VRBO IS The Way To Go!!

If you haven’t heard about Vacation Rentals by Owner by now, you are really missing out on some great vacation deals! VRBO.com , as it’s commonly called, is a vacation rental website that puts vacation homeowners in touch with potential renters. Whether it’s a beach house in the OC of the California, a Swiss chalet atop a mountain, or a small castle in Ireland…VRBO has it! The site is easy to navigate, which makes it almost addictive on a rainy day! I have to admit, we’ve spent time “dream travelling”…searching for beautiful apartments and Villas available across the world!

We’ve had success in renting a beach house in California through VRBO.com before so when it came time to take the next step in our vacation planning, it was a natural choice to begin here. I actually put our excited 10 year old to the task of narrowing our choices. The site allows you to choose your country, city and in many cases down to neighborhoods. It also has advanced search options like number of beds, number of rooms, whether it’s pet friendly, & what it’s occupancy limitations are.

We spent about a day, or rather, Paige did, narrowing our choices available on Grand Cayman. Once we found it, the site allows you to send an e-mail inquiry to the owners with any questions you have regarding their vacation property. In both of our experiences, the owners not only responded by e-mail quickly but also called us within a day once it became apparent that we would be confirming with them. For our Grand Cayman rental, our rental experience could not have been more pleasant! Our VRBO rental was perfect!

Once we confirmed our rental, the homeowners gave us several flexible options to pay our deposit and balance. They also were very friendly and forthcoming with tourist information about the Island...and trust me, there were many! The wife & I exchanged so many e-mails that we’ve become friends! We’re still chatting on line & I’ve already been back a month!

There are as many budgets out there as there are travelers & this may not work for all but it met our needs!

As of today, the rates on this oceanfront condo are:

LOW Season: 4/13/09 – 12/18/09 $1800USD per week/$300 a night
HOLIDAY: 12/19/09 – 1/10/10 $3000USD per week/$450 a night
HIGH Season: 1/11/10 - 4/11/10 $2400USD per week/$400 a night

+ 10% Government Lodging tax
There is also a cleaning deposit to most rentals so be sure to read all the policies before placing a reservation.

I recommend this web site to anyone I talk travel to! It’s just too easy! VRBO Really IS the way to go!

Happy Travelling!

How did we pick this year's "SPOT"?

Usually I get the “vacation bug” in the fall, but this last fall was a bit different because I knew I had a high school graduation year ahead of me & possibly a high school grad trip to go with it. I knew I couldn’t swing both a grad trip AND a family trip! If I sent her on the student Euro trip through one of the local high schools, it would almost equate what the whole family’s budget would be to travel somewhere. So, we teetered back and forth through the fall as to whether we’d send our well deserving graduate on one fabulous vacation or if we all got to go on a trip!

By the time we decided to go for the Euro trip for her, the cost went up another $500 bucks since we had missed another sign up deadline! Our unselfish grad finally became a little more vocal in the whole matter & said she’d much rather all of us go on a trip together somewhere anyway…that’s all this travel fiend needed to hear to begin spending my free time finding just the right place. Trouble was, in a family of 5, we all have our own perception of what the right place is!

We all loved Kauai but did we want to return again so soon after our last visit the summer before? What about another Hawaiian island? Or a cruise, or Washington D.C., or the Bahamas…and this is how it went for weeks in our house! We were stalled due to our own lack of direction & no one wanted to take the risk of pulling a location out of a hat!

One Sunday, John went to his usual men’s soccer game & asked a well travelled team mate his thoughts on the matter. Specifically, he asked him WHERE his best family vacation was, the ONE place they have returned to more than once that never disappoints them. The answer was Grand Cayman Island !
John came home & told me what his buddy said. It didn’t take long before we were doing some on line research. That is… if you call checking out our air miles and availability research! Within an hour, we secured our air & had a trip to plan!