Checking the neighborhood where the rental apartment is located is not only useful for avoiding Airbnb scams . Thanks to the map in the adverts, in fact, we will be able to understand if the apartment is in a good position to reach the city center on foot, the services in the surrounding area and if there are connections with public transport within easy reach.

We read all the reviews
Among the tips to book a holiday home on AirbnB avoiding unpleasant surprises we can certainly read all the reviews. Feedback from other users helps us to understand if the photos of the house are true, if the location of the apartment is comfortable compared to the rest of the city but also if the host is available and kind or not. Attention also to the hosts who have no reviews : maybe they are new on the platform and they are reliable but being the first guinea pig may not be a positive experience.

In some cities, especially large capitals such as Paris, London or Madrid, finding the apartment that suits us on Airbnb will be anything but simple. For this reason, once you have entered the dates and the number of people who will take part in the trip, we’d better use one of the many filters on the Airbnb portal. Through the filters we can choose whether to display only holiday homes below an average price, or only apartments with specific services (swimming pools, whirlpools, balconies, etc.). Filters are the best way to not waste too much time and find the right home on Airbnb.

Check the rules of the city you travel to
As mentioned, based on the city in which we travel, we can also find the tourist tax, which we will have to give in contacts on arrival or departure. To prevent the host from taking advantage of our lack of knowledge about the tourist tax applied by a certain city, before booking, we spend a few minutes to inform ourselves online how much the daily tourist tax is in the place where we intend to spend our holidays.

For many, it has now become a fixture when booking holidays online . After some initial uncertainty, in fact, Airbnb has been able to carve out a role of primary importance in the low cost travel market: if you are looking for a holiday home instead of a hotel, the portal created in San Francisco in August 2008 is our first option. A success that is the result of a business model that is as simple as it is effective: with Airbnb anyone can create an ad to rent a room or their home. And of course anyone can look for a vacation home in any city in the world.

In other words, Airbnb seems all roses and flowers, but there are some aspects to check before renting a house with your eyes closed. We are not just talking about the reviews of our host , that is, the landlord. Of course, feedback from other travelers is essential to understand what awaits us once we arrive at our destination, but to avoid unpleasant surprises and additional costs, we first check the hidden clauses of an apartment or a holiday home when booking with Airbnb.

What is meant by hidden clauses? On Airbnb every landlord chooses the rules of the rental house that his guests must respect. These may include additional charges for particular services, such as a swimming pool, gym, sauna and so on. But there may also be daily deposits to be delivered on arrival and which will be returned to us before departure if we have not damaged anything. While in some cities it is necessary to leave the tourist tax money in contact on arrival or departureprovided by the Municipality. In other cases, however, you may be forced to pay additional costs for the Internet connection or for having lost your house keys and other mishaps that may happen on the road.

Check out the neighborhood
Fake ads can also be found on Airbnb, created by cyber criminals to steal our money. It must be said that Airbnb has an editorial staff dedicated to identifying the false ads and eliminating them, but it can still happen to come across one of these. To understand that it is a fake apartment we look at the photos, if they seem to be taken from a hotel portal or from a travel site we avoid booking the holiday home . If the apartment that is proposed to us is an attic in a large building but we note that the neighborhood is actually residential and has only terraced houses, it is likely that they are trying to deceive us.