Arantxa Goenaga of law firm AF Legis revealed to the Majorca Daily Bulletin, “The more demand there is, the higher the fraud rates.” Many travelers are misled by hotels that do not exist. However, the pandemic has acted as a boost for vacation rentals, especially for stand-alone properties.
The fraud pattern is often the same. People are being redirected to fraudulent sites like Booking and Airbnb. They pay for their reservation in advance and don’t realize they’ve been scammed until they get to their destination.
An example is the experience of Muriel Breier from Germany as refers Majorca Daily Bulletin. She and two companions paid 3,000 euros to reserve a luxury apartment in Palmanova this summer. To this amount was added a 650 euro deposit for possible damage. In their case, they realised the scam before leaving Germany after all communication with the supposed agency was suspiciously cut off. It was too late because the payment had already been made, although they were spared the bad experience of finding out about the scam once they arrived in Mallorca.
Arantxa Goenaga advises that advance payments should be avoided as much as possible. “The easiest way to avoid a scam is not to make an advance payment. People should try and verify as much information as possible about the property. Suspicious websites, unbelievable offers or excuses for not showing the property in which people are interested”.
The manager of the Habtur holiday rentals association in the Balearics, Maria Gibert, says that her association periodically comes across fraudulent websites. These are reported to the tourism ministry, the Council of Mallorca’s tourism department and the National Police. Scammers typically operate, she points out, by using photos of legitimate properties taken from sites such as Booking.
