Vacation Rental Reviews

[Pauline]

Do we want to keep vacation rental reviews on Slow Europe?

Currently I have a Vacation Rentals section on Slow Europe, but it is old (I try to keep it up to date) and there are not many reviews. With the recent launch of Day Trips I am changing the focus of the site away from accommodations and towards trip activities.

My idea originally with the Vacation Rentals section was to list resources for finding vacation rentals. I wanted lists of local agencies and some of the good larger agencies. But it seems like we all use agencies less and less now and use rent from owner websites like HomeAway (and all the sites they own), TripAdvisor (and all the sites they own) and AirBnB more and more. For reviews, I only collect reviews of agencies I have listed on the site. And I do not publish negative reviews. Instead I remove an agency from the list if I receive legit bad reviews. I had too many ugly experiences on SlowTrav to ever deal with negative reviews again.

I like to read reviews of vacation rentals, or at least to have travel friends tell me their recommended places. I still read reviews on SlowTrav. I read the reviews on the HomeAway site.

This is what I am thinking of doing:
- Leave current vacation rentals section as it is for now.
- Use the forums to collect Recommended Vacation Rentals by country. This is not ideal, but would be a start. We could all post with info about the places we like. Again, I won't take negative reviews in these forums, but bad experiences could be mentioned in the Trip Reports forum or Country forums.
- Eventually, if the forums get more traffic, we will build a vacation rental review system - if it looks like we need it.

In the Recommended Vacation Rentals forums we could even do short lists of places in specific locations. For example, I have a good list of place to rent in Uzes. I would set up a standard post title for vacation rental reviews so it would be easier for people to quickly search the forum.

What do you think? @Shannon emailed me about this today, so I thought it might be a good time to get some other input.

 

[Shannon]

I think vacation rental reviews are SO valuable but I understand how much work it is to set something like this up. I think it is a good idea to start somehow on the forums. I hope some other people will chime in.

I guess the hard part doing it on the forums is, there are an awful lot of places to have threads about?

 

[Chris]

I really like your idea of it being RECOMMENDED vacation rentals. I only want to read about places people feel good about. I don't want to relive my own less-than-ideal experiences and I'm so over reading about other peoples' bad experiences/nitpicking/horror stories/revenge reviews. There are lots of places on the web for those. Plus, it makes it much easier to manage, since you don't have to judge the truthiness of the bad reviews.

 

[Pauline]

I think we could try this out in the forums. I would make a forum for each country and then I would made sure the thread titles were in a standard format, maybe:
Region, town, type (house, apartment), countryside/town, #bedrooms

An example:
Languedoc, Uzes, apartment, in town, 1 bed

So that title would narrow it down.

We could start out this way and if the website and forums traffic picks up this year, we would come up with a better solution and then could copy the reviews from the forums to it. Using the forum search tool you would be able to get a list of all reviews for a region. There is a better search tool for these forums that I could get - I will look into that.

Exactly @Chris ! All those ugly experiences on ST dealing with bad reviews. I never want to go through that again. Only recommended vacation rentals.

 

[Kathy]

Good plan! We need a place to collect recommendations/reviews for rentals. And I like the idea of doing it on the forum where they are posted immediately.

 

[Pauline]

I think I can install an add-on to the forums software that would let me put a group of forums on a tab. So the main forums list would be what it is now and there would be a tab for Vacation Rental Reviews and that page would have those forums. I worry about the home page being too long and confusing - listing too many forums.

I will get this set up this week so we can start adding our favorite vacation rentals. We will see how it goes.

 

[Pauline]

I created "Recommended Vacation Rentals" forums and started by adding reviews for France and Italy.

Please add your reviews. If anyone wants to review a place already reviewed, please put your review in the original thread for the review, so all reviews for one place are in the same thread.

 

[Jan55612]

Thanks for doing this, Pauline. I, too, appreciate having "recommended" rentals.

 

[Kathy (Trekcapri)]

This is such a great idea. I also appreciate having this new recommended section on the forum.

 

[Heidi]

I've been following this thread, trying to understand exactly why we will only write recommended rental reviews. I didn't go through the nightmares of ST negative reviews. It must have been horrid! I must say, I think it is very valuable to have a clear picture of the possible shortcomings of a rental as well as the glowing reviews. Only positive reviews make me a bit suspicious about the reviewers ~ family & friends of the owners? The cautionary tales are important to me, realizing, of course, we all come from a different perspective.

I had a rental in Paris this Spring that was a disappointment Had there been any honest reviews on the web site - only short, polite sugar sweet comments - I would have been better prepared ~ actually, I may not have rented it....

On ST, several of my reviews disappeared into thin air! Poof! They were gone, right after I hit "submit". I always opted for the running commentary review and not the one answering specific questions. I probably got timed out. It was finally suggested I write the report elsewhere, then copy and past.

Anyway, I would love to try again with a few apartment reviews - two in Paris (well, maybe only one, if you don't want my truly honest, not terribly negative review from this Spring (there were some redeeming factors) - one from London (there was a caveat with that one too..... but not super negative...just a surprise issue!) and a super glowing review from my Roma apartment.

Edited to add: Pauline, may I send my less than stellar but not too negative Paris apartment review to you privately? You decide if it is publishable or would be best unsaid....

 

[Chris]

You've got a point, Heidi, but I don't think recommended necessarily has to mean perfect. I don't see anything wrong with caveats or possible shortcomings if you would still recommend the rental.

And I stand by my review of Kathy's apartment. She is my friend, but I would have written the same review of this property if she had been a stranger.

 

[Pauline]

Good points Heidi and Chris. I will write more tomorrow, but I was thinking of places you would be happy to recommend to a friend. Most places are not perfect. ...

 

[Heidi]

I was thinking of places you would be happy to recommend to a friend.

That's an excellent way to phrase it!

By the way, I don't think I said this but I really do like the idea of rental reviews ~ they're invaluable....

 

[Heidi]

Just posted my Roma rental review ~ no caveats really, except the kitchen is quite small... but so am I

The owner, Nadia, gave me a "secret" key to the entrance to the building's roof. It's a large, undeveloped space with no chairs or tables ~ just a remarkable 360 degree view of Roma! Love it but didn't want to advertise it, as she implied she doesn't do that often.

I'm renting this same apartment May/June 2015 for a month...

 

[Pauline]

... Edited to add: Pauline, may I send my less than stellar but not too negative Paris apartment review to you privately? You decide if it is publishable or would be best unsaid....

Yes, send it and I will have a look.

 

[Pauline]

On ST negative reviews became a real problem for a few reasons:

1. People who were angry after a bad vacation rental experience plastered the web with their bad review. Frequently they were people who had never used ST and would never return to the site. We ended up with a very negative review from someone we don't know.

2. Someone who does not fully understand what to expect in European vacation rentals may give a bad review when it was not really deserved.

3. Owners were very angry with us because of bad reviews and some threatened legal action. Worst case scenario, someone offered to come to Santa Fe and find me!

So - on Slow Europe - no bad reviews. If we stayed in a vacation rental and would stay there again, or recommend it, we post a review. Otherwise, we may mention it in a trip report or a post, but not in the reviews section. We have all stayed in bad places. At the time it seems an outrage and we want to review it. I know I have been in that situation. But these are not chain hotels, owned by large companies. These are frequently individually owned homes. Yes the bathroom may be ridiculously small, but maybe the owner could not get planning permission to change it, maybe there are plumbing reasons why it could not be changed. I remember an agent saying once about someone asking endless questions, "You are not buying the house, just renting it for a week". And the same for our reviews - places don't have to be perfect, they don't have to be the place we want to live in full time.

This is a small travel community. Most of us travel the same slow way. Let's help each other by letting everyone know when you found a nice place because maybe they will want to stay there too.

If you have already posted your review on ST or TA or your blog, you can post it here too. And add photos if you have them.

 

[Heidi]

Oh my gosh! Now I get it! Sorry you had to relive the bad review nightmare but I couldn't imagine how bad the consequences of bad reviews could be.... Thank you for enlightening me!

In this world where everyone has an opinion, and they feel compelled to share every little detail, I would hate to be offering a service to the public - especially in the hospitality industry. It's obvious some folks become obsessed with their complaints or perceived slights but to threaten you?

Those folks who fall into the "don't fully understand what to expect in European vacation rentals" seem comical by comparison. Certainly naive or clueless! They want everything to be as it is home... I stay away from folks like that when I'm traveling.

Thanks again Pauline!

 

[Shannon]

Pauline, do you have a cut off date how far back you want to go? I stayed in a great apartment in Zaragoza but that was October 2013. Too far back?

 

[Pauline]

Maybe in the last 5 years? Places don't change that much.

 

[Roz]

I agree that it will be great to have vacation rental reviews here. When I have time, I will post some too. It's nice to be able to post them and have them appear right away.