Some tips for your next rentals

Facts

For some time now, the OTAs (Online Tourism Agency) such as Airbnb, Abitel, Booking, to name a few, have seized power in the holiday rental market. Supported by governments, which see them as a way to significantly reduce undeclared transactions, these sites take advantage of the economic situation by increasing their commissions each year very aggressively. As a result, they contribute significantly to price increases in this sector.

Consequences

Each of these OTAs surfs on this wave by arguing virulently this very lucrative market. They take advantage of their strong position to impose less and less acceptable conditions on property owners and managers :

• The 'Instant Book'. No more communication with tenants before a reservation. The owners no longer control their property or their calendar.
• Percentage commissions on rentals that systematically increase. Lack of laws and organizations to supervise the practices of these companies.
• Payment of the rental amount to the owners more and more late. The money works for their profit during this time.
• Percentage charges on all bank movements. Besides being slow, their bank transfers are very expensive.
• Some even charge an annual fee in addition to all of this ...

Solutions

Each advert on their sites is certified and therefore not the subject of a scam, as there have already been many in this sector. This is certainly their best selling point but above all a boon for you ! Thanks to the information that you can collect on the advert of the property that interests you (name of the locality or district, name of the house or property, keywords appearing on the ad...), you will be able to find the owner's contact details, using your favorite search engine, via a personal website like this one, a free ad site or even directly in your search engine. Thus, you can make a direct booking without intermediaries therefore without fees ! To date, these fees represent more than 13% of the rental price at Abritel and 17.5% at Airbnb.

If, however, you cannot find the owner's contact details, contact him (or her) via OTAs messaging and offer him (or her) a direct booking. Very few will refuse it ! But do not give your emails, phone numbers or internet addresses directly, since on these messages, automatic filters detect them and replace them with characters like this :

• **********@*****
• xxxx-xxxx-xxxx

However, there are loopholes in their filters, so a written phone number with misspellings or in phonetics passes through (zerro siks, siixtteenn, ninnettee siks, forrttee tree, twenttee too ... ). For an email, let's take the following example: toto.titi@gmail.com. Write it like this: toto dotth titi hosted by gmail dotth commm (spaces and misspellings included). Use cunning and ingenuity to bypass these filters ...

Thank you for taking the time to read these few lines !

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