Booking a vacation rental? Here’s how to avoid scams on platforms like Airbnb, Vrbo
much different from what they had originally signed up for.
Not only was it in a completely different neighborhood, but Huffmann described the rental as dirty, with dead rats in the building’s staircase and a thermostat stuck on the highest setting.
“It was so sketchy,” she said. “It was in an area where we weren’t entirely comfortable being outside after dark. … It was just disappointing.”
While scams on vacation rental platforms are rare, they can spike during busy travel periods like the Fourth of July weekend, according to Tarik Dogru, an assistant professor of hospitality management at Florida State University.
“(There are) hosts that … want to take advantage of the travelers, and know the gaps in the system,” Dogru said. “If you’re looking into booking … you have to do your due diligence.”
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What do vacation rental scams look like?
Dogru said the bait-and-switch vacation rental scam like the one Huffmann ran into is among the most common. He ran into the same scam himself while visiting New Orleans.
“We booked a place, and we went there – it looked very different than in the pictures,” he said, adding that the host later admitted that it was a different building than the one pictured in the listing.
“It wasn’t a bad place, but it was a different place,” Dogru said.
In these scenarios, the hosts typically blame the last-minute change on flooding, or say the original listing needed to undergo maintenance.
A 2018 post from the Federal Trade Commission added there are some scammers who try to mimic real listings, replacing the owner’s contact information with their own and listing the property on a separate site. Others create listings for places that aren’t for rent or don’t exist, but get renters to act fast by offering low prices. In these scenarios, the scammers run off with the money while the renters are left without a place to stay.
The FTC did not respond to a request for comment.
Other hosts may try to scam their guests out of money by blaming them for damages that were already there, Dogru said. To avoid this, he suggested renters take photos of the property as soon as they arrive.
How can I avoid vacation rental scams?
Vacation rental platforms ask users to only book and pay through their verified websites and apps to avoid any potential scams.
“Airbnb is an end-to-end platform, including handling all of the payments,” Airbnb spokeswoman Liz DeBold Fusco said. “As long as you are booking on Airbnb, communicating on Airbnb and paying on Airbnb – we can help you avoid these malicious third-party travel scams.”