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Booking a Vacation Rental House Online

by Lisa Milbrand on February 17, 2010

Hotels may have room service, but rentals offer additional perks—more spacious accommodations, the ability to save dough by fixing a few of your own meals, and often, a more low-key, authentic travel experience. The Internet has made it easier than ever to find a fantastic rental anywhere in the world—and here’s where to start your search.

FlipKey.com
A new entry from the TripAdvisor group, FlipKey.com has a more limited selection of rental listings than other sites, but offers TripAdvisor’s signature five-star user reviews—giving you a real traveler’s view of the pros and cons of any particular property, including specific ratings on everything from cleanliness and service to overall value. Includes more than 100,000 properties from locations around the world.

HomeAway.com
HomeAway.com has an extensive range of rentals, more than on any other site we checked out. (The HomeAway group also includes VRBO.com (125,000 listings), VacationRentals.com (35,000 listings), GreatRentals.com (29,000 listings), and CyberRentals.com (170,000 listings)). The search function makes it easy to narrow down the results by destination, rental type (everything from cottages to condos), and bedroom and bathroom count. And you can pay a little extra for the HomeAway Carefree Rental Guarantee ($101 for a $5,000 rental), which will help you recoup your losses if the rental isn’t as was represented on the site, the property was double booked or the home has been foreclosed upon. Includes 185,000 properties from locations around the world.

Zonder.com
Zonder.com focuses on North American destinations, and offers a stellar guarantee for free: If the property owner charges additional fees, misrepresents the property substantially, or double books the house, Zonder will help you find a new (and better) rental—or refunds the price difference. (Number of listings not published.)

DestinationVillas.com
For last-minute bargains, DestinationVillas.com is the go-to spot—input your chosen destination and your e-mail address, and they’ll send you great deals that you can take on when the urge to travel strikes. (Keep in mind, though, that they have no guarantees about the quality of the rentals—so you may want to review any potential rentals elsewhere on the web before you put your deposit down. (Number of listings not published.)

Topics

Fab Websites, Family and Parenting, Travel & Entertainment, Travel

Discussion

From Denise on February 17, 2010 :: 10:13 am

I prefer hotels. Or I guess I should say I prefer room service:)

From Cathy on February 23, 2010 :: 4:14 pm

I love HomeAway and VRBO, we have been able to take amazing vacations we otherwise could not have afforded. I also greatly appreciate their rental guarantee. They are both great when traveling with small children anywhere, we have even got amazing rentals in NYC.

If you like the hotel experience, so many of them have owner units you can find and still enjoy hotel amenities. I love renting the W Residences and could never afford to do directly through residence.

I have never heard of the others and will check them out too.