This site started off as a good place to advertise your holiday home but because it has grown so large customers who advertise are often treated as though the advertising company are doing them a favour even though the company charges quite considerable yearly rates for the advertisements.

Travellers who wish to post malicious reviews about holiday homeowners or their homes are able to do so easily and therefore can hold the home owner to ransom or destroy their holiday home rental at a whim. Owners have no say as to which reviews can be posted whilst reviewers are allowed complete anonymity.

Every holiday homeowner knows that sooner or later they will rent to a family or persons whose sole purpose is spend their holiday looking for things to complain about. Often, the complaints are made in an effort to get a massive reduction on the price of their holiday or to get their holiday money refunded. On this site, even where a review has been rejected on the grounds that it is malicious, the reviewer can then post another review so long as they are able to word their comments around the guidelines and prevent it from looking as obviously malicious. The only redress the holiday homeowner has is to post a response but really, by then the damage has often already been done and responding to a malicious review online is not the kind of thing that the average holiday homeowner wants to spend their time doing.

As the majority of the reviews are not monitored unless they are flagged up renting your holiday home can become a stressful experience on this site. Even if ten of your reviews are positive one malicious review one can potentially destroy your business.

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G B. I have a slightly different review issue with HolidayRentals.co.uk (now HomeAway.com). In order to submit a review, renters are being forced to either do so through Facebook, or to set up an account with HomeAway. Many of my renters do not wish to do either, so I have lost out on reviews. The formers system worked quite well, whereby the renter submitted a review on line directly to HomeAway. To my way of thinking, HomeAway are using the Facebook or the setting up of an account requirements to solicit my renters. HomeAway strongly encourage their advertisers to solicit reviews, which I do. However, I am being penalized because my renters do not want their privacy invaded by having to set up a Facebook or HomeAway account. I would happily drop HomeAway after 8 years of advertising with them, but it seems that many of the other online rental sites are owned by HomeAway.

3 minutes ago  •  Votes (0)