Happy Holidays to everyone and we hope this holiday season treated you well. Sadly with the ringing in of this New Year, my first post-holiday blog comes with some bad news. Another market is being targeted by vacation rental scams, Lake Placid and the Olympic village has reported dozens of rental scams this holiday season.
These scams are a little different in nature than some of the past scams we have reported. Usually, scammers linger on unverifiable sites like craigslist.com and other anonymous classifieds sites. In Lake Placid, most of the current rings of scams are coming through more reputable sites, even referencing VRBO.com. We hate to see such malicious use of the people looking to become part of our industry but this serves as another reminder of the perils that exist for our clients.
One specific trend discussed in the original article was price changing. A guest booked a vacation rental home, only to have the owner try to change the price and increase the payment required. I have not seen this type of scam before, hooking a guest and then trying to drive the price up certainly raises some hairs. In the end, we are happy to see that there is a friendly, professionally managed company in the area that is helping these families find suitable vacation homes. It is another testament to the security provided by a professional managed vacation rental company.
We have found that there are some simple ways to separate yourself from RBO listings on these sites so please read that article here. As these scams come up, it’s always smart to make sure your vacation rental software has the ability to offer pricing options for those coming in for the holidays.
