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Suppose you did a great job in creating a dream vacation home and in its photography, marketing, promotion. Now you are ready to sell and take the market by storm. How do you know your property will be kept intact or in perfect shape, just like the guest found it?
The first option is to collect insurance for incidentals. You can request cash on arrival, keep a credit card number to charge in advance or keep a credit line in there. Cash however can be a problem because this means that the guests many times need to travel with significant or very large amounts of cash in foreign places that they do not know at all and visit for the first time. This is especially true for luxury and expensive properties. Safety is certainly a concern, let alone though the problem that arises at the airports.
If the traveller is caught with large sums of money at the airport of departure or arrival, his money can or will be confiscated until proof of their legitimacy can be provided. The result is that the traveller will travel without his cash funds, he will not be able to pay the owner the security charge -or even part of the rental- and his booking is at risk, many times in the high season when and where alternatives are scarce.
The other problem of the cash on arrival option is that especially a luxury traveller can find it uncomfortable or not chic to carry a hoard of cash with him.
A bank transfer can be advised as a sensible option at that point. However why would the traveller trust with his money someone he has not even met yet? And on a property he does not actually know it exists? Several examples of properties advertised on established channels, photographs and text description, that do not actually exist, have occurred. The photographs are drawn by image banks or they are actual houses that are not for rent by the fraudsters who advertise that they rent them. The guest pays them, never sees them, the property is not available, the real owners are implicated, and the guests end up with no accommodation and leaving their destination, financially and experientially damaged.
What is the solution? Let us see the example of the pioneering Villa Galaxy Mykonos, the first Concierge villa rental in Greece under license by the GNTO. The Galaxy Mykonos collected a blank credit card slip on arrival signed by the guest as part of the check in process. An authorisation form to charge the guest is signed along with it. If any incidentals occurred, the property filled in the amount of the damages and without occupying the guest any further, since time is precious. Hence the property stayed assured and the guests did not need to pay upfront a single dime, either cash or credit card. The risk is mitigated and diversified this way, the guest and the property do not face any trust issues or discomfort.
A happy process:)
As a property owner, keep in mind perhaps not the purchase cost of the items but the replacement cost. The replacement of damaged articles can cost more -or less perhaps- that the initial cost of purchase. As a guest, you can always offer that you replace the damaged object so as to avoid the replacement cost.
You also need to pay attention to the difference between "damage due to a guest's action" and the "damage usually caused by the normal wear and tear". You need to be specific, as much as possible, on your rental contract.
Pay attention to the coverage of your insurance policy, which many times does not cover you for letting your place for short term rentals. You need a specific contract for that with the insurance company and (or) the guest, if you can find one, since in certain markets, such insurance contracts are not available. Rarely do they cover the content of the house.
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