Holiday Homeowner Advice

Tips to help with your experience on Simply Owners.

Provide as much accurate information to the holidaymaker about your property, its location, and its contents on your listing. However, it is better in the long term to acknowledge, when necessary, that your property may not be suitable for a particular holidaymaker. If you take a booking knowing it is not a suitable fit, your guests will not only have a less than desirable experience but there is potential that they may leave a negative review.

Make sure your property listing includes as much information about your property as possible and answers all potential holidaymaker questions. Make sure your photos are well lit and are a suitable resolution/size. Below is a list of suggestions that you could include in your description to help holidaymakers:

• Distance from airport
• Check-in and out times
• Minimum stay requirements
• Extra COVID-19 cleaning and sanitisation measures
• Pull out any impressive selling points e.g., proximity to beach, local attractions.
• What deposits are required and when payments need to be made
• How they get their deposit back

Some countries and regions have legislation specifically relating to holiday rental properties and this is subject to change. It is important that you identify exactly what is needed by way of licences in your location and continually review such legal responsibilities to ensure that you are operating within your area’s legal framework. You can include any license numbers on your listing to give holidaymaker confidence that you are a legitimate owner.

When logging into Simply Owners you must ensure the address in full is:
https://www.simplyowners.net/login
and that your browser indicates that you have a secure connection, normally by means of a padlock icon. You should not enter your Simply Owners login details into any other address.

Simply Owners guarantees 100% payment protection for your holidaymakers at no extra cost, providing that the prescribed method of making payments has been followed carefully and precisely, by both the holiday homeowner and the holidaymaker. (For more detailed terms see Terms and Conditions.) Don't allow scammers to phish or hack your emails to redirect your payments to their accounts. Only use emails to receive general enquiries and send general information. Only give instructions and details on payment methods during the receipt of a phone call from the holidaymaker on the unique phone number you provided to Simply Owners Never make the call to a holidaymaker to discuss payments! Your phone number is unique to you and this method protects both you the holiday-home owner and the holidaymaker. Protect your phone from abuse and never allow any unauthorized person to use it to deal with payments from holidaymakers. Always take payments on a recognized credit/debit card, bank transfer or via an organization such as Paypal.

For our payment protection certificate to be valid for your holidaymaker you must issue it at the time of entering the booking into your calendar and be in compliance with all of our terms and conditions.

Simply Owners does not have the resources, in terms of time or legal expertise, to investigate disputes between owners and holidaymakers. We are unable to collect all the information, assess the legitimacy of it and make judgments as to who is right or wrong. If disputes cannot be resolved amicably between both parties, then the ultimate place for a ruling on matters is in the courts. Simply Owners will support both parties as best we can with any information we have but will have very little weight to bear on legal matters as we are not party to the contract.

If Simply Owners becomes aware that criminal proceedings are being issued against an owner then we would suspend that owner’s listing as a neutral act until the case had been ruled upon. It would be remiss of us to allow future holidaymakers to follow in the footsteps of a situation that was found to be illegal.

It is important therefore to try to avoid disputes by providing as much detail as possible in the booking, payment and cancellation terms and conditions so that both parties understand and agree on the position of things from the start.

We have supported many owners that have sold their property while having future bookings. It is critical you take our advice to avoid unnecessary court costs for breaching contracts.

The holidaymaker’s contract is with you the owner and they have agreed to rent your property based on the advert you created, and they viewed, at the time of booking. Further, any verbal or written communication or agreements have been made on the basis that you will be the owner when their holiday takes place. Should you need to sell your property while it has future bookings you need to take appropriate steps.

Option 1. – Selling a property with future bookings

Ensure your buyer is contractually obligated to meet the future bookings on the same terms and conditions as those currently agreed with future guests. The benefit of contracting the new owner to honour the future bookings is it can remove any concerns of the future guests and mitigate cash flow issues. The downside is it could reduce the level of interest in the sale.
You should offer your future guests a full refund or the option to leave the booking in place with the new owner, assuring them that their holiday will be under the same terms and conditions as it is currently.

Option 2. – Selling a property outright

If you are selling a property outright, in an ideal situation you would not have any future bookings. If you have the unfortunate circumstance that you must sell your property and cannot honour future bookings, you must refund future guests as soon as possible. Guests could have organised travel arrangements and could incur significant costs to find alternative accommodation.

Owners should never sell their property and attempt to defraud or deceive holidaymakers. Simply Owners take pride in being a trusted platform and we will put considerable resources behind legal efforts and tracing agents against any owner trying to defraud holidaymakers. Ultimately, we will ensure owners end up paying all costs incurred by holidaymakers if they have behaved inappropriately when selling their property. These costs could include court costs, travel arrangements, alternative accommodation, finder fees etc. This can amount to several thousands of pounds.
Any owners behaving in this way would also be in breach of contract with Simply Owners for bringing the company into disrepute and we would pursue this through the courts.

The best way to sell your property is with no future bookings. The second-best option is to maintain trust with any holidaymakers that have future bookings and offer them a full refund in the first instance.

Simply Owners only provide advertising space for holiday-home owners and connect potential holidaymakers with them directly. It does not vet any properties nor verify any comments or content entered in the advert by you, the holiday-home owner. It is you, the holiday-home owner, therefore that is solely responsible for the representations made in the advert placed with Simply Owners.

Also, as Simply Owners does not have any kind of contract with any holidaymaker, financial or otherwise, it cannot be considered a ‘renter’ and drawn into any form of rental agreements, licences or any form of contract with the holidaymaker or third party.