Last updated: September 2026.
If you’re wondering whether Simpson Travel is worth the premium, we spent a week at Mousses Villas in Lefkada with our 18-month-old son to find out. This Simpson Travel review is based on our first-hand experience: what impressed us, where we think the extra cost goes, how the Simpson Kids programme works, and whether we’d book with them again. Spoiler: like many of the families we met who visit each year, we already have booked to return!
Quick verdict
- Would we book again? Absolutely!
- Best for: while Mousses is best for families with babies, toddlers and kids under 11 wanting proper childcare and concierge support, the broader villas offer a premium wraparound service but without the childcare
- Overall rating: 9/10
Full disclosure, we first travelled with Simpson Travel on a press trip but booked to return to the same property with no discount or agreement to promote them again. I hope this reinforces the exceptional attention to detail and experience we had with them!
Want the full experience of staying with Simpson?
Read our Mousses Villas review for what a week there is really like.
In this review:
Quick verdict Simpson Kids Is it reputable? Loyalty club Who this suits
Who are Simpson Travel?
Simpson Travel is a family-run UK tour operator with well over a decade of experience selling villas and boutique hotels across Europe. It’s still run along family lines: founder Graham Simpson led the company for decades before stepping back, with his daughter Hannah and her husband Kirk now involved in the business.
Unlike many larger tour operators, Simpson focuses on a relatively small collection of hand-picked villas and boutique hotels, rather than hundreds of resorts. Their portfolio spans Tuscany, Sicily, Puglia and more destinations in Italy, Provence and Ile de Ré amongst other parts of France, Mallorca, Corsica, Turkey and the Algarve in Portugal, with particularly strong family collections in the Greek islands, which is where we tried them ourselves, staying at Mousses Villas. They also have a small collection of villas on the Greek mainland, around Stoupa in the Peloponnese, which we haven’t stayed at ourselves but have covered as part of our own Peloponnese itinerary with kids.
Simpson Kids: childcare, kids clubs and family facilities
Family holidays sit at the centre of what Simpson Travel does, under the “Simpson Kids” collection. It’s not a single one-size-fits-all product: what’s on offer depends on the specific villa or hotel, so it’s worth checking exactly what childcare and extras a property offers rather than assuming it’s identical everywhere. Broadly, though, the programme covers:
- Family villas with complimentary infant packs (cots, highchairs, sterilisers, stairgates and the like), garden toys and games
- Staffed creches and kids clubs at a handful of family-focused properties, including Mousses, GK Beach Hotel in Crete and Bella Mare Hotel in Corfu, typically split by age: Hatchlings for babies and toddlers from around 6 months to 3 years, Turtles or Dolphins for young children, and in some places a teen club (Tribe, 11+) with its own programme of activities
- Private nanny and babysitting services, bookable by the hour or for full and half days, generally available for children from 6 months up, capped at a maximum ratio of 3 children to 1 nanny
- All Simpson nannies are English-speaking, DBS-checked and required to hold a UK childcare qualification to CACHE Level 3 standard or equivalent, with a minimum of two years’ experience
We used the kids club and babysitting at Mousses ourselves with our 18-month-old, and we’ve covered the first drop-off nerves and everything else in detail in our full Mousses Villas review.
What’s included when you book with Simpson Travel?
A few of the details that seem to run through the wider Simpson Travel offer, not just the family villas:
- A welcome pack waiting at your villa on arrival
- A hold bag included when you fly with them
- Car hire or a transfer included with most holidays, with zero-excess insurance on it as standard
- An app holding all your travel information in one place
- Local Concierge Teams and Destination Specialists on the ground, who Simpson say visit every property themselves before it’s added to their portfolio
Can you book a Simpson Travel villa with flights and car hire?
Yes. One of the things that makes Simpson different from simply booking a villa yourself is that you can book the accommodation as part of a package with flights and, on many holidays, car hire or transfers included too. You can also book accommodation only if you’d rather arrange your own travel, which is what we did for Lefkada.
For families, I think the appeal is less about getting the cheapest possible combination and more about having fewer moving parts to organise yourself, particularly when you add the local concierge support and baby equipment available at many of the family properties.
Is Simpson Travel reputable?
Simpson Travel’s flight-inclusive package holidays are ATOL protected, and accommodation-only bookings are covered by their bond with the Association of Bonded Travel Organisers Trust (ABTOT); they’re also members of ABTA. In January 2025, they became the first villa operator to sign the Safer Tourism Foundation pledge, which sets standards for traveller risk management, health and safety. They’ve picked up a run of travel industry awards over the past few years, including recognition from Condé Nast Traveller and the Telegraph Travel Awards. Simpson Travel’s Trustpilot reviews are excellent too, and alongside our own experience, it’s worth reading them yourself to get a broader picture across different destinations.
Our experience staying with Simpson Travel at Mousses
At Mousses, our concierge / resort manager Wendy met us at the airport, even though we hadn’t booked flights or a hire car through Simpson, and had icy cold water waiting for us to help with the midday heat. Our villa wasn’t quite ready when we arrived, so we got settled for lunch at the on-site taverna while it was finished. Throughout the week, Wendy gave us restaurant recommendations and personally booked every dinner out we had, securing good tables each time.
That level of hand-holding is really the heart of what you’re paying for with Simpson Travel: not just a villa, but someone local sorting the details you’d otherwise have to work out yourself on a family holiday abroad. Although we can only speak from our experience at Mousses, the wider Simpson Kids programme appears to follow the same concierge-led approach across its other family properties. We’ve written up the full day-to-day detail, including the kids club, food and villa itself, in our Mousses Villas review.
Is Simpson Travel worth the money?
Simpson isn’t the cheapest way to book a Villa holiday in Europe, and at Mousses you’re paying for the childcare infrastructure and concierge service as much as the accommodation itself.
For us, the biggest value wasn’t the villa itself, it was the fact that we got a real break. Our trip to Lefkada was an amazing family holiday with R, but also offered a precious few hours each day to relax in the afternoon – all while he was having a lot of fun at the kids club. I hadn’t really appreciated just how much good it would do for us to have some free time to fill our own cup up (even if R was just around the corner), and now feel I will be preaching Mousses to all of our friends!
Beyond the crèche, Wendy removed dozens of small decisions – there was no need to decide whether to get a babysitter and spend time researching if anyone would feel good enough to look after our little one, or wondering which restaurants would welcome toddlers, or trying to source baby equipment locally.
Compared with booking independently or through larger villa operators, Simpson feels much more hands-on and I’m here for it despite always tending to prefer a self-catering villa than a hotel experience. Simpson offer the best of both worlds and while a bit of a premium price, the kids club pricing at Mousses (free outside school holidays, €250 per child within them) is reasonable for what you get: a properly staffed, small-scale, dedicated setup, with experienced nannies. You can’t put a price on the trust you feel at Mousses.
Pros and cons of Simpson Travel
Pros
- Excellent concierge service
- Proper childcare from six months at select properties with experience Nannies you actually trust
- Villas well equipped for babies and toddlers
- Smaller, more personal feel than large tour operators
- ATOL and ABTOT protected
- Genuinely strong late availability discounts, some of the best we’ve seen
Cons
- Premium pricing at some villas compared with self-booking
- Kids clubs and creches only available at selected properties, not the whole portfolio
- Some childcare incurs additional charges during school holidays
- Most (maybe even all) villas only available for 7 or 14 days – I didn’t check every single one
The Simpson Travel Loyalty Club
Because we’ve genuinely booked to go back, it’s worth mentioning what returning guests get too. The Simpson Travel Loyalty Club rewards regulars with tiered benefits: travel treats and extras (from airport parking to an in-villa massage), up to 20% off the accommodation on a second holiday booked in the same departure year (on selected properties), and early access to new destinations and properties, including invitations to “test drive” new hotels.
Who this suits
Simpson Travel makes the most sense if:
- You want proper, structured childcare on holiday rather than assembling your own patchwork of babysitters or avoiding any child-free time
- You’re travelling with a baby or toddler and don’t want to pack (or buy) half a nursery to bring with you
- You value having someone local to book restaurants and sort logistics, rather than doing it all yourself
- You’re drawn to the space of villa holidays, but want the option of a hotel-style concierge layered on top
It’s probably not the right fit if you’d rather have full independence and no structure at all, or if you’re on a tight budget and happy to self-cater and self-entertain without any of the extras.
If you’re still choosing a destination, our guides to the best Greek islands for families, Mallorca, Tuscany and the Algarve cover some of the other regions Simpson offers, and our roundup of the best European resorts with kids clubs compares some of our other favourite family-friendly stays. For the full picture of the island itself, our Lefkada with kids guide covers beaches, restaurants and a 7-day itinerary, and our Mousses Villas review covers the accommodation itself in full. If you’re ready to look at dates, check Simpson Travel’s current late availability, since that’s where we’ve found their best prices.
As ever, always happy to answer any questions about our stay directly on Instagram!
Allie, Jack & R x
It sits at the premium end compared with self-booking a villa directly, but the price includes concierge support, infant equipment and, at select properties, staffed childcare, which would otherwise cost extra to arrange yourself.
Yes, their flight-inclusive package holidays are ATOL protected. Accommodation-only bookings are covered separately through their ABTOT bond, and they’re also ABTA members.
You can book flight-inclusive packages or accommodation only, depending on the property and what suits you.
Yes, based on our experience. Family villas come with complimentary infant packs, and select properties, including Mousses, take babies into a dedicated creche from around 6 months.
Mousses in Lefkada and Bella Mare Hotel in Corfu are among the properties with staffed kids clubs. Availability varies by property, so check before booking if this matters to you.
Yes. Nannies are required to hold a UK childcare qualification to CACHE Level 3 standard or equivalent, are DBS-checked, and have a minimum of two years’ experience.
Booking independently can be cheaper, but you’d need to source your own baby equipment, babysitters and restaurant recommendations. Simpson’s concierge and Simpson Kids programme bundle all of that in, which is where most of the premium goes.
Based on our week at Mousses, yes. The concierge service, childcare and villa standard justified the premium for us, though it depends on how much you value that extra support versus booking independently.
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