Explosion in the number of inexpensive vacation home and apartment rentals
April 27th, 2008 - Category: ApartmentsWith even modest hotels charging from $200 to $300 a room all over the world (and sometimes more), the smart traveler is frequently turning to the rental of lower-cost vacation homes or apartments.
We have learned that it is rather easy to find, say, a perfectly acceptable $139-a-night apartment in Manhattan to substitute for a Manhattan hotel room costing — according to American Express — an average of $325 a night in 2007.
So many large new companies now offer the rental of vacation homes and apartments worldwide that it’s hard to keep up. Starting some 12 years ago, there was VRBO.com (Vacation Rental by Owner), followed by several similar but smaller firms, then followed last year by the big EVRentals.com (owned by the immense Wyndham Hotels corporation) and then Rentalo.com.
But the mightiest of them all turns out to be a firm of which you probably have never heard: Homeaway of Austin, Texas. Formed in 2005, but not really operating until late 2006, it recently has merged with the big VRBO.com and today offers far more than 100,000 vacation rentals in the U.S. and abroad.
Part of its appeal is an unusually attractive Web site — www.homeaway.com — that’s one of the most logical and informative of any in the field.
Since Homeaway now owns VRBO, is there still any reason to use VRBO? Yes, claimed an executive of Homeaway with whom I recently spoke. Though a large percentage of their respective inventories are the same, the two collections of homes and apartments aren’t totally similar, and you occasionally can find a bargain on one site that doesn’t appear on the other.
An even newer entrant to this expanding industry is Zonder (www.zonder.com), whichspecializes in North America, Central America and the Caribbean. As an example of its product, it cites one particular four-bedroom beachfront property in Costa Rica that includes a private hot tub, full-size kitchen and even a blender for cocktails, all for less than $200 a night. I recently used Zonder to find an attractive $139-a-night, two-bedroom apartment in expensive Manhattan.
What other advantages does Zonder offer? Its users, it says, can view exact property locations through Microsoft Virtual Earth or Google Earth. They can filter search results using criteria such as price, distance, group size and thousands of amenity combinations. Their description of each property includes a photo slideshow and a detailed write-up.
The success of Homeaway and Zonder stems not simply from cost but convenience. Spacious, well-furnished, reasonably priced properties are found in popular areas ranging from Orlando and other Sun Belt locations to Paris and London.
As a test, go to Homeaway’s Web site, click on the state of Florida, then click on several of the towns in the Orlando area. After accessing several offers, go deeper into the site for the many photographs that are included for each property. Who wouldn’t prefer a large multiroom home with a swimming pool to a hotel room or two, which cost exactly the same?
