When vacay rentals stink
Don’t take towels, TP for granted,
If you rented a vacation home this summer, you probably have a story like Michelle Lawson’s. She has lost count of the times she has checked into an apartment, only to find that it’s lacking something important, such as towels, soap, a working dishwasher or an Internet connection.
Her least favorite missing amenity? “No air conditioning,” she says. “It’s prevalent in European countries.”
Lawson should know. She’s one of the founders of a company called The Remote Experience, which inspects and rents apartments for customers who work remotely. She has personally rented more than 100 homes in the last year and says you can’t count on anything — in some cases, not even hot water.
Vacation rental owners know what they want. They have guest surveys and complaints — lots of complaints — about the things that are missing.
One recent Florida survey suggested that renters most desire Wi-Fi, a washer and dryer and kitchen amenities, in that order. And if you log on to one of the popular vacation rental sites, you might think the industry got that memo. But it hasn’t.
That’s because definitions can be fudged, says frequent vacation home renter James Cave, an Irish blogger who frequently writes about vacationing in Portugal.
“Take the Internet connection, for example,” he says. A rental may claim to have Internet, but sometimes it’s nothing more than an aging and sluggish connection that requires a physical hook-up. “If you have to work while you’re on vacation, it could be an issue.”
The gap between expectation and reality has created business opportunities. Companies such as Vacasa offer their guests a clean, inspected room along with the essentials such as shampoo, soap, fresh linens, towels, cleaning products, dishwasher and laundry soap.
Bob Milne, Vacasa’s chief operating officer, says you have to deliver what you promise. “It starts with providing accurate information,” he says.
But guests can also do better. I rented a cute cottage in Temecula, Calif., this spring that looked too good to be true. It was: It didn’t have any Internet connection. Thank goodness we had a fast LTE signal and could connect through our cellphones. Turns out that fact was disclosed in the listing; I should have read more carefully.
I also checked into a nice rental home just north of Olympia, Wash., this summer during a heat wave. It had no air conditioning. This, too, had been disclosed in the listing. I glossed over it, assuming every rental would have A/C.
Even if you’ve done your due diligence, there’s always a chance that the unit won’t be stocked with enough soap, paper towels, or, heaven forbid, toilet paper. I’ve stayed in some amazing vacation rentals that didn’t have enough toilet paper.
There’s a reason for this, says Brian Davis, a real estate investor who co-founded the rental website Sparkrental.com. Vacation rental owners are not hoteliers and often don’t know how to keep their homes stocked with enough basic supplies.
“Vacation rental managers should always have at least twice as much of each item on hand as they’ll actually need for any given tenancy,” he says.
Rental owners and managers know that it only takes one unhappy guest to blow their fivestar rating, so they try. But unlike hotels, they lack the sophisticated inventory management tools some hotels have, not to mention the professional housekeepers. They just have to remember.
For guests, it’s just another reminder that vacation rentals, no matter how hard their owners try, are still not hotels.
Christopher Elliott is a consumer advocate and editor at large for National Geographic Traveler. Contact him at chris@elliott.org or visit elliott.org.