BC Vacation Rentals Home  > Owner Direct Rentals

BC Vacation Rentals - Owner Direct Rentals

Why Book Your Vacation Home Directly With the Owner?

The following paragraphs are quoted from the website of one of the properties listed on BC Vacation Rentals, Long Meadow Estate, near Victoria, on Vancouver Island. The high standard of service they describe is, of course, particular to their own operation, but it serves as an example of  the considerable advantage to the renter of booking directly with the property's owner, rather than with an agency. While few properties can rival the standards at Long Meadow Estate, direct contact with the owner allows you as a renter to inquire and be informed about the standards that pertain to each property. By contrast, rental agencies are concerned primarily with earning a commission ( often as much as 30% ) and are careful to prevent any direct contact between renters and owners in order to ensure that their role as middle-man, and their high share of the price you pay, is protected.

Owner-Direct Vacation Rentals at Long Meadow Estate:

You can either reserve a vacation rental property directly from the owner, or you can book a vacation rental through one of many large internet booking agencies. For the first couple of years, we listed our property with several of these large sites. It may be useful to know that the salesperson who books your home at one of the large agencies has likely not been to the property you are thinking about. They likely do not know the neighborhood, the exact layout of the home, what the cleaning standard is like, etc.

There are some significant advantages to booking your next vacation rental directly from the property owner:

We set an extremely high standard for service and take great delight in providing this to our guests. We greet you when you arrive, provide you with a short 10 minute orientation of the house and property, give you a map for the grocery store, answer any questions you might have and then leave you to settle in. If you are a group that likes to get to know the locals, we might see you on the pool deck and if you are a group that likes your privacy, we likely will not see you again until check out time.

We know our neighborhood intimately as we have lived on the property for almost 10 years.

If a light bulb needs replacing, or anything needs fixing, we are on call to help and either do the work ourselves or call an expert. We are conscientious homeowners and maintain our property, hot tub and swimming pool at a very high level.

Cleaning is essential. We have had the same cleaning person for the past 5 years. She is dedicated, incredibly hard working, knows our house like her own, and is extremely fussy. Guests have told us that this same high standard of cleaning is not the case at every vacation home that they have stayed at.

And finally, when you call Long Meadow Estate you talk with the owners of the property. From a business perspective, we are the ones most motivated to ensure that you have a great time. We know that the best form of advertising is the recommendation from a satisfied guest and we invite all our guests to fill out a short survey when they leave as a way of monitoring our success and continually making improvements.