Tuesday evening. That’s more than half your holiday spent in pretty poor conditions.
These companies are also generally uncontactable on weekends meaning if you do have any problems, you are going to have to wait up to 48 hours for assistance. Villas are generally visited only once a year to check they are still in an acceptable condition for rentals… 12 months is a long time, and villas can quite easily become shabby and fixtures and fittings broken within that time. For this reason, they are also careful to limit their liability by saying that they can’t guarantee the accuracy of the description of your villa on their website. Say you are travelling with young children, and for this reason absolutely have to have air-conditioning in your villa for the sweltering heat in August. If you book a villa based on an online description stating it has air-conditioning units and, on arrival, find that these are missing or broken, wouldn’t you prefer to know that the company you have booked with will either resolve the problem swiftly or compensate you adequately rather than just pointing to their terms and conditions and saying they aren’t liable?
It can also be irritating to be quoted a weekly price for a villa, only to encounter a myriad of extra charges, ranging from linen hire to pool maintenance, final cleaning, electricity bills and even check-in fees. A good service-based company will include all of these services in the prices they quote you, rather than hiding them as “extras” not quoted in the rental price.
These companies tend to have a much wider choice of accommodation available for rental, but at the cost of personal service and intimate knowledge of their properties. Their emphasis is on getting as many rentals as