Tips on how to avoid those booking agent fees.

You are planning a holiday abroad, so what’s the first thing you do? It’s probably turn on the computer, tablet, or phone, then in your browser you type holiday homes, holiday rentals, holiday apartments etc to wherever your destination will be. Most likely the first four names to come up will be Airbnb, home & away, Trip advisor, Booking.com mainly because they have spent a fortune in Ads or seo etc. So who pays for this? As someone has to pay? yes you guessed right its you and the home owner.

Lets say just for example you are a family of 4 persons and you want to stay in a complex or a villa with a pool, sea view etc in a great location. You are probably going to pay at least 800€ a week or more so two weeks will should cost you 1600€ but its not quite that simple as the price may pass through several hands which in turn add on there commission.

Home owner price 800€ a week.

Property manager +10 to 20% 80€ to 160€

Online booking agent + 25% 200€

Now at this point the rental is costing 1160€ not to mention credit card fees and advice fees on top.

So when you book a holiday rental you are more or less paying a lot more than if you went direct to the owner at least 50% above the home owner price. But how do you find properties in other countries if you don’t know anyone.?

The easiest way is to look up a property in one of the main online booking agents, then write down the name of the property, town, location, country, etc get as much info as possible on a property, then try to find it on social networks hoping that they use the same name. Ok for example take my apartment Trekking cottage apartment. Now before clicking on the link type into your url Trekking cottage apartment, San Benedetto Sardinia. And more than likely you will find of course the big online agents plus Google map with address etc, WordPress for sure, and maybe Google+ or type directly into any of the social networks like Twitter, Google+ WordPress, etc As most people these days use social networks for blogs etc, and if intelligent would have put it on Google maps. You may not find all the properties but if you strike it lucky you will save enough money to rent a car.

Now the other way is to try and find the free advertising sites for that area or country or even try eBay, just spend some time checking the web and deal direct with the owner or property manager, saving pounds, go through all the pages not just the first page if you don’t find it, also try to find free papers of the area.

Anyway if its Sardinia you are looking at just come straight to me through WordPress and I will find something for you.

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