A staffed house is the single largest difference between renting a villa and renting a home. Done badly, it feels like being watched. Done well, it is nearly invisible — the terrace is set before you arrive at it, the laundry returns folded, and no one has asked you a question all day. What follows is who is actually in the house, what each of them does, and what the arrangement costs.
The core team
Most substantial Riviera villas run on four to six people, not all of them present at once, and rarely all of them living in.
- House manager — the single point of contact. Coordinates the team, the deliveries, the reservations, and anything that goes wrong.
- Chef — plans menus with you, shops daily, cooks the services you have asked for. Provisioning is billed at cost.
- Housekeeper(s) — daily service of rooms, laundry, linen. One per five or six guests is the working ratio.
- Butler or service staff — table service, drinks, guests arriving for dinner. Present in larger houses only.
- Gardener & pool technician — early morning, several times a week, and you should never see them.
- Driver — usually engaged separately, by the day or the week.
What the house manager actually does
This is the role that determines whether the week works. The house manager holds the diary — who is arriving, which nights are dinners at home, when the boat leaves the port — and translates it into instructions for everyone else. They also absorb the friction: the air conditioning that fails on the hottest afternoon, the restaurant that has lost your reservation, the guest who lands three hours late.
The practical consequence for you is that you should have one conversation a day, usually over coffee, and no others. Everything for the next twenty-four hours is settled in ten minutes. Houses without a manager push those ten minutes out into a dozen small interruptions across the day, which is what makes a staffed house feel like work.
The chef, and the one conversation that matters
A chef arrives with a repertoire, not a menu. The first evening’s conversation — what you actually eat, what the children will refuse, whether lunch is a long table or a plate by the pool, which wines you drink — shapes the whole week. Be specific and be honest, including about the things you dislike; a chef told plainly is a chef who never disappoints twice.
Provisioning is billed at cost against a float, in the same way an APA works on a yacht. Expect €80 to €150 per person per day for full board on the Riviera, more if you drink seriously. Our note on hiring a private chef covers the arrangement in detail.
We place and manage house teams across the coast, in our own houses and in others.
What it costs
| Role | Basis | Per week, high season |
|---|---|---|
| House manager | Full week | €2,000 – €3,500 |
| Chef | Full week, two services daily | €2,500 – €5,000 |
| Housekeeper | Per person, daily | €1,200 – €1,800 |
| Butler / service | Full week | €1,800 – €3,000 |
| Driver with vehicle | Per day | €450 – €900 |
| Nanny, qualified | Full week | €1,500 – €2,500 |
A six-bedroom house running a full team therefore carries €9,000 to €16,000 a week in staff above the rent. In houses that rent fully staffed, that cost is already inside the weekly rate — which is why two apparently similar villas can differ by €15,000 a week and both be fairly priced. Read the inclusion list before comparing numbers, as we set out in our note on what a Riviera villa really costs.
Setting the rhythm on day one
Three decisions, made on the first morning, remove almost every subsequent friction. Say what time the house should be quiet in the morning — staff will simply work around it. Say which meals you want at home for the week, even approximately, because the chef’s shopping depends on it. And say plainly how present you want the team to be: some families want service at the table, others want the kitchen stocked and the house empty by eight in the evening. Both are normal, neither is guessed correctly by default.
Where staffing goes wrong
Almost always for one of three reasons. Under-staffing for the group — ten guests and one housekeeper produces a house that is never quite clean. Overlapping authority — instructions given to four people separately, which the house manager exists to prevent. Or a team assembled at the last minute from whoever was free in August, rather than a team that has worked in that house before.
The last is the real argument for booking a staffed house early. The best house teams on this coast are booked for the season by February, and they are, far more than the architecture, what you are actually paying for. If you would like to see what we can open, our villa team will start from the house and the people together.