Many Apartment owners are often private ordinary people who have often inherited their property and are renting it out on the internet. They are not professional offices or agencies and often they act in an unprofessional manner. When you smell a rat trust your instinct which is always correct!!
I once did an experiment where I wrote to an apartment owner for a booking in Italian as a an Italian tourist. I then wrote to them as an english speaking tourist and the apartment was 150 euro per week higher in cost!! This really upsets me when english tourists are ripped off because I strongly believe in parity for all human beings in all ways.
This is why our team here at Passion for Italy Travel work so hard to bring prices down for our clients. Sometimes we have to fight huge wars over prices that can go on for a week and risk a heart attack by throwing an Italian tantrum back at those normally lovely people who turn into sharks when negotiating apartment prices or bank fees. We try very hard to make sure that our clients are not getting ripped off and that there is parity for everyone.
This is why we are travel agents - to do the hard work for you out of organising your holiday and it has taken years of experience to understand how the system in Italy exactly works.
