A 90-minute conversation on the 14th of April 2026 in Le Collectionist's 11th-arrondissement Paris office with Max Aniort, cofounder and CEO. Founded in 2013 with Olivier Cahane and Elio Cohen-Skalli, the company now markets approximately 2,500 villas and chalets across Europe, the Caribbean, and the wider Mediterranean. We covered the acquisition of The Greek Villas, the opening of the company's first US office in St Barts, the broker-aligned model the founders chose over a pure aggregator play, and the three things he says he would change about the build if he were starting again in 2026.
By The Villas For Kings desk
Le Collectionist sits in a category of one. The European luxury villa rental space has consolidated around three working models: the legacy concierge agencies (The Thinking Traveller, Le Mas Sans Souci), the resort-aligned villa books (Eden Rock Villa Rental for the Oetker Collection, the Aman residence pool), and the aggregator platforms (Onefinestay, Plum Guide, Airbnb Luxe, Vrbo). Le Collectionist built a fourth model: a relationship-led brokerage at platform scale, with a 2,500-property inspected book and a venture-funded growth pace.
The conversation that follows is edited for length. We have lightly grouped his answers under the topics we wanted to test rather than the order they arrived in. The company verified the factual claims (founding year, founding team, the Greek Villas acquisition, the St Barts office opening) before publication. The opinions are his.
The piece links inline to our existing review of Le Collectionist and to our wider platform comparison hub.
VFK: The category had two settled models in 2013: the concierge agency and the aggregator. You chose neither. Why?
"We thought the concierge model did not scale and the aggregator model did not vet. Both were correct premises and both built real businesses. The opportunity we saw was a third route. We would do the in-person property inspection of a concierge agency and the digital booking surface of an aggregator. The bet was that a renter spending €40,000 to €80,000 a week wanted both, and was not willing to choose."
VFK: That implies a cost structure closer to a concierge than to a platform. How does that work at 2,500 properties?
"We hire local. Every market we enter has a relationship manager who lives in the market and visits every property in the book at least twice a year. We have approximately 70 of these managers in the field. The cost is real. The cost is also the reason an owner agrees to put a property in our book rather than on a marketplace. The owner is buying the same thing the renter is buying: a human who has been to the house."
VFK: What does the average property look like in your book?
"On the median, six bedrooms, sleeps 12, weekly peak rate in the band of €28,000 to €52,000, on-site staff of three to five. The distribution is wider than the median suggests. We have entry-tier properties in the €8,000 to €14,000 band that we keep because they introduce a relationship, and we have trophy properties above €200,000 a week that we keep because they define the top of the book. The middle is where most of the volume sits."
VFK: The acquisition of The Greek Villas. What did you buy?
"Three things. Inventory across Mykonos, Paros, Antiparos, and Santorini that we did not have in our own book at the same depth. A team that had been in the Greek market for a decade and held the owner relationships we would have needed two or three seasons to build. And a credibility line in a market where the broker community is small and the door is hard to open as an outsider."
VFK: How long did the integration take?
"Faster than the typical acquisition because we kept the local team intact. The slower part was the technology integration. We migrated the inventory onto our booking surface, we standardised the property brief, and we aligned the inspection protocol. That work took approximately nine months across the back office. The front-end customer experience was migrated in a single season."
VFK: Is the Greek book working?
"Yes, with a caveat. The Mykonos rate band has been compressing at the top. The August week on a trophy Mykonos villa is harder to sell at 2024 prices in 2026 than it was at 2022 prices in 2024. The market is digesting two seasons of new inventory and a weaker secondary aggregator pool. Paros and Antiparos have been stronger than we modelled. The team we acquired had the local knowledge to redirect inventory there. The book has performed."
Our coverage of the same market shift can be read in the Mykonos 2026 summer rate report and the Paros vs Antiparos 2026 analysis. The platform's read of the market matches our own field reporting.
VFK: The first US office is St Barts, not New York or Miami. Why?
"Because the work we do in the Americas is in St Barts. The Caribbean book accounts for a meaningful share of our US bookings and the bookings cluster around four windows: New Year, Presidents' Day, Easter, and Thanksgiving. The work is physical: walking properties, meeting staff, building owner relationships. The work does not happen in midtown Manhattan. It happens on the island."
VFK: How big is the office?
"Small to start. The team is based in Gustavia and works the book across the high season. The intent is to build to a permanent year-round presence by 2027 with a Caribbean head who reports into the Paris team and a local operations layer. The structural lesson from our European build is that the local team has to be on the ground, not remote. We are applying the same lesson in the Caribbean."
VFK: Does the office change anything for a guest booking through the website?
"In the booking flow, no. The website is the same. The Caribbean experience post-booking is faster. The handover from booking to local operations is shorter. The local team handles the inbound questions in the time zone of the guest. That is the visible change. The invisible change is that we will be tighter on the owner side: better vetting, faster contract turnaround, more discipline on the properties that come off."
VFK: Walk us through a property inspection.
"The relationship manager spends a half day at the property on first inspection. The brief covers 14 categories: build quality, staff configuration, kitchen, climate control, bedroom programme, bathrooms, pool deck and outdoor, technology, soundproofing, access, security, accessibility, neighbourhood, and the owner's responsiveness profile. Each category produces a written note. We do not photograph against the standard listing-photo template. We photograph against the brief. The renter sees a different set of images on our platform than they would see if the owner had taken the photographs."
VFK: How many properties have you turned down in the past 12 months?
"Approximately 40 percent of properties offered to us. The reasons fall in a small number of categories. Staffing that cannot be brought to standard. Build quality below the rate band the owner wants to charge. Geographic locations we are not deep in. A small number of properties we have declined because the owner has not been willing to commit to the contract terms we ask for around guest-service handover."
VFK: What is the most common reason for declining?
"Staffing. The owner wants the rate band but has not invested in the staff layer. A villa that should be on a five-staff configuration is on a three-staff configuration and the owner does not want to fund the difference. We will not list a property where the staffing falls short of the rate. The owner will list it elsewhere. We will not."
The vetting model matches what we have heard from senior brokers in Mykonos, St Barts, and The Thinking Traveller's quality audit. The discipline is consistent across the broker-aligned end of the category.
VFK: If you were starting Le Collectionist in 2026, what would you do differently?
"Three things.
"One. I would build a sharper property-grading system into the customer-facing experience earlier. The renter who pays €40,000 a week and the renter who pays €12,000 a week are looking at the same website. The €40,000 renter wants a different sort. We have built that on the back end, but the front-end experience could be more honest about the trophy band versus the editorial band. We are working on it now.
"Two. I would have entered the United States as a booking origin earlier. We were Europe-headquartered, Europe-funded, and Europe-staffed. The shift to a meaningful US-origin book happened later than it could have. The St Barts office is a correction.
"Three. I would have built the chalet business as its own brand. The chalet market on the alpine side has a different rhythm, a different inventory pool, and a different decision pattern from the villa market. We have run both books under one brand for 13 years. There is a case for separating them. We have not yet made that case to ourselves but it is on the table."
The honest answer to the third question is the kind of answer we rarely hear from a sitting CEO. The honesty is the reason we ran this Q&A. Our coverage of the chalet market through the Alpine winter 2026-2027 rate index shares the diagnosis. The category is structurally different.
When was Le Collectionist founded? Paris, 2013. Cofounders Max Aniort, Olivier Cahane, and Elio Cohen-Skalli.
How big is the book in 2026? Approximately 2,500 properties across Europe, the Caribbean, and the wider Mediterranean.
What was the most recent major acquisition? The Greek Villas, which expanded the Cycladic inventory and added a local operations team.
Where is the first US office? St Barts. Opened to support the Caribbean book and the US-origin booking share.
What is the working commission band? Not published. Broker-community conversations place it in the high teens to low twenties, with variation by market and owner relationship.
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Last updated 2026-04. We have not adjusted our editorial for the commission rate. See how-we-make-money for the full disclosure.