbnb. Nightly costs for her portfolio of ten villas in Greece selection, for instance, from $4,000 to $25,000. 

Kennedy’s A-checklist purchasers incorporate British business moguls like Carole Bamford and Richard Caring, as nicely as Swedish DJs Sebastian Ingrosso, Alesso, and Steve Angello, according to the firm. A  spokesperson explained Elon Musk has also stayed in a single of the Mykonos villas, but declined to share documentation or further specifics regarding his trip, citing NDA restrictions.

Her higher-profile guests shell out incorporate-on charges for 24/7 concierge companies, these as a private yacht charter, chauffeur, private trainer, or bodyguards. 

“When you want to keep in a villa, you want to be far more isolated in a way,” Kennedy advised Insider. “You are not the variety of traveler that feels comfortable remaining in a professional residence. They do not want to be viewed by everybody.” 

The remarkable, last-minute, and at any time-switching requires of a billionaire on holiday

No matter if it truly is traveling in Michelin-starred cooks for dinner or organizing non-public sailboat excursions at the fall of the hat, Kennedy is accustomed to making the impossible needs of the rich occur correct. 

“They always question last-minute points, and we provide,” she stated. “I under no circumstances say no. I will say indeed, I will do it, I will deal with it. I normally want to make sure you them.”

The most hard request nonetheless arrived from a DJ remaining at a person of the Mykonos villas, who named all around midnight to ask if the villa could be established up for a 200-person get together. Her crew managed to set up experienced audio devices, a bar, decor, and staff and stability — all in less than a person hour.

“It was like a extremely major problem for us,” Kennedy said. “He didn’t even believe himself that it could be so nicely organized. He was in fact hugging my entire group in the early morning.”

It is really this amount of dedication and personalization to which Kennedy credits the accomplishment of her business, even when it borders the absurd.

When she was 8-months expecting, Kennedy mentioned a substantial-profile client requested her to attend his birthday celebration on board a personal yacht. She complied, and later that night time, her water broke. 

“So I took a helicopter in the morning and went to Athens to give birth,”  she reported. “Then I receive a text from an additional guest, a incredibly vital businessman, indicating ‘Thank God you gave start prior to I arrived. I will see you at my test-in 6 days later on.'”

And he did.

“What can I do?” Kennedy explained, laughing. “I gave beginning in the center of the summer.”

Not all rich individuals are manufactured equal 

If you know just one billionaire, that will not mean you know all of them, in accordance to Kennedy. 

“We have all these clientele on the greatest level, they are all billionaires, right,” she claimed. “But they are each so diverse — what they want, their wants, and how they be expecting you to take care of them.”

There are the tech stars, who Kennedy suggests like discretion and privacy above flouting their wealth, and want to solution workers with any questions. 

“They you should not like publicity. They you should not like fame. They do not like folks to discuss to them,” she informed Insider. “They’re like ghosts.”

Then there is certainly the other form of organization mogul, who want to get into the finest clubs, rub shoulders with fellow socialites, occasion challenging, and obtain the most pricey champagne just to spray it. 

But even when you imagine you’ve got nailed a client’s choices down, it could all improve in an immediate, Kennedy claimed, noting that a few in their sixties resolved that previous summer season would be their time to celebration tricky in spite of a heritage of wanting to stay low-important.

“At times they say a little something but they mean some thing else,” she stated. “You learn to browse their eyes and realize the body language and see when they truly feel uncomfortable, when they experience bored, when they experience delighted.”

No make a difference the style of visitor — reserved or demanding, social gathering-goer or sunbather — Kennedy claimed the critical to profitable their hearts is to supply a thing new and interesting, a undertaking that’s less complicated stated than completed for people accustomed to unrestricted means at their fingertips. 

Kennedy claimed her staff spends hours brainstorming exceptional pursuits and tips, like using underwater photoshoots and cooking freshly caught fish in excess of a fireplace on a hidden cove. But the biggest hit amongst company, billionaire or not, is a common Greek sailing boat tour to the ancient island of Delos, she claimed. 

“When the visitors occur again and they hug you and say thank you and they are complete of enjoy,” Kennedy reported. “That’s my reward.”

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