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Portuguese authorities are warning of a significant increase in scams targeting tourists looking for holiday rentals.
The Madeira Island is a popular tourist destination all year round, but with the start of summer, the demand for alternative accommodation other than hotels increases dramatically, especially for longer stays.
Given the shortage of properties in the regional market to satisfy all needs, certain individuals take advantage of these situations to try to deceive the most unsuspecting. They resort to all sorts of tricks and fraudulent schemes to deceive not only tourists but also university students and even workers who, for some reason, need to travel to Madeira. However, this also occurs in all major cities in Portugal.
The Attorney General's Office (PGR) warns that these scammers typically use legitimate e-commerce operators but quickly switch and take tourists to other platforms such as 'WhatsApp' to carry out their scheme and deceive customers by convincing them to send money for reservations, which ends up in foreign accounts, making it difficult to trace and identify them.
Therefore, the authorities have issued a warning to tourists seeking local or rural accommodation in Portugal to ensure that they are contacting the genuine landlord or responsible person of the property where they intend to spend their well-deserved vacation.
