How to Choose a Villa with a Pool

1. First, find out which kind of pool it is

Sixty-five of the hundred properties carry a pool tag. That number usually gets used as a single sentence: it has a pool. Read the detail tags and the pool splits into types - 35 landscape pools, 29 infinity pools, 2 rooftop pools, 10 children pools (one property can carry several), and 7 that say only "pool" with no type at all.

The four types do four different jobs. Landscape and infinity pools are for looking at: irregular shapes, built around the view. A children pool is for getting in: shallow, with a visible bottom. A rooftop pool is for photographs: windy, and the water cools fast. So the first question is not whether there is a pool. It is which one.

2. Depth and heating: no record exists anywhere on the site

The harder problem is that none of the 65 can answer whether you can actually swim. Across all hundred properties the facility tags contain zero records for heated water, zero for water depth, zero for a lifeguard. Even sun loungers appear once, and a pool ramp once. This is not one host being incomplete - it is the vocabulary of the category: hosts upload what exists, not what its specifications are.

So the pool has to be resolved by phone, and the question has to be answerable. "How long is the longest side, how deep is the deep end, where do you get in" beats "is the pool big" by an order of magnitude. Heating works the same way: ask what the water temperature is in mid-November and whether there is a heater. If the answer is vague, there is no heater.

3. Landscape pools and infinity pools: looking and swimming are different things

These two types account for most of the supply and share one design logic: the pool is built around the view. Irregular shape, water that often reaches only to an adult standing waist or knee. In practice these pools run 30 to 50 centimetres deep - excellent for photographs, useless for swimming.

Whether that matters depends on what you want from it. If the goal is somewhere to sit in the afternoon, water for the children and a good photograph for someone, a landscape pool is enough. If anyone in the group genuinely wants to swim lengths, you need a proper pool, and among the 65 that is a minority. Fix the test: a pool you can swim in needs a straight side of at least 15 metres and water deeper than 1.2 metres. Twenty-five metres is a lane. Both numbers come out of one phone call.

4. Only 10 properties have a children pool, and all 10 also carry child facilities

This is the row that family groups should read first. Among the 65, only 10 list a children pool - 15 percent. The more interesting detail: all 10 also carry the child entertainment tag, which suggests a children pool is never a standalone basin. It comes as part of a child-oriented fit-out, usually alongside toys, a children menu and small slippers.

Read the opposite column too: 8 properties state adults only, and one of those also has a children pool, zoned separately. Travelling with children, either rule those 8 out or confirm which stretch of water the children may use.

• "Is there a separate children pool? How deep? Is it a different body of water from the adult pool?" Only 10 can say yes.
• "Is there shade at the pool, or is it in full sun all day?" Twenty-six of the 65 list umbrellas.
• "Are there floats and rings, or do we bring everything?" Thirty-nine list pool toys.
• "What hours is the pool open, and is it lit at night?" This decides whether it fits before dinner.

5. The gap is around the water, not in it

Pull the poolside fittings out on their own and the spread is wider than the pools themselves: 26 with umbrellas, 39 with pool toys, 15 with a sun terrace, 8 with a pool lounge or changing room, 7 with a poolside bar. Twenty-two have neither toys nor shade - roughly a third of the pool supply is a body of water with no umbrella, no toys and nowhere recorded to sit.

One detail worth remembering: 39 properties list pool toys, and 6 of them carry no pool type tag at all. Tags contradict each other, so toys are weak evidence of a pool, not proof. Filter on the pool type and the phone answer, not on a row of icons.

6. What a pool really solves is the four hours after 14:00

Ninety-nine properties hand over the room at 14:00 or later (81 state it plainly), and 98 want you out by noon - one night is 22 usable hours, cut into two blocks. In a whole-house booking the hardest slot to fill is three o clock to dinner: too late to reach an attraction and get back, too early for anyone to have settled in.

A pool works in exactly that slot and nowhere else. It needs no facilitation, no props, no assembly. Five of twenty people get in, the rest sit at the edge, and the group is together without being organised. This is where it beats the games room (71 properties) and karaoke (56): those split twenty people into rooms, a pool keeps them in one field of view where you can see what everyone is doing. For groups with children it is the only place where five or six of them can be watched at once.

7. October to April the pool is worth zero; hot springs are the substitute

Not one property declares heating, which means the usable window is set by air temperature. Moganshan is mountain terrain: nights turn cold from late September, and an open-air pool loses heat faster than the air does. From mid-October to mid-April it is a surface you cannot use, still priced into the rate.

The metric to swap in for that season is hot spring. Twenty-four properties have one, and 21 of them also have a pool - only those 21 have water all year; the other 3 have the spring alone. Below that sit 15 properties and 32 private-bath room types. Small in scale, but they solve a different problem: after quiet hours begin, a bath inside the room still works while the poolside does not.

8. Six questions, then decide whether to pay the premium

A house with a pool usually costs more. Whether the premium is worth it depends on three things: which month, how many people, how many nights. Coming between October and April, staying one night, arriving at 15:00 - match two of those three and the pool is worth nothing to you. One more constraint is easy to miss: only 7 of the 12 properties that sleep 40 or more have a pool, so a large group wanting one loses 40 percent of its options immediately.

Reverse the conditions and it earns the money: June to September, around twenty people, two nights. Then the pool is the only facility in the house that keeps the whole group outdoors for three hours. The rest of the decision sits in one phone call.

• "Is it a landscape pool or a swimming pool? Longest side, deepest point?" No depth data exists, so this is the only source.
• "Is it heated? What is the water temperature in November?" Zero heating records across the site; the answer is usually no.
• "Is there a separate children pool, and is it apart from the adult pool?" Ten have one; 8 state adults only.
• "Is there shade and somewhere to sit at the pool?" Twenty-six have umbrellas; 22 have neither umbrella nor toys.
• "What hours does the pool open and close, and is it lit?" Where quiet hours start at 21:00 or 22:00, an evening pool session is not possible.
• "How often is the water changed, and is there a filtration loop?" Nobody volunteers this, and it is the single question that reveals maintenance standards.