Olivia Beach Vacation Rentals by Meredith Lodging

Plenty of options, friendly and knowledgeable staff ready to assist planning the perfect vacation.
Nov 27th, 2023

Aug 6th, 2023

We stayed this past week at Puffin Place. The location is awesome, however the management of the property is horrible. There are challenges with running a beach front vacation rental, I get that. Ive stayed in premium beach front vacation rental homes in Hawaii, Bahamas, and various other locations. This is by FAR the worst. When we arrived the windows and exterior spaces of the property were filthy. There was trash, cigarette butts, and tons of bird poop on the lower two outdoor spaces to the point they were almost unusable. Who wants to sit on a patio covered in bird poop, on furniture covered in bird poop!? The windows were so dirty on the ocean side of the home that it obstructed the view. We ended up cleaning several of them ourselves, just to be able to enjoy the view. We continued to find other areas not well cleaned or maintained throughout our stay, but nothing as egregious as the outdoor cleaning issues. My wife emailed the property management our first night, describing the issues and included the photos shown below. We did not receive a response after two full days, so my wife emailed them for a second time. On our final day in the home we finally received and email back saying they would send out a cleaning crew. We declined having the cleaning crew show up to clean the exterior space on out LAST day. Through email we requested a refund of our cleaning fee, as well as any other concessions they felt appropriate.they responded by refunding $91 of my cleaning fee, and offering $75 off on a return visit. Completely laughable and insulting. Keep in mind this home rents for approximately $1k per night during prime summer dates. It falls FAR short of what is reasonable to expect in terms of management and cleanliness at that price point. Its a real shame because the home has the potential to be really amazing if anyone cared.
Jul 19th, 2023

Mar 15th, 2023

We stayed at Blue Shutter Olivia Beach. I normally dont write reviews but I feel I have to on this. Our stay was unpleasant from arrival. First, we were told they were would be no issue with parking our truck due to it being a small area. We have a typical size truck, nothing huge. The bedsyoure better off bringing your own air mattresses because that is exactly what the two beds in one of the bedrooms feel like. You sank in them just from sitting on them. When I reached out about this, their response was I am sorry that the furniture was not to your liking and comfort, however this is a matter of personal preference. What an absolute joke. They clearly have never sat in those beds. The pillow cases were stained. Not enough towels- yes we couldve reached out for more however the house says 7 people can stay there, how are you going to have 4 towels for 7 people? Common sense. The community pool was closed and we were NEVER informed, their excuse was The pool is run by the HOA, and we are not always informed of any hours or closures. Amenities and furnishings are subject to change at any time. I actually texted someone at Meredith during our stay to ask about the pool and they said it wasnt open yet, so they knew it wasnt open and didnt bother to tell us ahead of time. Okay well you would think as one of the amenities they advertise with the listing that they would make sure it was open so that they could inform guests ahead of time but I guess when youre just a money hungry company, you dont care and just want the bookings. Upon walking to the beach access we found there were SEVERAL and I mean ALOT of stairs that needed to be taken to get down to the beach, therefore we didnt even attempt it since we had children. Luckily we were able to find better beach access down the road. I feel the photos from the listing for the house were deceiving as they did not show the amount of stairs. The fan in the living room did not function, we did not reach out to the company because I had already had it with everything else that was wrong with the place and just couldnt wait to check out. Do yourself a favor and just get an Airbnb or a hotel because that would be a better option than this place.
Jun 8th, 2023