About Us - Essential Italy

About Essential Italy

Essential Italy was established in 2002 by a brother and sister team, Ian Styan and Helen Forbes. Sarah Sharland joined in 2003 to set up a programme in Sardinia – Essential Sardinia (now part of Essential Italy).

Sarah had worked with Ian previously at a large UK based tour operator and they knew they shared a passion to offer quality accommodation in Italy with a strong emphasis on customer service.

Initially Essential Italy offered villas in Tuscany along with Apartments in Tuscany and Villas in Umbria followed shortly afterwards. Essential Sardinia was created in 2003 and accommodation in Puglia, Amalfi followed shortly afterwards. In 2007 we decided to place all regions under the umbrella of Essential Italy to ensure easy use of our website for our clients.

Sicily is the newest region to be added to our web site and although the programme is currently limited, we are always adding new properties so do visit us again very soon.

We don’t offer on-line availability, we believe that if the property of your choice isn’t available we’ll have something else to match your requirements. Do call or email us, we really do enjoy speaking to you.

Our aim is to use years of extensive travel and tourism experience to seek out properties to suit your holiday requirements – our selection criteria is always based on whether WE would like to stay there – and we offer a wide variety of properties from small rustic Tuscan cottages to ultra chic Puglian hotels.

When we started Essential Italy we decided to create a company that was friendly, hands-on and completely professional, and we believe that we’ve achieved this without compromise.

At Essential Italy we all share a desire to treat our clients as individuals and offer a professional, friendly and fun service.

Our promise

To ensure that you enjoy visiting Italy as much as we do. This means listening to your requirements for a great holiday and then tailoring the experience to one that we hope exceeds your expectations. If we do our jobs well, you tell your friends and you come back for more year after year. What could be better?

The reality

We take your feedback very seriously – good, bad or indifferent (thankfully the majority of feedback is positive, but when certain properties don’t live up to our high expectations, we listen and drop them from our programmes).

A little bit about us

We often get to know quite a bit about you in the course of helping you to book and enjoy your holiday.

We thought we’d return the compliment and let you know a little bit about us.

Helen Forbes

Before Essential Italy, Helen enjoyed working in the fast paced environment of a student travel organisation. Helen ran a division of the company based in London where she was responsible for a large sales team, a multi-million dollar budget, and the travel plans of tens of thousands of students from all over the world. Gradually Helen came to realise that the part of the job she liked the most was not the ‘glamorous’ bit where she flew off to the States for management meetings, but the part of the job she was increasingly too busy to do: where she actually talked to clients about their travel expectations.

At Essential Italy Helen is using all the financial, practical and organisational skills she developed when working for a large organisation, as well as offering personal advice and service to our clients.

Helen has three children, her free time is spent pottering in her garden at the beginning and end of the day and enjoying her family. She discovered running in 2007 and continues to attempt distances of up to 10K with a little success. She has yet to take on the challenge of the Tuscan hills.

Louise Turner

Louise joined Essential Italy in 2003 after its first successful year. Before that Louise worked in the vibrant but demanding world of the hotel industry where she was involved in the customer care programme of a leading hotel chain. After years of sorting out the many and varied requests of hotel guests, and then a few years ‘off’ to look after the demands of her own children, Louise is now relishing the challenge of providing a first-class but friendly service to Essential Italy clients.

Louise lives in a village just outside Cambridge with her husband and two children.

Both Helen and Louise have visited all of our properties and return to Italy every year to refresh their knowledge (and of course stock up on Parmesan, olive oil and handbags).

Ian Styan

Ian trained as a PE teacher and worked for 3 years in UK before heading for Italy and teaching sport at the International School of Milan. Leaving the world of teaching behind, Ian sought work with a specialist tour operator and quickly became their manager in Central Italy. After a few years hard work (and fun), Ian realised that big business was starting to erode the ‘specialist’ nature of the company – the client was no longer priority number one, it was really about filling beds.

Ian travelled all over Italy, getting to know the country and its people, learning the language fluently and acquiring an in-depth knowledge of the rental market. When the company was bought-out by one of the largest travel companies in Europe, Ian was taken on by the new management and had a stimulating time learning about the travel industry as a whole. Eventually, however, frustration at not being able to offer clients the service he knew they had a right to expect, led him to begin dreaming of getting it right with his own company. So, spurred on by the opportunity to work with Helen and Sarah, that is exactly what he’s doing.

Ian currently lives near Arezzo and has two children. To keep his sport interests up he plays hockey for Pistoia and can often be seen toiling up climbs on his bike enjoying those wonderful views. He is also a very active member of his local tennis club, and always available for a match with guests.

Chris and Martina

Essential Italy is committed to ensuring that all clients travelling with us have access to local knowledge and assistance whenever required. In 2006 Chris and Martina joined our team, they live close to Ostuni and are on hand for all clients travelling to Puglia.

Chris and Martina are full of local knowledge and useful hints so that you can enjoy your holiday to the full.

Chris is from Lewes in Sussex, and Martina from Rome. They met in England while Martina was studying, they’ve lived in Spain and have now settled in Puglia, where they believe they have found the perfect place to live and bring up their two young daughters Felicity and Julia. They embark upon their own building project this coming year, as they set about the construction of a new home close to Ostuni.

Sarah Sharland

Sarah has lived in Sardinia for over 20 years, speaks Italian like a local, and more importantly is accepted as a local. She has a superb knowledge of the island and is extremely well-placed to offer advice to Essential Italy clients. We are convinced that there is no one on the whole island that is better qualified to find accommodation and look after our clients than Sarah. So any request for information you have – whether it’s about the best beaches to visit, the best restaurants to eat in, or the best shops to buy from – Sarah is bound to have a range of options and advice to help you. Sarah knows all of our property owners personally, and is familiar with each of our properties.

After many years of employment with ‘traditional’ tour operators and organising varying tasks from beach parties for 300 people, accompanying tours through Europe and tracking down the right villa for the right operator, Sarah was greatly disillusioned when numbers took precedence over quality and is now in her element taking care of Essential Italy guests and suppliers.

Sarah lives with her family close to Palau and has two children, Francesca and Luciano. You will probably see Sarah ferrying Francesca to dance and music lessons and you will certainly see Luciano zipping around Palau on his motorbike! She holds a private pilots licence, which she would love to revalidate one day, and in the meantime plays a mean game of tennis and loves entertaining when she has the time.

Essential Italy