what are good websites to rent vacation homes
Hotels aren't always the best fit for traveling families and groups. When you need perks like a kitchen, a private pool, or a backyard; more space to spread out; or the adventure to alive like a local, information technology'southward time to seriously consider a vacation home rental. Whether yous're looking for a beach firm, an urban apartment, a summer rental, or a country vacation abode, you'll exist able to notice it on i of the all-time vacation rental sites.
The All-time Vacation Rental Sites for Groups and Families
There are a lot of vacation rental sites out there, and it may not be immediately articulate what makes one better than another. At that place's also the complicating factor that there are two dissimilar types of vacation rental websites:
- Vacation rental booking platforms (likewise known just as vacation rental sites) that act every bit a third-party pass-through between belongings owners and guests.
- Vacation rental booking agencies, through which yous can book straight, and which tend to offer more protection and service.
In this story, nosotros'll focus on the best vacation rental booking platforms like Airbnb, Vrbo, and others. Just be certain to check out our story on vacation rental booking agencies for a elementary explanation of the benefits and a look at some of the best agency websites if you want to go that road.
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Even when you narrow your search to just the all-time vacation rental websites, you're still going to notice a lot of variation in the approach these booking platforms take. There are some like Airbnb that mix full-firm rentals with room rentals in individual homes. In that location are online travel bureau (OTA) sites similar Booking.com, Hotels.com, and Expedia that role both as hotel booking sites and holiday rental booking sites, and mingle both in listings. And at that place are likewise dozens of smaller vacation rental sites, many of which offer region-specific short term rentals.
We're going to tackle all of it and plough you into an skilful who knows exactly how to detect the best holiday rental abode for your grouping or family unit. Click on any site in the listing below to get directly to the vacation rentals booking site and beginning your search, or curlicue down and read our reviews detailing what y'all'll get from each platform, plus its relative strengths and weaknesses. And keep reading for tips on finding the best holiday rental site for you.
The Top Vacation Rental Booking Sites (Sorted Alphabetically)
- Agoda Homes
- Airbnb
- Booking.com
- Expedia
- HometoGo
- Hotels.com
- Tripadvisor Vacation Rentals
- Vrbo
Agoda Homes
Agoda is owned past Booking.com, only the user experience is different plenty that nosotros're reviewing it separately in this list of best vacation rental sites.
Agoda is Asia'south largest online travel agency. It has a booming hotel business organisation, simply it likewise has a standalone Agoda Homes site where you can discover short-term holiday dwelling house rentals in 50 dissimilar countries, including the United States.
Correct off the bat, y'all tin place your needs every bit a family or group traveler looking for a holiday rental property. When you specify location and dates, click on the number of people—there you can specify if you're a family traveler; traveling in a group; or are a solo, couple, or business traveler. Once you become search results, you tin drill down more with filters like "Family Friendly." In sure destinations, Agoda also lets you filter by backdrop that don't need a credit carte du jour up front—a nice perk if you're trying to pay out equally piddling equally possible up forepart.
Filters are pretty standard on Agoda, with the ability to sort by price, rating, amenities, etc. There's also the nice option to sort by what other guests think are the strengths of the belongings, for example "excellent location," "excellent service," and and so on.
To see the total price of backdrop, y'all'll need to go up to the dollar sign ($) near the height correct of the page, click on it, and then toggle from "Base of operations price per night" to "Full price per night." Agoda, similar its parent company Booking.com, offers a great best-price guarantee on bookings. Unlike Booking.com, however, Agoda sometimes charges a guest booking fee, though it'southward difficult to know what information technology will be until you lot expect at the price breakup for an individual vacation rental property.
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Airbnb
Airbnb offers a make clean, easy-to-navigate platform, one that manages to feel minimalist in design but also has all the filters you want. Because this vacation rentals site mixes in whole-firm rentals, individual rooms, and even hotel rooms, you'll want to specify (with the "Type of Place" button at the top of search results pages) if yous want to have your unabridged rental to yourself. Private listing pages are similarly like shooting fish in a barrel to browse, with of import information surfaced at the peak, and a articulate outline of the total pricing, including cleaning fees, service fees, taxes, then on.
There are too filters that allow you to surface upscale vacation rentals, attainable vacation rentals, and rentals managed by "Superhosts" (Airbnb-speak for property owners and managers that are highly rated by guests). Also handy? The side-by-side map then you can coil listings and meet exactly where they are within a city or region. Airbnb does offer a way to search for vacation domicile rentals with flexible cancellation policies, merely it's not as specific a search equally those offered by Vrbo and others.
Guests are charged a variable service fee that Airbnb says is "typically under fourteen.2% of the booking subtotal (the nightly rate plus cleaning fee and boosted guest fee, if applicative, but excluding Airbnb fees and taxes)." As well note that Airbnb has had some loftier-profile fails when it comes to protecting guests from last-minute cancellations and questionable booking behavior on the part of holding owners and managers. But the sheer scale of options and the by-and-big skilful booking experiences of guests keep people coming back to this ultra-popular vacation home rental site.
Booking.com
Booking.com is best known every bit a hotel booking site, just information technology's likewise a vacation rental booking site, and a good one at that. If yous're considering booking a vacation rental habitation, but want to compare your options confronting hotels in your destination, Booking.com offers an like shooting fish in a barrel way to do simply that. If, however, you want to narrow your search to just holiday rentals, you need to put in your search parameters, and choose the "Entire Homes and Apartments" tab almost the top of the search results page. Booking.com labels its properties by type. Expect to come across Apartments, Holiday Homes, Aparthotels, and even Chalets.
Filters are arable on this vacation rentals site, and they include toll range, amenities (pond pools, ac, pets allowed, etc.), holding score, location, and a very specific list of accessibility options (including wheelchair accessible holiday rentals, rental homes with Braille visual aids, bathrooms with lower level sinks and higher level toilets, and more). You can sort past backdrop with a free-cancellation option, though counterfoil is mostly merely complimentary up to a sure date before your booking.
On private habitation listing pages, you can see a checklist of health and safety measures in identify, including contactless check-in, disinfected guest accommodations, the use of cleaning chemicals that are effective confronting the coronavirus COVID-19, sanitized kitchen implements and cutlery, and other measures.
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At that place'southward a lot that's smashing about using Booking.com for vacation home rentals, but one bespeak of frustration is that the site doesn't always display the total cost, which can make comparing prices across vacation rental booking sites more hard. Even so, Booking.com has a skilful price-match guarantee on accommodations that will refund you lot the difference (with restrictions) for pricing you discover up to 24 hours in advance of your reservation date. To set it apart even more, Booking.com is ane of the few vacation rental sites that doesn't charge guests a booking fee. And so it might be worth the extra legwork.
Expedia
Expedia owns Vrbo (and other global vacation rental sites Homelidays , Abritel , FeWo-direkt , Bookabach , and Stayz ), simply considering the browsing and booking experience is different past virtue of Expedia being a traditional OTA, we're reviewing its vacation rental booking platform separately.
Vacation rental searches on Expedia are a lot similar hotel searches on the mega-OTA. In fact, at first, they're virtually duplicate: You offset by inbound your dates, destination, and number of guests into the Stays field and allow the results display.
At that point, though, you can plough your general accommodations search into a vacation-rental-specific search by scrolling down to the Belongings Type filter on the left and specifying preferences. Depending on the destination, you lot may be able to cull among holiday rental types including apartment, apart-hotel, motel, condo, condominium resort, cottage, individual vacation home, and villa.
Expedia's vacation rental listings accept some nice features. When you put in more than two people, Expedia starts flagging properties that are good for families. Filters are abundant, and include the usuals similar price, invitee rating, amenities, and number of bedrooms, plus highly specific filters similar accessibility options (accessible bath, whorl-in shower, etc.), neighborhood, and a box to check if you're looking for family friendly vacation rentals. You can also filter past properties that offer free cancellation or a reserve-now, pay-later choice.
Photos are, past and large, high quality, and make information technology easy to run into what y'all're getting. At that place's a tiny map at the top of the results page, but to brand it big plenty to see you lot'll demand to click on it, at which betoken, you tin't run into the listings.
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Expedia displays the total price plus the nightly rate in the search results. Expedia does charge booking service fees, though its Terms of Use is very cagey about how much (the fees are bundled into taxes and fees in the total price).
HometoGo (+ Casamundo and Tripping.com)
HometoGo doesn't have its own inventory; instead, it's a vacation rental metasearch site that displays more eighteen million listings around the world. When you practice a search, this vacation rentals site pulls in listings of big vacation booking sites like Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, Flipkey, and and so on, but as well searches thousands of smaller and regional booking sites to see what's bachelor.
The site has more pop-ups than is platonic, merely search results are clean and like shooting fish in a barrel to read, and yous tin narrow results with filters including amenities, price, rating, and complimentary cancellation. Results are displayed alongside a map, and so it'south like shooting fish in a barrel to run into where the rental property you're considering is located.
When y'all're choosing the number of guests in your party, at that place's a box y'all can check to notation you're traveling with kids; this allows for more authentic pricing displays. Beyond beingness able to drill down to find rental properties with family-friendly civilities similar cribs and fenced yards, there are not specific means to discover family-friendly vacation dwelling rentals.
There are piece of cake ways to salve and share listings, nevertheless. Once you click "view deal" on a specific listing, you'll either be routed to the vacation rental booking site or, in some cases (if the property is marked "express") you tin complete the booking without leaving HomeToGo. According to the site's fine print, it makes its coin from commissions on referrals.
HomeToGo also owns Tripping.com, a metasearch holiday rental site with similar functionality and listings to its parent company. The company likewise owns Casamundo, a regional vacation rental website with 700,000 listings in Europe and the U.S.
Hotels.com
Hotels.com's vacation rental booking site is a mixed handbag, but at that place are enough make loyalists that nosotros're reviewing information technology for this listing.
Considering information technology's an established online travel agency, Hotels.com has helpful infrastructure in place. Y'all tin run across properties on a map, cheque distavnces to well-known attractions easily, and observe competitive prices. Filters are abundant, and allow you drill down on certain vacation rental types, including apart-hotels, apartments, caravan parks, cottages, houseboats, and villas.
Hotels.com also has the most comprehensive breakdown of accessibility options of whatsoever vacation rentals site, and includes the ability to search properties with accessible parking, accessibility equipment for the deafened, braille signage, wheelchair-accessible rooms, and more. The site touts its "gratis and like shooting fish in a barrel" online cancellation for nearly properties and offers different payment options, including paying online or at the property. Hotels.com also has a toll guarantee up to the twenty-four hour period before bank check-in.
There are some drawbacks, still. Search result pages are chaotic with things like cloak-and-dagger prices to unlock, extra stamps to collect, etc. While this can be good for savings (especially if you use the site oft and earn loyalty points), information technology makes it difficult to scan apace and come across accurate prices upwards front. Information technology's too non always easy to scan for bones information; for instance, you may have to dig to see how many bedrooms a property has.
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On the default "Featured" listings, properties are sorted by Hotels.com's commission rates, so information technology's a good idea to sort by invitee rating, cost, or some other filter to go an unbiased sort guild. And you lot take to drill down a number of screens in order to meet the total price (Hotels.com displays the "average nightly cost" in search results, and doesn't show taxes and fees, which include service fees, until yous achieve the booking window).
Tripadvisor Holiday Rentals (plus FlipKey, HolidayLettings, HouseTrip, Niumba, and Holiday Home Rentals)
Tripadvisor is a surprisingly lesser-known major player on the holiday rental booking scene. Its size is in large part due to the number of vacation rental sites in its portfolio. In improver to Tripadvisor Vacation Rentals (the Vacation Rentals tab on Tripadvisor), the company owns FlipKey, HolidayLettings, HouseTrip, Niumba (Castilian), and Vacation Home Rentals. These vacation rental sites share inventory, and then using Tripadvisor Holiday Rentals will yield the same results yous observe on the other sites. With more 800,000 listings around the world, at that place are a lot of options.
In browsing vacation rental listings by destination, you can easily meet the neighborhood, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, maximum occupancy, and reviewer rating. Photos vary in quality; some are clearly amateur snaps while others are clearly the work of a pro. You lot can scroll through the pictures without clicking away from the general listings pages, and you can opt to see more than data (similar a list of amenities) while staying on the main search results page every bit well. There's also an easy way to save properties you similar; merely click the heart.
Amenities are specific and conspicuously outlined—yous can check for everything from pilus dryers to hot tubs—and you can curlicue through bachelor dates on the agenda. Tripadvisor is an proficient in user reviews, and vacation rental reviews are, by and large, specific and helpful (and a great identify to become a sense of the property owner or managing director'due south customer service skills). At that place's a button to send a bulletin to the property owner even earlier you lot book, and vacation rentals prices are shown as both nightly charge per unit and bundled as the total price.
Navigating tin can be somewhat frustrating, though. Switching dates or destinations isn't as seamless every bit you'd expect, and in our tests, we found we needed to essentially start over (past going to the main Tripadvisor folio and clicking back into the Vacation Rental section) when we wanted to change destinations or dates.
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Tripadvisor's portfolio of vacation rental sites accuse guest booking fees between eight percent and xvi percent. Properties booked through Tripadvisor holiday rental sites are covered by a Payment Protection guarantee that promises a total refund if y'all're "prevented or denied access to your rental when you check in" or if the property is misrepresented.
Vrbo (formerly HomeAway; too Homelidays, Abritel, FeWo-direkt, Bookabach, and Stayz)
Looking for Homeaway on this list? You won't observe information technology: In June 2020, Expedia opted to retire the brand and focus instead on concentrating all its vacation rental listings on HomeAway'southward sister site, Vrbo . Family travelers were a major role of this decision: Expedia CEO Peter Kern explained, "Through the years, the Vrbo brand has consistently outperformed HomeAway with family unit travelers. Unifying our vacation rental brands under Vrbo allows the states to focus our energies on providing the best travel experience for families everywhere."
Vrbo is owned by Expedia, and is a major holiday rentals booking site in the U.S. and fifteen other countries. It, along with Expedia's other vacation rental sites—Homelidays, Abritel, FeWo-direkt, Bookabach, and Stayz—offer a massive inventory of vacation rentals around the world.
Vrbo has a clean and easy-to-navigate interface and, with its Trip Boards, makes it elementary to salve, organize, and share listings for multiple cities or vacations. Arable filters brand narrowing down properties easy. In add-on to number of bedrooms and bathrooms, you tin can specify neighborhoods, reviews, safety features, accessibility, property type, and amenities. You tin besides screen for properties that are especially family unit-friendly or that allow events, and you can see and sort by "Premier Partners," i.e., highly rated owners and managers. The free counterfoil date deadline is displayed on search results pages; in that location's also a filter where yous tin can sort past properties that permit free cancellations until a sure number of days out.
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Vrbo conspicuously lists the total cost—including taxes and fees—every bit well as the nightly charge per unit for each listing. You also get clear linguistic communication before you volume about charges for damages and cancellation fees. Vrbo has fraud-screening measures, payment protection, and helps with last-minute rebooking if owners cancel within 24 hours of the booked stay.
Wondering how to say Vrbo? Rather than pronounce each alphabetic character, say "Verbo."
Regional Specialist Vacation Rental Booking Sites
- Akilar: This Kingdom of spain-focused regional vacation rental site lists villas, apartments, and homes all around Spain.
- Casamundo: With 700,000 listings in Europe and the U.S., Casamundo (owned by HomeToGo) is a behemothic among regional specialists.
- Clickstay: This large network of rentals is focused mainly on Kingdom of spain, Italy, and France; but its too has listings in Asia and North America.
- Cottages.com: Cottages.com lists more than than 20,000 holiday cottages and luxury homes in the UK, Ireland, French republic, and Italy.
- SnapTrip: SnapTrip calls itself a market aggregating "over sixty,000 professionally managed cottages from large name partners" in the U.K.
Which Is the Best Vacation Rental Booking Site?
In that location's no one agency or platform that shines higher up others for families, but we can provide some conclusions based on our holiday rental site reviews and years of using these booking platforms.
- If you're looking for budget alternatives to conventional hotels, start with one of the behemothic booking platforms—that'southward where y'all'll detect the majority of the low-priced options. Become to a regional specialist platform if yous want more options.
- For rentals in the U.S., do a local search in addition to checking the larger vacation rental booking platforms.
- Cast a broad net. Cheque with every bit many different sources as you lot have time and patience for. And keep in mind that many rentals will list with more than one booking platform, but a few stick to one or ii. Prices are most ever the same.
- Avoid booking holiday rentals through Craigslist or eBay. Although both list vacation rentals, they provide almost no consumer protections.
Where Can I Find High End Holiday Rentals?
If you're looking for an upscale rental, and especially one with lots of bedrooms, start with either a worldwide managed bureau or area specialist. By going with a managed agency, yous accept the peace-of-heed of working with an established rental bureau rather than an possessor who may be hard to track downwardly in there'due south an issue. Renting a high-end vacation rental through a managed vacation dwelling house booking agency by and large incurs less take chances than renting through a booking platform considering if you encounter a problem, you know how to reach a responsible political party, or who to request a refund through. This is a particularly important item if y'all're renting an expensive holding based solely on online descriptions and pictures.
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More from FamilyVacationist:
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- 27 of the Most Epic Family Vacations
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