Initiative: VILLA DIHOVO
City: Dihovo
Country: Macedonia
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Villa Dihovo is a place where you can come and rest, surrounded by nature, silence, calmness. And decide yourself how much you want to pay for it.
You can stay here, we provide accommodation, food, homemade alcohol – says Pece Cvetkovski, manager. And in fact alcohol is the only thing which has a stable price. For the rest you decide.
Pece set Villa Dihovo this way after travelling a lot and considering what he liked in the places he stayed in, and what he didn’t.
Few years ago, I finished my football career and started to take care of this house. We have rooms here, water, sun, nature, good food.
Why not to develop it, open for others? As ex-football player I spent a lot of time in hotels, restaurants. Many times I was not really satisfied from the service, but I had to pay anyway. Why? I decided to try another way. Take a risk.
At the beginning the neighbors thought him crazy, people will not come and if they come, they won’t pay. But Villa Dihovo has been existing for 10 years and it seems to develop quite well.
At the beginning we accepted visitors just to come, see and then tell others. With time we started to have customers who came with money. Not a lot, but enough to sustain. People who have money need a peaceful place to rest. All previous ambassadors in Macedonia stayed here, American, German, French … a lot of famous people from all over the world came along. We collaborate with travel agencies from Australia, tourists stop here, enjoy hiking around, resting in the garden, testing local wine. Now we are starting with cooking tours from England, USA, they are interested in our cuisine.
Food is also something really special here.
We are part of slow food. We buy from local producers, I know their food is clean. We try to support the local community this way as well as promote local, fair, healthy food. Tourists can also go around, pick fruits themselves, touch bees and other animals. Take their time to discover and rest.
Rest and relax seems to be the main idea behind this place.
Our aim is to have the visitor satisfied. As we wrote in the offer on the website: Come as guest, leave as friend. There is so many a rule we are supposed to follow in life. So many musts. But why? People need to relax, especially on their holiday. I try to provide everything which is needed for that. I give people time, I usually I don’t come when people eat breakfast or pay. It’s not fair. They need to decide how much to pay, without me watching them. I would be not poor or rich from few euro.
Villa Dihovo is recommended in Lonely planet issue 2015. We have also climbed up to number 7 in Secret Europe in their 50 secret destination section and the latest recommendation in 2018 by Olive magazine.com for 5 hotspot secrets place for food in the world.
More about Villa Dihovo: villadihovo.com