How guest screening helps secure your vacation home

Key takeaways

• There is no such thing as a risk-proof rental—but there are plenty of ways a trustworthy property manager like Vacasa can help protect your home.
• Vacasa’s go-to guest screening procedures include setting minimum rental age restrictions, confirming guest-provided information, and flagging risky bookings.

While most travelers treat vacation rentals respectfully, unfortunately risky guests do exist—and they could potentially damage your home and prompt neighbors to complain.

When you manage your own vacation rental, you are the main safeguard against partying minors, fraudulent reservations, and all other potential risks.

At Vacasa, we have comprehensive protocols to help block these disruptive guests not just from checking in, but from making reservations in the first place. One of the most important systems is our combination of automated and manual guest screening. Consider it your first (and toughest) line of defense. Our security-first method helps to stave off potentially risky reservations, plus protects you and your home.

Here’s what we screen before confirming a guest’s reservation:

Minimum age

One of the ways we help ensure that only responsible adults stay in your property is by establishing—and enforcing—a stringent age policy. The minimum age to rent is generally 21, though some areas have different minimum age requirements. For example, Lake Chelan in Washington and Palm Springs in California require guests to be at least 25 years old, unless they’re traveling with parents or their legal guardian. If any guest is under the minimum age, they must be accompanied by a parent or guardian for the entire duration of the stay.

These age restrictions are in place to ensure guests are staying responsible and prioritizing safety for everyone in the home.

If our Customer Experience agents have a reason to believe any reservation was initiated by anyone underage, they’ll follow up with a phone call to determine the guests’ ages. At times, we may even ask your local manager to stop by and greet the guests in person.

Identity

While extensive background checks aren’t typically necessary for travelers on vacation for a few days, we still have deliberate protocols in place to make sure those making reservations for your vacation home are who they say they are. As an additional layer against fraud for certain reservations, like those booked last minute or in high-risk areas, we partner with a third party to automatically verify the identity of any potential guests. Guests are prompted to answer questions about their personal history before being allowed to book the Vacasa home.

Potential concerns

We engineered our booking system to automatically flag suspicious reservations. It’s important to note: legitimate and responsible guests can also trigger these concerns, so we follow up with a phone call to make sure we’re still offering a warm welcome while sussing out the situation. Common reasons why bookings are flagged include:

• A booking for a home with a large capacity, but only 1 or 2 adults listed on the reservation
• An abnormally long stay at a property in a remote location or during an off season
• A possibility that the home will be used for commercial purposes, such as garage sales or catering (these activities are forbidden by our rental contract and can violate licensing requirements)
• A payment that has been declined several times
• A request for several people to call in with separate payments
• Credit card payments with a name that is different from the name on the reservation (our Customer Experience team will call the cardholder to verify payment)

No single screening approach can catch every ill-intentioned guest, but our several layers of prevention are key to keeping your home as secure as possible.

Important to note: We only evaluate potential risks and violations of our rental policy. Vacasa welcomes guests from all backgrounds. We are fervently against discrimination or bias of any kind, including those based on race, gender, or age (besides compliance with our minimum age policy).

Want to safeguard your vacation home and investment? Let’s discuss all the ways Vacasa protects your home.