Awaze Brand Guidelines: The 2019 Name Behind Hoseasons, cottages.com & Novasol

European Vacation Rentals becomes Awaze.

Awaze is a new name on an old business. On 5 March 2019, at the ITB Berlin travel fair, the group then called European Vacation Rentals unveiled Awaze as its corporate name. TTG reported the change on 7 March 2019 and listed the brands behind it: cottages.com, Hoseasons, James Villas, Landal GreenParks and Novasol. The renamed group set up a London-based corporate team under chief executive Henrik Kjellberg, with a group technology chief and a group finance chief alongside him.

The brands themselves were older than the name. According to both TTG and Awaze’s own 2019 release, they had been owned by Wyndham Worldwide before being sold to the private equity firm Platinum Equity in May 2018. The rename gave a portfolio of separately known holiday brands a single parent with its own identity for owners, staff and investors, while the consumer brands kept their names.

At the 2019 launch the company said its brands offered more than 110,000 places to stay across 36 countries. In the release, Kjellberg said the group would use a new corporate identity and leadership team to share learnings, build group-wide technology and grow faster, while staying “locally relevant to owners and communities.” He described owners wanting the same personal approach “whether they are in Croatia, Cornwall or Copenhagen”, a line that sums up how the group pitches itself: one central structure, many local teams.

The name has a trap for anyone searching it. In English, “awaze” is also the name of an Ethiopian red pepper paste, a spiced condiment with its own encyclopaedia entry. The holiday group’s own site sits at awaze.com.

A house of holiday brands.

Awaze works through its brands rather than under its own name. Its site lists cottages.com, Hoseasons, Novasol, James Villas, Fincallorca and Ardennes-étape. By the company’s own counts, Hoseasons offers more than 29,400 places to stay across the UK, from woodland lodges to holiday parks and boats, and says it has been established for over 80 years; cottages.com offers more than 23,000 UK properties; Novasol lists more than 50,000 holiday homes in 19 European countries; Fincallorca specialises in villas with pools in Mallorca; and Ardennes-étape covers holiday homes in the Belgian Ardennes. Awaze describes itself as Europe’s largest provider of holiday rentals, with more than 105,000 properties, and says over 90% of them are exclusive to its brands.

The brand list has changed over time. Short Term Rentalz reported in September 2022 that in June 2021 the group sold around 100 holiday parks under the Landal GreenParks name to Roompot, and that in 2021 it bought a run of smaller firms, including Quality Cottages and its sister brand Quality Unearthed, Amberley House, Portscatho Holidays and the Danish business Bornholmtours. The same publication reported in January 2025 that the group had closed its James Villas brand in October 2023. Awaze’s results release of 11 September 2026 then said the company had relaunched James Villas in the UK in 2025, and its brands page now lists the name again as a villa specialist across seven Mediterranean destinations.

The model the company describes is “managed” holiday rental: local teams look after the homes as well as the bookings for owners. In May 2026 it opened a James Collection store on the high street in Southwold, Suffolk, as a pilot that brings premium villas, cottages and lodges together under one name, followed by a Whitby store in late May and, in October 2026, “James of Dartmouth” in South Devon, which the company placed within its James Villas brands. Awaze says it employs more than 280 people in Lowestoft, the Suffolk town where its registered office sits.

How holiday rental brands present themselves.

Holiday rental companies fall into two broad groups: marketplaces, which list homes run by others, and managers, which run the homes themselves. Vacasa, which English Wikipedia describes as a vacation rental management company, and Sonder, which leased and operated its own apartments, belong to the second group. A manager answers to owners or landlords as well as to guests, and Vacasa built a separate app for the owners whose homes it looked after, according to the same source.

Search and listing pages carry much of this work. In 2019 Vacasa began showing its rental homes directly in Google search results, English Wikipedia says, and in July 2026, ShortTermRentalz reported, TravelAI relaunched Sonder.com as a booking site whose listings would be selected for design, location and quality. In a 2020 profile, Surface magazine illustrated Sonder with photographs of its interiors in Philadelphia, Savannah and Montreal, and quoted its founder on celebrating “architecture and the arts.”

Naming follows ownership. When Marriott International signed its licensing agreement with Sonder in August 2024, the portfolio was to join its system as a collection called “Sonder by Marriott Bonvoy.” In 2026 the operator Prism opened former Sonder buildings in the United States under its Belvilla brand, as Belvilla District 6, and Casago’s franchisees trade under place names such as Casago San Diego and Casago Belize, ShortTermRentalz reported.

Apps sit at the centre of the guest’s stay. Surface described Sonder guests receiving an access code and concierge services through an app in place of a front desk. This guide sets out each company’s founding, owners, listings and sales as dated facts, and marks clearly what rests only on a company’s own word.

Owners, apps and high-street stores.

Ownership has stayed with Platinum Equity since the 2018 purchase in the sources used here. Short Term Rentalz reported in September 2022, citing Sky News, that the owner had appointed banks to review a possible sale or listing; in January 2025 the same publication reported that no deal had been finalised. In that January 2025 report it also said Kjellberg, chief executive since 2018, was leaving at the end of the month, with chief financial officer Matthew Price leading the business in the meantime. Awaze’s 2026 releases name Price as chief executive.

The group’s recent work is digital as much as physical. Awaze said in its results release that it launched new apps in May 2025, and in February 2026 it announced an app inside ChatGPT, launched first with cottages.com, that lets travellers describe the break they want in plain language and see live availability before booking on the brand’s own site. The company said it had launched eight consumer apps for iOS and Android. In September 2026 it announced a partnership with Jet2Villas that puts 1,000 Novasol villas with pools in Croatia, France, Italy, Spain and the Balearic Islands on jet2villas.com.

For a design guide, Awaze shows how a parent brand can stay mostly out of sight: a corporate name for owners, investors and staff, and a set of consumer brands that keep their own names and audiences. Compare it with Novasol, one of its own brands, and with Interhome, another European holiday-home group. For this guide we use a deep pine green, a warm sand and a soft coastal blue with a rounded geometric sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Awaze’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.