Not a hotel lover? Try a vacation rental
“Eew, this isn’t anything like what I expected!” Although vacation rentals don’t generate a lot of complaints, I’m pretty sure the number one complaint is disappointment on arrival at a previously unseen rental.
The big online vacation rental “marketplaces” such as FlipKey and VRBO do as much as they can to assure that rental owners are, as FlipKey puts it, “nice and trusted people,” and they vet renter reviews and complaints to weed out bad actors.
Still, they’re essentially billboards, with no way to check individually on as many as a million separate posted rentals. And less organized websites such as Craigslist provide almost no cover for renters.
Over the years I’ve used several such marketplace websites with no problems. But if you’re looking for an extra level of certainty, you might well turn to a “curated” rental agency that posts only rentals that staff or associates have examined personally.
Most curated vacation rental agencies specialize geographically. I’ve used such disparate outfits as Oregon Coast Vacation Rentals, At Home in France, and Vacanza Bella to find rentals that I would be reasonably sure were described accurately and honestly.
And I know of literally dozens of similar agencies around the world. While London, Tuscany and Provence may get a bit more than their share of curated agencies, you can find one almost anywhere.
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Working with an agency
Some curated vacation rental websites offer another advantage. Unlike the marketplace websites, many specialized sites act as actual agencies: Your deal is with the online agency, not the individual property owner/manager. If you have any problems related to payment terms, you settle them with a local agency, not a possibly anonymous owner in some foreign country.
Not all geographically focused agencies are curated. I recently received a press release from a new outfit that mounts a series of separate websites for rental cabins in narrowly focused rustic regions: RentWisconsinCabins, RentMichiganCabins, RertMinnesotaCabins, RentMontanaCabins, RentNewYorkCabins and RentTennesseeCabins.
The basic pitch is to renters: Avoid the big guys’ fees. But, obviously, that pitch may draw in some properties that you won’t find on the giant websites. Give them a look if you’re interested in those areas.
Send e-mail to Ed Perkins at eperkins@mind.net. Also, check out Ed’s new rail travel website at www.rail-guru.com.
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