Unknown rental co handling my property!

[jdabney]

I have just found a website called puglia-rental.com who have my house on their site. I've never heard of them! I noticed the rental systems logo at the bottom of the page and was then told by the bloke on the phone in Puglia that they have an agreement with villarenters.com to market their properties in Puglia. I think this is probably fairly widespread and must be open to abuse and problems with double bookings and god knows what else.

Would it not be proper practice for the likes of villarenters to inform or even ask permission!! of owners before farming properties out to all and sundry.

I'd be interested to know anyone else's views on this. I expect some will say all exposure is good exposure. I'm not so sure!

[Mouse]

hi jdabney

I certainly wouldn't take kindly to that at all! You, as the owner, must have total control over your property.
I also think as a matter of good client relations villarentals.com (who I assume you are with) should have advised you of this additional site and asked if you wanted to be on there not presumed you would.

I can't understand why they wouldn't do that...is it an example of things to come (i.e. poor communication)

However - it remains that you have another site at your disposal, should you want to use it. Or will you find out later that you have to pay?

Mouse
x

[Mountain Goat]

jdabney

You should also check whether they are using identical descriptive text - this can be penalised by search engines - and you may need to insist on editing the secondary text.

MG

[jdabney]

Good point MG. Actually I didn't realise that and it could be I have other sites with smae texts. Is this really a problem with the search engines?

[Mountain Goat]

That's what I understood, but you should perhaps wait for a passing guru's opinion first.

MG

[Angel]

It's their affiliate system - they get commission on any referral that turns into a booking. The data displayed should be the same as on Villarenters.

Marion

[roxytoo]

Yes Angel is right, it's probably on hundreds of websites, maybe you have signed up to unknowlingly in the blurb?

[marcus]

I'm pretty sure you have signed up for this, because its how VillaRenters work.

Generally duplicate text won't be an issue because usually (but not always) the properties are included through an 'iframe' which search engines don't read. In any case, it shouldn't be problem because whichever page ranks highest for your property will show up.

All the bookings go through one central villarenters booking system so there is no chance of duplicate bookings etc.

It's actually quite a good way to get wider publicity for your property, so I'd leave it unless you really object to the site where you found the listing!