At risk of this post sounding like financial advice, I have written it in a way to reflect my own musings. Maybe my musings will help someone, and maybe they won’t – this is after all my anonymous blog.
I’ve read several helpful articles about the pitfalls of purchasing serviced apartments or holiday accommodation in Australia, and these things all seem to ring true in my mind.
However, curiosity does kill the cat; I still would occasionally look up apartments in tropical regions, such as in Cairns and it always angered me that they are often difficult to differentiate in many of the sites and apps until you click into it (and waste precious time).
I was looking up the potential cost of holidaying in Tropical North Queensland, a beautiful place and reading TripAdvisor reviews (as you do) and found something very interesting, screenshots of which I will caption below. It turns out that (an obvious fact in hindsight really) information asymmetry points to the fact that hotels will only sell their crap apartments. Otherwise, you’re likely to be fooled into buying something with highly restrictive contracts that the hotel still actually wants to control.
In the above screenshot, a traveller has complained about apartment 1206. You can also see the official Mantra response below, clearly indicating that the apartment is no longer in their inventory.
I’ve also posted the review directly below the previous one, in case you were not convinced for some reason.
I can also see that the Mantra chain sells apartments frequently. If I wasn’t careful in my thoughts and musings before, I certainly will be so now, more than ever.
Free beautiful photo of the Maldives as always from Pixabay.