Berlin.
The portals look deceptively real. But those who book their dream holiday home through it experience a nightmare. What helps against fake sites?
At first glance, the website looks legitimate. High-resolution images of dream holiday homes and a search mask, as you know it from booking portals: where should it be, desired arrival, departure, number of guests.
There is an impressive selection of holiday properties, an imprint, a picture of the supposed owner, contact details, seal. It looks really serious, even if you click through a little further.
But the sites with names like “ferienhaus-profis.com” and “breitkamp.com” are fakes, which the Association of German Holiday Home Agencies (VDFA) warned about in mid-January. These and other portals that look the same are still online and anyone who takes a look at them begins to understand how perfidious and professional holiday home fraud can be.
And the fake portals are apparently still getting caught: “Aggrieved parties keep calling,” writes VDFA Managing Director Monika Kowalewski on Wednesday (February 22nd) when we asked.
Money gone, holiday home not available
The VDFA estimates the damage that holidaymakers have already suffered to be in the “double-digit millions”. They fell for fake websites and their supposedly professional paintwork, paid thousands of euros – and ended up without a holiday home and without the money they paid. The VDFA warns that in 2023 there will be more fraud sites on the Internet than ever before.
The German Holiday Home Association (DFV) assesses the situation in a more differentiated way: In the member portals of the DFV, the cases of fraud have decreased in the recent past, while they tend to increase on private landlord websites, which are often fake.
“Unfortunately, fraud in this way is far too easy and still too often successful,” says DFV chairman Göran Holst. “A professional-looking site can be counterfeited relatively easily with construction kits.”
In order not to be taken in by holiday home scammers, industry associations and consumer advocates have the following tips:
- Prices: If the holiday home is extremely cheap, the alarm bells should ring. This is typical for fake offers, she warns Consumer Center Rhineland-Palatinate. The advice: compare with other offers in the area. This gives information about whether the price can be realistic.
- Imprint: If the website has no imprint at all – generally keep your hands off! But as the example of the fake sites mentioned above shows: Even a supposedly serious imprint with contact address, tax number and other information cannot be trusted blindly. Fraudsters sometimes shamelessly copy data from other websites. The advice: Check this data and, if necessary, ask associations, placement agencies or local tourism associations whether the provider and the property exist.
The two industry associations VDFA and communication also have websites online where they bundle the latest fraud reports. So if you are unsure about a portal, you can also take a look at these pages – if the domain appears there, you have clarity.
- Payment in advance: A deposit of 10 to 30 percent of the travel price is usual when booking a holiday home. However, according to consumer advocates, fraudsters often demand the total price in advance, sometimes via transfer services such as Western Union or Moneygram. The advice: Don’t go into it. If you do pay (in the case of last-minute bookings, for example, the total price is often due immediately), then in case of doubt it is better to pay by direct debit or credit card. In this way, the money can be booked back by the bank in the event of fraud.
- Seal: They should vouch for a certain quality and seriousness of the provider. Among other things, the German Holiday Home Association awards a seal. But of course scammers don’t stop at that and sometimes put a picture of the seal on their website. The advice: Click on the seal. “Only linked seals are real seals,” says Göran Holst. After clicking, you get the information that the site rightly bears the seal.
Protection from reputable platforms
Booking through a reputable brokerage platform is therefore highly recommended in order not to be taken in by scammers. Because there the landlords are usually put through their paces.
Göran Holst is also one of the managing directors of the Travanto portal. With them, landlords would have to show extracts from the land register and identification documents, water and electricity bills, for example, he says. And: “We use Google Maps to check whether the object exists.”
According to Travanto, it has more than 70,000 holiday properties on offer in Europe. The number of cases of fraud per year is less than five, says Holst. The last case involved a property in the Netherlands. “It was identity theft with a loss of 6,000 euros.” The alleged landlord had submitted a stolen ID card and a forged entry in the land register. According to Holst, this damage was voluntarily settled by Travanto.
The amount of liability depends on the provider
And what else happens in such a case? In some cases, the providers are liable up to a certain amount. The German Holiday Home Association obliges its members to a minimum liability of 500 euros per booking. “Everything about that is provider dependent,” says Holst.
To put this into context: According to Holst, the average booking amount for properties in Germany on the portals organized in the DFV is 833 euros. Nevertheless, if you pay thousands of euros for a holiday home, you may be stuck with a large sum in the event of fraud. Only the terms and conditions (GTC) of the respective platform reveal how exactly the protection in the event of fraud is ordered.
In general, when in doubt, you should always book via the platform. In some cases, landlords offer holidaymakers the opportunity to book their holiday home directly in order to save on the service fees due for the agency portal, which can easily amount to several hundred euros. But be careful: when you leave the platform, you also leave its protective mechanisms – if you get caught by fraudsters, the portal will definitely not give you any money back. (dpa)
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