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Vacation Rental Primer: What is a Vacation Rental?
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I have stayed at many vacation rentals in my travels and I can attest that, for me, it is the most relaxing way to vacation in any destination. Perhaps it is the idea of being perfectly at home in a distant city or country. It is exhilarating to pretend, if even for a few days, to be a local; to get to know the town or city; to frequent a great cafe or bar, meet the townsfolk and really get a sense of what it would be like to live your life in that location.
A few examples of my vacation rental travels: watching the whales from an oceanside condo in Maui; a ski-in, ski-out 5BR home with outdoor jacuzzi in Breckenridge; a 5BR/5BA pool/spa home near Malaga, Spain; an efficiency apartment in North Beach, San Francisco, near Little Italy.
The mission for this column is to encourage travelers everywhere to branch out from hotel and resort vacations and to experience vacation rentals and live like locals in their vacation destination.
In this series of articles, I will give tips for the renter regarding how to find a great vacation rental, how to negotiate rates and terms, what questions to ask, how to research your destination, and the options and protocols of booking a vacation rental.
For owners of vacation rentals I will give advice on how to buy and set up a vacation rental, how to market and price a vacation rental as well as how to deal with the rental process and the renters themselves.
First of all, what is a vacation rental? Simply put, a vacation rental is a home away from home. Instead of booking a full service hotel or even a modest roadside motel for your vacation, travelers can opt to stay in a modest condominium, a lavish private home, or even a celebrity estate. You can find short term vacation rental options in almost every town in the world.
Often the property is a second home for the owners of the property. The owners have purchased a private home or a condominium as a vacation home or as income property and have decided to rent it out for short stays. Owners would be looking to maximize income on this property in order to defray expenses or perhaps, although less likely, to make a profit on the rental income.
Property owners will hire a property management company to market, rent and maintain their property or they will do this work themselves, assuming that they live in the same town as their rental property.
One of the most robust sites for both owners to list their property and for renters to find vacation rentals is homeaway.com. Homeaway.com owns other sites such as vacationrentals.com and vrbo.com as well as A1vacations.com and cyberrentals.com as well as European sites. The major advantage for owners is that all of the sites link to one availability calendar. This is great for owners who want to utilize any or all of these sites to list their property and link availability to one calendar. There are countless vacation sites, but homaway.com and their affiliates is a good place to start.
For renters, these sites, especially homeaway.com, make it easy to find a property in almost any location in the world. Granted, there is a lot of work involved including sending the inquiries, evaluating responses, determining which property is a good value and even negotiating rates, but it will be hopefully worthwhile in the end.
So, dear fellow traveler, try a vacation rental for your next vacation, if you haven’t already. You’ll love it, and, if my experience is any gauge, you’ll come back for more.
