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Save Money On Your Villa Holiday | Alicante Holiday Villas

For many years owners of holiday properties around the world were happy to advertise their properties on websites such as Owners Direct, HomeAway and Holiday Lettings and guests were happy to deal directly with the owner, or agent, to book their holiday direct with the owner or agent and also pay directly. The price that was advertised was the price that was paid. However recently all that has changed.

This recent article from the Daily Mail illustrates the overcharging problem with these sites. Here Alicante Holiday Villas explains why booking DIRECT with them will save you hundreds of pounds for the SAME property.

Owners Direct Charging Holidaymakers Hidden Fees

Owners Direct and HomeAway are now part of Expedia and Holiday Lettings are part of TripAdvisor, massive travel business with millions of dollars to invest in their pursuit of appeasing their shareholders. On the surface that all seems fine, so how does it affect people like you who like to book a privately owned villa or apartment for your all important holiday? The biggest change is that Owners Direct, HomeAway and Holiday Lettings have changed their businesses to become ‘middle men’ so that instead of paying the owner you pay the middle man and then the middle man pays the owner after you have arrived at your holiday property. Seems reasonable? Maybe, but Holiday Lettings have just added 13.5% and HomeAway/Owners Direct between 4 and 8% plus VAT to the price that the owner advertises at. You are paying more for the exact same holiday than if you booked direct with the owner or agent.

The three listings sites will argue that you are better protected by paying through them with your credit card. However you are paying a third party and as such you have just negated your rights under Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act because your booking contract is with the owner or agent and not with the listing site. You are simply paying more for your holiday so that Expedia and TripAdvisor can line the pockets of their shareholders. Also, the listing sites block direct access to the owner or agent until the last possible moment, you can only communicate via their dashboards and conversations between owner/agent and prospective guests are monitored.

How To Avoid Being Overcharged?

So, how do you avoid paying these so called ‘traveller fees’? Simple, use Owners Direct, HomeAway and Holiday Lettings to research the holiday property you want to book. Once you have found it, or have a shortlist, use the advert to look for clues about the property and then turn to Google. Many savvy owners and agents will use the same property names on their adverts and also their own website. Check the location of your favoured holiday property and use that in your search. Also many owners will use the same descriptions in all their adverts and simply Googling a few sentences from one advert will help you find the same property listed elsewhere or the owner/agents own website and more likely at a cheaper price.

Book Your Villa Holiday Direct With Alicante Holiday Villas

Mark Smith, Director at specialist listing site www.alicanteholidayvillas.com says “For years we have all used the big listing sites to advertise our properties and we all did very well from it. The arrival of AirBnB changed the landscape so Expedia and TripAdvisor saw an opportunity to increase their profits by adding high service fees to the price the guest paid without actually doing any extra work for it, the owner or agent still handles the booking from start to finish. We continue to use these major sites but we have noticed a marked decrease in enquiries from them but a sharp increase in direct enquiries. Our guests say they found one of our adverts on HomeAway or TripAdvisor and quickly found us using Google to deal direct with us to save money.”

We hope you enjoyed the article! Remember you can search for your perfect property in Alicante by using our alicante villa search on our home page. Please don't hesitate to contact us directly for help and advice.

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