Holiday Lettings, part of TripAdvisor, and the UK's leading holiday home website, today announced a campaign to deactivate listings that consistently provide poor service to travellers, damaging the overall site experience.

In line with the site's mission to provide an easy and secure holiday rental booking experience, Holiday Lettings has this year already deactivated 1% of its listings from holidaylettings.co.uk. The deactivation programme targets owners using the free listing service who fail to engage with traveller enquiries and in fewer instances where they attempt to deviate guests from the secure Holiday Lettings payment platform.

''As a TripAdvisor company, we're committed to providing travellers with a positive search and book experience that results in a secure and easy booking,'' says Kate Stinchcombe-Gillies of holidaylettings.co.uk. ''Not only are we the sole British vacation rental site to offer free payment protection to travellers, but we're now also taking steps to protect the entire experience.''

Holiday Lettings rewards owners who have the most 'bookable' homes. These are properties with the most responsive owners offering online payment to expedite the booking, with higher positions in its search results. Travellers can refine their search many ways to find the most suitable homes for their trip, including sorting by homes with the most TripAdvisor reviews for additional peace of mind.
 
Holiday Lettings' payment platform ensures that holidaymakers are protected as long as bookings and payments are made through the site. If, for instance, a property does not exist or travellers are denied access to it upon arrival, Holiday Lettings provides a Payment Protection policy and claim process to protect holidaymakers.

To ensure the ongoing protection of holidaymakers, Holiday Lettings will continue this deactivation programme with the aim of providing the safest holiday rental site for travellers.

Kate Stinchcombe-Gillies shares her top tips on how to avoid a holiday let scam:

• Payment Protection – when booking a holiday let, we'd advise holidaymakers to ensure the property they want to let has a Payment Protection badge. The Payment Protection policy protects the holidaymaker's money in the event of non-existence or denial of entry to the property. All payments must be completed on the Holiday Lettings payment platform to be eligible for the policy.

• Payment is conducted via holidaylettings.co.uk – payment is taken online via the Holiday Lettings payment platform by credit/debit card or PayPal. Please alert our customer services team if the home owner tries to take the conversation/payment off platform.

• Valid web address – before making a payment, check the web address starts with https://www.holidaylettings.co.uk/. This is to ensure you are not directed to a bogus booking page.

• Booking a rental without a Payment Protection badge? The owner may still be able to offer you payment via PayPal where you can use your credit card for the securest method of payment. Owners without a Payment Protection badge have all been through our verification processes. This gives us the confidence for holidaymakers to book with them directly. But we always advise the use of common sense: maintain a written conversation with them so we can detect any suspicious behaviour, check their previous reviews and how long they've been listed with us, and if you're really unsure drop us a line. Ultimately if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

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For further information, please contact the Holiday Lettings press office at the Red Consultancy on:
Email: holidaylettingsteam@redconsultancy.com /Telephone: 020 7025 6700

Note to editors
About Holiday Lettings:
Holidaylettings.co.uk was established in 1999. Part of TripAdvisor, since June 2010, the business forms part of TripAdvisor Vacation Rentals and continues to thrive as an independent brand from its offices in Oxford.

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