Unusual: They rent accommodation on Airbnb but discover the owner dead in her apartment

2023-09-08 06:03:00

Shock for this family of vacationers who could not find a way to access the rented accommodation.

Like millions of vacationers during the summer, a Spanish couple had booked accommodation for their vacation in Malta on the Airbnb platform. A very classic story so far.

But when they arrived on the island, nothing went as planned. First of all, the couple from the Canary Islands thought it was a scam since they couldn’t contact the owner to get the keys. A very surprising situation for these tenants who had established, through conversations, extensive exchanges with her for many months while they were preparing their vacation in the middle of the Mediterranean.

While the Maltese woman had been silent for a few days, the couple tried to go directly to the rented apartment. But then again, the calls rang hopelessly in the void.

False hope

Without a fallback solution, the couple then rented a room in a hotel while undertaking a neighborhood investigation to try to find the trace of the woman who was to rent them an apartment for the duration of their vacation. Eventually they managed to find the address of the owner who lived nearby. But the latter was not very used to leaving her house and her absence had not been particularly noticed by her neighbors.

A neighbor, however, had seen an ambulance taking an elderly woman to the hospital a few days earlier.

Hope was then reborn but, at the hospital, the Spanish tourists learned that the hospitalization had gone back about ten days and that the lady had been sent home a few days later.

At the insistence of the couple, the neighborhood then called the police who forced their way into the woman’s home. She was then found dead in her apartment.

Much to the dismay of the family who had forged close ties with their landlady. According to Chain Being, the Airbnb platform offered vacationers a refund but no alternative accommodation. A local real estate agency found them another apartment. A small miracle in this busy summer period.