Holiday Lettings, another prominent online player, has a clause in its booking conditions which reads as follows: ” We do not own, nor have we inspected, nor do we have any control whatsoever over any property listed on our site and we make no representations or warranties regarding any of the properties”. There are tens of thousands of cases every year of consumers who have been mis-sold properties because the online descriptions bear no resemblance to reality, let alone consumers who have been cheated out of their money by fraudsters.
Compared with the likes of Booking.com, Ownersdirect, Airbnb, Expedia et al, any risk involved in booking with Sunvil is infinitesimal – because we check all our properties personally and write our own descriptions. This is the reason why we feature fewer properties than the massive web- only companies. We could never individually visit and describe hundreds of thousands of hotels, villas and apartments – no-one could do so. These huge platforms rely instead on individual owners posting descriptions and photographs – and which owner is likely to admit that his/her property is not the best, or that there is a noisy building site next door?
When considering a property featured on these sites the key is to look at the booking conditions and verify if the operator/platform is acting as +AGENT for the property. If they act as agent then you are at risk. To be safe the operators must ACT AS A ++PRINCIPAL, as does Sunvil, whether the sale is for a package or for accommodation only. As an aside, when a company acts as a principal it also pays VAT ( in the case of Sunvil some £300,000 a year) which is why many organisations aim to avoid tax and responsibility (and to increase profitability) by acting as agents…