Why are many rental properties not as advertised?

Our aim is for the guests of our Isla Mujeres rental properties to comment that they found the properties better than the photographs on our website or Airbnb. We think our photos are pretty good, but it is a nice compliment to receive. This may be because guests are used to arriving at a property to find that the photography has been, let us say, complimentary.

We have four Isla Mujeres Luxury homes, and we like our guests to be pleasantly surprised on arrival, additionally we provide complimentary wine and flowers and a lot of attention to detail. There are properties we know of where guests have to go out and buy salt and pepper before they can prepare a snack, unless there happens to be some left bought by the previous guests. We offer a mid-week clean and change of sheets and towels for our guests; many properties do not. Those properties often experience the electricity and water supply being cut off, which is very inconvenient. It would be nice to say our guests don't experience this inconvenience, but it is an island wide problem, and we are also affected. Although when it comes to the water shortage, we do have an advantage in that we have four homes. This means we can pump water from empty properties to those that are rented.

There are rental properties in Punta Sur that look great in the photos; what you cannot see in the photos is that all the properties are squashed together, the pools are small and there is no privacy. Another Isla Mujeres rental we are aware of has quite a small kitchen, but in the photos it looks almost the size of a football pitch. These are common problems with Isla Mujeres rental homes, and elsewhere too, we have projects in Spain and Portugal and see the same lack of attention to detail there; when we are at the end of a project and do not need to be in attendance so much, we will often rent a property through Airbnb for a few weeks. The last time we did this the villa showed very well in the photos, but in reality the gardens were not well-kept, the gates into the property didn't lock and one of the exterior doors didn't lock. The property had a nice pool, although we don't have time to use the pool, we noticed that two of the sunbeds were broken. So it is not just Isla Mujeres rentals homes that don't come up to scratch.