July 1, 2004 -- Reacting to the increased aversion to e-mail spam, Rentalo.com, an Internet directory for vacation rental lodgings worldwide, has developed an e-mail privacy option. With this method, your chances of getting spammed by someone learning your private e-mail address are lessened, they say. Moreover, they have a new browse feature that allows you to search by price, size and name and type.
Rentalo.com (www.rentalo.com)claims it has nearly 100,000 rental homes, hotels, villas, apartments, guest houses and B&Bs in 15,000 locations in the USA and around the world. I checked out five of their continents. In Key West, I found a small B&B I know well, the Garden House, with prices from now through December 23, 2004, starting at $129 per room, for example, with some at Eaton House said to be as low as $95.
In London, usually a pricey destination, I found monthly stays that worked out to as little as £18.66 per night (about $34) in North London, but in central London a better deal (time wise and transport wise) of £60 (about $110) for a double room. I discovered moderate and high prices in searches for lodging in the Bahamas (35 properties, one as low as $66.66 per night), the South Pacific (two properties in Fiji) and Asia (10 listings in Kyoto, most of them expensive hotels).
Better yet, the firm will research for you. Submit a free inquiry with criteria such as destination, type of property, dates and price range, and shortly thereafter offers are generated automatically and instantly online or via e-mail. After you look over the proposals, you pick which ones you like and communicate with the owners or managers directly.
Rentalo.com offers a couple of examples of their properties:
- Villa Chez Nous in New Orleans is a five-room Creole cottage of the 1800s with 14-foot ceilings and two bedrooms, with nightly rates from $85 to $100.
- The castle of Marchesi Peruzzi in Tuscany is with a two-bedroom, two-bath villa. Amenities include a pool and garden. It's just 15 minutes by car from Florence and is close to the towns of Siena, Pisa and San Gimignano. If you stay a week, you get an afternoon of free wine and food sampling. Nightly rates start at $60.
Other Directories
Of the half dozen other sites I checked out, only one mentions the number of properties listed. That one is www.greatrentals.com, which has 6,100 lodgings on hand. It's also a member of the Better Business Bureau, which is reassuring, and its international listings range from a continent, Africa, to a country, Zambia, with nearly all the European nations and Caribbean islands in between.
Here are a few more: www.rentalexpress.com has mostly USA listings, but its international listings range from Aruba to the US Virgin Islands, alphabetically speaking. The www.10Kvacationrentals.com site, despite its name, says only that it has "thousands" of listings without being more specific. Its international sites range from Africa to the South Pacific.
At www.rent101.com, they don't mention numbers of properties but say their international sites vary from Africa to Oceania, again alphabetically. At www.onlinevacationrentals.com, the worldwide range is from Africa to the South Pacific, though the majority of listings are in the USA.
Finally, at www.vacationrentalnet.com, the range of rentals is from Africa to the United Kingdom, with most emphasis on the USA.
As to user frequency, figures (when available) are all over the place, Rentalo.com saying nearly four million page views per month are registered with them, and Vacation Rental Net saying they have more than 25,000 unique visitors per month.
