about specialstays
That is the moment we work for. Not for the booking, not for the check-in. For the third time you walk to the fridge, turn on the tap as if it were your own, and think: I'd happily stay one more night here.
specialstays selects holiday homes in South Limburg and Belgian Limburg, with the Meuse as its backbone. A tight-knit core team, all of them at home in the region where we work. And no house is added without one of us having slept there ourselves for a week first.
who we are
specialstays has existed since 2019. We started with a few houses of our own and have since grown quietly to a collection of several dozen. The next one only comes into view once one of us has personally viewed it, measured it and tried it out.
A house we wouldn't book ourselves, we don't offer. It's that simple. That is the only way we can actually deliver on our promise of a house that breathes the place it stands in.
Behind the scenes we build our own software, because it's the only way to treat every house as if it were the only one. The confirmation that arrives on time, the price that fits when you're coming, the access that works without hassle: that's all work you never have to see.
what you feel from that
No fumbling with a key safe in the rain, no wifi code on a yellow sticky note, no forgotten towel.
Before a house comes under our management, someone from our team sleeps there for a week. Whatever is missing, we order before the first guest arrives: a good cooking pan, a second colander, a reading lamp above the bed that would otherwise sit too far from the switch.
Whoever answers your call is not sitting in a call centre far away.
Whoever answers your call is sitting at a desk in Maastricht or Dilsen-Stokkem, and has recently walked through the house you're staying in. We keep our team small enough to know every guest by name by the end of a stay.
No teaser rate that's suddenly sold out, no spring price for a night in October.
Behind the scenes, our software recalculates every night what a stay is fairly worth on that date, in that house, in that season. No gimmick, just good housekeeping. You pay what it is.
the regions
South Limburg and Belgian Limburg, with the Meuse as their backbone. The Netherlands on the right bank, Belgium on the left, and between them a river that has connected rather than divided them for centuries. Our office in Maastricht sits on the Oude Maasstraat, a stone's throw from the water and the city centre. Our second office is further up the Meuse Valley, in Dilsen-Stokkem on the Zandstraat, in a historic mill just across the border.
Morning mist in the valley, cows higher up the slope, and evening sun tilting late across the facades.
Our houses in the Heuvelland lie between Slenaken and Epen, in places that go quiet without being remote. People come here for the shifting light: five in the afternoon in July, half past two in November.
Evening light on the water, a cycle path stitching the Netherlands and Belgium together.
Between Maaseik and Stokkem, the Maaspad rides better than most people expect: a dike-side ribbon with villages on both sides that still have their church and their café in order. Same river in the evening, different country.
The smell of pines, a deer at dusk, and miles of paths without a soul.
The Hoge Kempen is Belgium's only national park: a plain of pines, heath and pools, and the quietest spot within an hour's drive of Eindhoven. Come outside the school holidays and you can hear the difference between the wind in the pines and the wind in the birches.
Burgundy on a terrace, coffee in a narrow inner-city street, and coming home to your own little house once the city closes.
A townhouse in Maastricht is not a hotel room with a view. It's your own front door on a street where the neighbour reads his paper on the doorstep, a kitchen to have an early breakfast before the centre wakes up, and a sofa to sink into once you're back from the Vrijthof.
the team
These are the people behind the scenes: the ones who answer your email, furnish your house, prepare your stay. Whoever picks up the phone knows the properties, not a script.
And around them: a permanent cleaning team, trusted local contractors, and the people in the houses themselves who call us when something needs restocking.
That's what it's about for us.
