Holiday house vs short tourist rental

When you decide to book a private house or your favourite apartment in Italy, do you really know if you are booking a holiday house or a short tourist rental? It is not so easy sometime to understand the market proposal but a good starting point is to be well prepared. You can have the knowledge to make the correct questions to your host and definitely you will be able to satisfy your (proper) expectations!

First of all I am sure that Piedmont and Liguria will seriously open again for your next summer (and maybe spring) holidays and we are keen to welcome tourists back. More Italian people will be probably holidaying at home again in 2021, so my suggestion for everybody (Italians and Foreigners) is to start to think about their vacation as soon as possible… We all have a lot of time in those days for dreaming so just turn this thought process in… PLANNING PROCESS!!

Image that you have decided to spend your holiday into a holiday house and not into one of the more classic hospitality accommodations (like hotel or B&B). The reasons for this choice are no doubt many: you like to feel completely free and sometime you want skinny-dipping in the privacy of your holiday swimming-pool; you have five kids and you need to have a big house for your own family and for the grandparents and a kitchen for cooking some delicious and (probably) frantic meals; you hate the housekeepers who knock at your door each morning and you want to eat breakfast without being pushed to have it from 8.00 to 10.00 am!

Regardless of the reason why you want to find a holiday house or an apartment for your next vacation, where can you start? Of course, if you don’t know already the area in which you want to spend your holiday, the easiest and fastest way is to have a look at the OTA (On line Travel Agency) pages on the web: AirB&B, VRBO, Booking, Expedia suites etc… But it is easy to get lost in these web metropolis with millions of properties!

To avoid problems occurring, regarding Italy, you can consider that in most of the cases what you are going to book is a short tourist rental and not a holiday house: because more than 60% of the no hotel rental accommodations offered in Italy are classified as short tourist rental.

So what’s the difference between the short tourist rental and the holiday house (from the guest’s point of view)?

Each Region can rule the object autonomously but we can say that the main difference concerns the additional services. This element for a guest can really represent a huge variation during his/her holiday.  Broadly speaking in a real holiday house you can find some more services: for example you can ask for a mid stay cleaning service. Instead in a short tourist rental you pay (you can ask and you can find) only the availability of the property for a specific period and never for more than 30 days. You can find as additional services the final cleaning and the towels and bed linen change. That’s it. No breakfast, no concierge services, no host’s tips…

Now we know the main general difference between these two accommodations but how can we recognise if what we are booking is a holiday house or a short tourist rental?

The starting misunderstanding depends on the fact that many short tourist rental on the OTA or on the web pages are called “Holiday House”, “Holiday Apartment”, “Guest House”, “Tourist House” and so on… the reasons for this confusion are many and probably the most relevant it is because everybody (Italians and Foreigners) can immediately understand “Holiday House” but few people know what the “short tourist rental” are. So the main instrument you have for understanding what you are booking is to see if the host usually gives to the guests some extra services. In the holiday houses you find often more professionalism and less “family atmosphere”. So we can conclude and say if you are looking for a simple accommodation without any specific standard you can choose a short rental, if you are a guests who needs a lot of extra services and facilities for sure you have to take in consideration only the holiday houses.

Good thing there’s always a third way out. My job as property manager is to take care of the holiday houses and the short tourist rental. When there is a property manager involved you can always expect a more professional offer and the difference between these two accommodation types becomes less huge.

Could I just say one more thing?

The best way to experience what I have just described in this article is… to book your next holiday in: Villa La Romantica, in Casa Il Giardino or in Villa Marisa!!

Enjoy!

Mame