Posts Tagged ‘vacation homes’

The inside scoop on beach rentals

Posted on April 22nd, 2009 by Laura Byrne Paquet

Joyce Copeland‘s love affair with vacation rentals started about a decade ago, when she was planning a vacation for her extended family and spotted a newspaper ad for short-term rentals in Lake Tahoe. “I was astounded by how little money we’d have to spend, and we could bring the dogs,” she says. Joyce often travels […]

Read the rest of this entry »

Under-the-radar vacation rentals

Posted on January 17th, 2009 by Laura Byrne Paquet

Interested in renting a house or apartment for your next vacation, but nervous about dealing with total strangers in a rent-by-owner arrangement or a big agency? Don’t despair. According to a new PhoCusWright study of the vacation rental market, there are 1.26 million homes available for short-term rental in the U.S. alone and–here’s the interesting […]

Read the rest of this entry »

Top five perks of vacation rentals

Posted on December 8th, 2008 by Laura Byrne Paquet

Buenos Aires apartment

I’ve been raving about the benefits of vacation rentals for years to anyone who will listen. So what’s so great about staying in a house or apartment instead of a hotel room? Here are my top five reasons to go local. You can discover new neighbourhoods. In many cities, hotels are clustered downtown or in […]

Read the rest of this entry »

Canadian family loses $4K in vacation home scam

Posted on November 26th, 2008 by Laura Byrne Paquet

As regular readers of this blog know, I’m a huge fan of vacation home and apartment rentals. I’ve rented properties on three continents and, fortunately, have never been the victim of a scam. But fraudsters are out there, as shown by this recent CBC story about a Gatineau, Quebec, family who lost $4,000 while trying […]

Read the rest of this entry »

New site promotes Scottish vacation rentals

Posted on November 4th, 2008 by Laura Byrne Paquet

The Association of Scotland’s Self Caterers (ASSC) has launched a well-designed website, Embrace Scotland, to link travellers with more than 2,500 vacation rental properties. You can search by region, number of people, property type (apartment, lodge, cottage and so on) and star rating (currently assigned by VisitScotland). Check boxes allow you to specify that you’re […]

Read the rest of this entry »

Vacation rentals are a $24.3-billion industry

Posted on October 23rd, 2008 by Laura Byrne Paquet

Tourism market research company PhoCusWright has released some preliminary figures from its forthcoming report, Vacation Rental Marketplace: Poised for Change. According to the study, vacation rentals are a US$24.3-billion industry worldwide, with online rentals accounting for about 12 percent of those revenues. Given the plethora of online vacation rental sites, I’m surprised the figure for […]

Read the rest of this entry »

Rent a place in the sun in Orlando

Posted on October 18th, 2008 by Laura Byrne Paquet

Not surprisingly, given that it’s one of the America’s top tourist destinations–it drew 48.7 million visitors last year, including almost 800,000 Canadians–Orlando has thousands of vacation homes for rent. Vacation homes are a great option for two types of groups that flock to Orlando each year: families visiting the famous theme parks, and golfing buddies […]

Read the rest of this entry »

More News

Books

Book review: Writer explores England by kayak

As British writer David Aaronovitch points out in the introduction ...

Contests

Contest: Win an African safari for 11!

Become a friend of Intrepid Travel on Facebook, and you ...

Destinations

Anguilla…just because

Those of you who have been following my new series, ...

Food

Aussie cafe serves chocolate on steroids

If you've ever thought, "Gee, chocolate bars would be great ...

Home Exchanges

Wanna buy a home-swap site?

Ever wanted to run your own home exchange site? Do ...

How To

Useful tips for travel photography

For 20 years, I used single-lens reflex (SLR) film cameras, ...

Language

Five places to find foreign language schools

The current online issue of The Atlantic Monthly includes an ...

Music

desert sands dunes Algeria

Year of Geography: Algeria

Unfortunately, Algeria is going through a bit of a rough ...

Recipes

Recipe: Tara Farms Pecan Pie Muffins

OK, this is a first for this blog: a recipe! ...

Travel Trivia

Travel trivia: Islands of Japan

By area, what is Japan's largest island? (Hint: It's where ...

Vacation Rentals

More info on Montserrat villa

A while ago, I wrote a blog post about the ...

Volunteer Travel

The view from Cameroon

British ex-pat Steve Jackson writes a somewhat colourful, often cranky ...