Belvilla Brand Guidelines: A 1980 Dutch Holiday Home Firm, @Leisure, OYO & PRISM

Two founders and four decades of owners.

Belvilla is a Dutch holiday home company. Dutch Wikipedia dates its founding to 1980 and names the founders as Dries Veen and Dick Hakkenbroek; the company’s own website speaks of “40 years of experience”. It offers holiday homes across Europe, from private owners and professional managers, and its site groups them by country and region, from the Dutch coast and Texel to Tyrol, Tuscany and the Algarve.

Ownership changed several times. Dutch Wikipedia says the travel group Thomas Cook Nederland held 80 per cent of Belvilla from 1999 to 2005, with the insurer Europeesche Verzekeringen holding the other 20 per cent. Thomas Cook then sold it, because, the article says, Belvilla no longer fitted its focus as a full-range tour operator, and the business continued on its own as Leisure Invest Belvilla.

In 2007, according to Dutch Wikipedia, Belvilla merged with EuroRelais to form Belvilla-Euro Relais, and from that year until 2019 it was part of the @Leisure Group, which the article says was majority-owned by the German publisher Axel Springer. Shorttermrentalz also dated Belvilla’s time in the @Leisure Group from 2007 in a June 2024 report. In November 2018 the same trade site reported that the American rental network RedAwning had integrated more than 20,000 Belvilla homes in Austria, France, Spain, Italy and Portugal into its collection.

From @Leisure to OYO Vacation Homes.

In 2019 the Indian hospitality company OYO bought the Amsterdam-based @Leisure Group and with it Belvilla, launching a division called OYO Vacation Homes, Shorttermrentalz reported in May 2022; OYO’s own corporate timeline, which today appears at the About address on belvilla.com, lists “Acquired @Leisure group to enter vacation homes business across 40 countries” under 2019. For several years the brand was presented as Belvilla by OYO.

OYO used Belvilla as the home for businesses it bought. In February 2020 TravelMole reported that OYO Vacation Homes had bought the holiday home and tour operating business of TUI Wolters, and that its holiday home tour operator unit would be folded into the Belvilla brand. In May 2022 OYO bought the Dubrovnik-based rental agency Direct Booker, founded in 2010 and, by its own count, managing more than 3,200 holiday homes; its inventory was to be listed on Belvilla, Shorttermrentalz reported, and the deal strengthened a group that already had close to 1,800 homes in Croatia; the Nordic operator Bornholmske Feriehuse followed three months later. The same group runs the Danish brand DanCenter and the German site Traum-Ferienwohnungen.

Belvilla also works through local partners. In May 2021 Shorttermrentalz described an agreement with a Murcia company to bring homes on Spain’s Costa Cálida onto the platform. In June 2026 the trade site reported that the family-owned firm Holiday House Service had become Belvilla’s official Homeowner Advisor in Belgium, looking after 695 homes in the Ardennes and on the Belgian coast on the platform; the report described Belvilla as part of OYO Vacation Homes within the hospitality and travel technology group PRISM.

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.

From the Dutch coast to London and New York.

Under OYO the brand began to travel. In June 2024 OYO launched Belvilla by OYO in the United Kingdom through a partnership with the apartment operator SOJO, offering homes in London, Milton Keynes, Birmingham, Sheffield and Leeds, Shorttermrentalz reported; the same report said the brand had already entered Indonesia, and that OYO then managed more than 50,000 holiday homes in more than 20 European countries.

OYO’s parent has since taken a new name. In March 2026 Shorttermrentalz reported that PRISM, “formerly OYO”, had leased ten former Sonder properties through Sonder’s court-supervised bankruptcy process, choosing them from 79 that were available, to launch Belvilla in the United States. The report called it Belvilla’s first operational presence outside Europe. The first buildings to open were in Long Island City, New York, and in New Orleans, under an urban sub-brand, Belvilla District 6, and the leased properties spread across seven cities including Seattle, Denver and Austin. The same report gave Belvilla’s European portfolio as more than 60,000 holiday homes.

The website itself is built around places rather than owners. Its menus run country by country, with regional pages such as Zeeland, the Ardennes, the Black Forest and the Costa Brava, and the homepage presents Belvilla as a “holiday home specialist” with “40k+ homes in Europe”, figures the company gives for itself. Booking is offered online and by telephone, and owners are invited to list a property from the same page.

The name itself has changed less than the owners. Belvilla has kept its own brand through Thomas Cook, @Leisure, OYO and PRISM with “by OYO” added for a time, and in 2026 it gained an urban sub-brand, District 6.

For a design guide, Belvilla shows how a holiday home brand can carry the same name from Dutch cottages to city apartments while its owners change around it. Compare Sonder, whose former buildings opened Belvilla’s American chapter, and Novasol, another long-running European holiday home name. For this guide we use a dune green, sand gold and shell with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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