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Planning a vacation but don’t want to go the hotel route? Vacation home rentals can be an ideal solution — you get the extra space, separate bedrooms, a kitchen and much more, often for a better price than a hotel. Millions of people use vacation rental websites, like VRBO or HomeAway, every day to find the ideal vacation rental and the best deals.
But how do you know which websites provide the most legit vacation rentals? And if you’re a property owner looking to advertise your vacation home, which websites are the best to list with? Keep reading to find out the answers to these questions and more — and to see our picks for best vacation rental websites.
Article Overview
- Why Are Peer To Peer Rentals Better?
- Best Rentals For Renters
- How To Avoid Scams
- Websites For Owners
- More Rental Websites To Consider
- Benefits Of Rentals vs Hotels
- Travel Inspiration
New To Peer To Peer Home Rentals?
For those of us who love to travel (especially off the beaten path), it’s a no-brainer to turn to a vacation rental website. More often than not, you can find any type of accommodation you desire at a more affordable price than staying in a hotel.
It also allows you to experience your destination in a more realistically local setting than you would in a hotel. It’s obviously an appealing alternative.
According to a recent TripAdvisor survey, an estimated 59% of U.S. vacationers have turned to the vacation rental route.
If you’ve never tried a vacation rental website, you’re certainly missing out.
Best Vacation Rental Websites For Renters
As a traveler, you have millions of rental options ripe for the picking on vacation rental websites. Some of these sites are very reliable and have your back in case things go wrong. Others, not so much.
See our top picks for top vacation rental websites based on several factors:
- Site search features
- Quantity and consistent quality of rentals
- Payment options
- Insurance availability
- Direct contact with the property owner (or rental agency)
- Customer support
Best For American Travel: Vrbo Review
Vrbo (who merged with Home Away) is the best vacation rental websites for American travelers, hands down. As mentioned above, HomeAway is the parent company to VRBO and its parent company is now Expedia. With well over a million listings to choose from and the best search features out there, it has the best inventory to find your match in the United States (and beyond).
It also offers insurance policies that other sites just don’t match (although it charges some hefty fees). And its reach for listings is impressive, whether you’re looking for a regional U.S. beach vacation or going abroad, Vrbo can deliver listings like no other site can.
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Best For International Travel: House Trip Review
HouseTrip has excellent listings and superb customer reviews. Acquired by TripAdvisor in April 2016, HouseTrip remains a European based company at the time of writing this review. HouseTrip has a wide variety of listings, from single rooms and studio apartments to large homes and even castles.
A majority of its listings are in Europe, but it does have a fair number in the U.S. — a total of 20,000 destinations around the world. HouseTrip gets excellent customer reviews for the quality of its rentals and ease of process. However, it offers no type of insurance to protect guests or hosts. It now provides TripAdvisor’s Payment Protection, which protects guests for up to $10,000 if denied access or the website substantially misrepresented the rental property.
HouseTrip has pretty hefty guest booking fees (thanks to the acquisition) at 5% to 15%, but it charges a nominal 3% booking fee for owners. If you’re not concerned with damage insurance, we recommend you try House Trip.
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How To Avoid Scams As A Vacation Home Renter
Read Previous Renters’ Reviews
Always read reviews posted by previous renters. If a rental property doesn’t have any reviews, it’s not necessarily a red flag, but you won’t have that third-party verification to put you at ease. And if a site doesn’t allow reviews, you probably want to steer clear.
Payment Forms Matter
Look for rentals that require a credit card, PayPal or another form of traceable payment. If they ask you to wire payment or pay in cash — red flag! Another red flag: if you’re asked to pay the full amount more than two months before your stay. Reputable vacation rental websites typically require an initial deposit, followed by payment in full one to two months before your arrival date.
Get The Facts
Confirm with the owners or agency that a “full kitchen” is, in fact, fully functional. Does the description say “three bedrooms?” Make sure all are full bedrooms instead of one being a sunroom, an open loft or another type of makeshift room. Get the skinny on any additional fees you could incur which the rental website may not advertise.
Property Conditions
What do you do if you arrive at your rental, and it’s not as advertised or is something not working that should be? If you’ve rented through an agency, ask for another property. If you’re dealing directly with property owners, take photos so you can compare them to what’s on the rental website. If you decide to stay, ask for a partial refund. If you don’t stay, ask for a full refund.
Best Vacation Rental Websites For Property Owners & Managers
See below for our top picks for top picks for best websites for vacation rentals by owner. We based our selections on several criteria: damage coverage, popularity/marketing reach of the site, listing fees and more.
What Do You Need To Know Before You List Your Property?
- Check On Your Local Ordinances: Many localities have rules in place for licensing a short-term rental as well as occupancy tax.
- Neighborhood Associations: If you own a home and pay neighborhood dues, many homeowner’s associations have regulations against renting out your property or at the very least, some guidelines to follow.
- Make Sure You’re Covered For Insurance: While some vacation rental websites offer damage insurance, make sure you’re covered for that as well as personal liability claims and theft of personal property like jewelry or artwork.
- Cleaning And Maintenance: With most vacation rental websites, you’re in charge of setting up (and setting fees for) repairs and cleaning of your property before and during your guests’ stays.
Best For American Property Owners: Airbnb Review
Airbnb is our top pick for best vacation rental website for hosts. What’s the main difference between Airbnb and VRBO? Its listings are usually places where people currently reside versus HomeAway’s VRBO which are second homes and not occupied full-time.
What sets it apart? With a reasonable 3% booking fee for each rental and a free “Host Guarantee” that covers up to $1 million in damages to your property, you get a lot of bang for your buck. And Airbnb is another powerhouse vacation rental site, with more than 1.5 million listings, so you’ll reach a large audience of potential renters.
For travelers, Airbnb has easy, fairly thorough search filters and a cool feature that lets you know the percentage of rentals still available based on your search criteria (dates, location, occupancy, etc.). In other words, book now because your options are running out. You can even view the owner’s profile, which includes reviews from previous renters.
In 2019, Airbnb acquired HotelTonight the popular App for booking last minute hotel deals at high-end and boutiques. If you are new to Airbnb, get an exclusive $35 credit towards your first trip via this link.
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Learn About Starting An Airbnb Business
Best For International Property Owners: Wimdu Review
Another Europe-based company, Wimdu isn’t the site to find your regionally popular or lesser-known vacation sites within the U.S. But if you’re looking global, it’s worth giving it a shot — a majority of its listings are apartments in European cities. And you can find some magnificent deals! A double occupancy room in the heart of London for less than $50 per night? Score! If you’re considering a trip to Europe, we highly recommend you see what Wimdu has to offer.
And, if you own property, Wimdu allows you to list for free, and you only incur a 3% booking fee with each rental. Wimdu offers owners damage insurance up to 500,000 Euros (roughly 545,000 U.S. dollars) per claim, and owners are only responsible for 150 Euros for each claim. This liability insurance, however, doesn’t cover properties in the U.S. or Canada.
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Other Vacation Rental Websites Reviewed
Although the following vacation rental websites didn’t make our top picks, they’re still worth considering as a vacationer and as a property owner/manager.
9flats | FlipKey | VacationHomeRentals.com
9flats Review
A German company launched in 2011, 9flats has more of a global, large-city focus heavily concentrated in Europe. 9flats is not the vacation rental website for you if you’re looking for a lot of U.S. beach or smaller city destinations (although they do have a good number of rentals in Miami). Like Airbnb, you can rent a room in addition to larger properties — and it offers a wide variety, including castles, treehouses, igloos, etc.
Property owners get host insurance in case of damages, which covers up to 500,000 Euros (approximately $545,000 U.S. dollars), but they also incur a hefty host booking fee. Still, 9flats gets excellent customer reviews, largely from their European clients. So, if you’re looking for a great deal abroad, check out 9flats.
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Flipkey Review
FlipKey’s parent company is the hugely popular travel review website TripAdvisor, so you’ll find the most authentic guest reviews and more photos compared to other sites. FlipKey has an intuitive, search-friendly interface and even has a feature that tells you how many people have used FlipKey to book each vacation rental home you view. It also offers more daily deals than other sites.
The downside? With roughly 300,000 rental properties in 11,000 destinations, it doesn’t have as much selection as its larger competitors. Its booking fees for renters are higher than most sites we’ve seen. And, although it offers a Payment Plan Policy, there’s a pretty strong consensus by customers online that FlipKey doesn’t have your back if things go wrong.
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VacationHomeRentals.com Review
VacationHomeRentals.com is another vacation rental website owned by TripAdvisor, but unlike other TripAdvisor-owned sites, VHR is simply a place for owners to list their vacation rentals and connect with vacation seekers. VacationHomeRentals.com has the smallest number of listings (100,000) out of all the sites we reviewed. As a traveler, you’ll largely be dealing with the property owner for rental payment, cancellation and other terms of your agreement.
From a host/property owner perspective, you’ll incur an annual $399 fee for listing and booking (per property listing). And your listing will be featured on TripAdvisor’s site as well, which has a reach of 250+million travelers. It’s easy to give VacationHomeRentals a try — for hosts, it offers a 60-day free trial period, and there are no booking fees for renters. But you do need to pay attention to the details on this site.
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The Benefits Of Using A Vacation Rental Website vs Hotels
The following video by HomeAway (our top pick for vacationers) illustrates the benefits of finding a larger rental space for you and your family — and how easy it is with sites like the ones we’ve reviewed.
Get Inspired To Travel
We hope this best vacation rental sites overview serves as a useful guide to help you discover a whole new vacationing world! And next time you plan a trip, compare it to hotels and you might be pleasantly surprised to see what you find and how much you can save.
Need a little travel inspiration on where to go? Here are some travel-related articles, but we recommend Honduras, Singapore and Bali as a few ideas and our favorite places to go.
Which websites do you rely on to find the best vacation rentals?
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This article should be updated to reflect that Airbnb does not allow hosts to create their own cancellation policies – they merely give the illusion of doing so. In fact, they offer guests what essentially amounts to travel insurance that overrides any cancellation policy the guest has agreed to, and does so solely at the host???s expense.
Thanks for letting us know, we’ll be sure to take a look and update so it’s as up to date as possible!
In addition to a bad experience with an Airbnb damage claim, I had another bad experience with Airbnb. I had a 2 week rental cancel on day 3 and Airbnb refunded the rent with no investigation of guest’s false claims giving me 2 hours to respond to guest’s ‘grievance’. I was working and didn’t see the email or respond for 4 hours. I believe the guest changed their vacation plans and avoided my strict 50% refund policy by showing up and creating a false complaint with Airbnb
I began hosting with Airbnb last summer to 7 great reviews with 8 more accepted for this summer. Airbnb has delivered great guests who I???ve enjoyed hosting. Airbnb let me down with one guest from whom I attempted to get compensated for damage they caused. Airbnb closed my first request without contacting me and promised to get in touch with me on my second request but didn???t. I called Customer Service but they said it was the Response Center???s responsibility but I cannot figure out how to actually communicate with them. This has gone on for 3 weeks with hours of my time going into a black hole of Airbnb process. Their model may be to make not worth the time to chase a $250 claim.
After reading the comments, Im just not sure which service to even use.
Something that every owner needs to know about HomeAway and its associated companies like VRBO. Homeaway illegally puts a block on the enquirer’s email account essentially preventing the owner from communicating directly with the enquirer. The owner’s email is detected by the block on the enquirer’s email account and the enquirer never knows that the owner has replied to them directly. Why does this occur? Simple reason, HomeAway wants to collect a service fee from the enquirer. The service fee is a simple greedy grab from the renter. I have definite proof that this blocking by HomeAway occurs.
I would strongly suggest that the author and all readers of this article read the recently revised AirBnB Terms and Conditions. It places the onus of renting a room or dwelling squarely on the shoulders of the renting parties (the host and the guest[s]). AirBnB accepts no liability – legal, professional, fiduciary or otherwise. All policies that exist are meant solely to favor AirBnB, the renter (guest) and not the renting party (host). Mind you, renters can damage property, cause harm or stay past their agreed upon, contractual amount of time (squatters) and you are left in the lurch as a renting party. They really have dropped the ball with their new policy. I know of a Super Host (as they call long-term hosts with consistently superb reviews) that has immediately terminated her account because of this. There are others doing the same. They are quickly creating their own obsolescence, deservedly so.
What platform did she migrate to?
Lady G, thanks for letting us know and that’s too bad to hear – hopefully they’ll revisit/revise their terms to protect both parties soon!
Seems most of the blogs I’ve read lately that pose the same question, opted for VRBO but most comments were from a year ago. Now it seems Airbnb is the Android or Apple and VRBO/Homeaway is the BlackBerry. Am I correct? We host on Airbnb but wondering if its a good idea to host on another platform to get other clients. Homeaway makes it difficult for non US / UK or EU countries to host – is there a work around for people like me sitting in Cape Town or say Rio, or Zanzibar?
Expedia’s Homeaway/VRBO/vacationrentals as well as Airbnb are basically vacation rental middlemen and they are so big and corporate they really aren’t interested in creating a good experience for both the homeowner and the traveler. They just want to facilitate a booking and collect fees. However, they are the only choices for the individual homeowner and so we must learn to work with them.
Another big Con with these companies is they are insisting that the homeowner offer instant booking because it is good for the traveler (and to hell with the homeowner). They forget that I am not a hotel, that the apartment I am offering is in my home, my residence. This is a problem because if you don’t agree to instant book they put your listing low on the list and as we all know, most vacation rental hunters have a short attention span and don’t scroll very far down because they assume that is where the dregs are. And they don’t have a filter for five star reviews which would automatically bring my property to the top. These companies are dictating more and more how we should rent our properties and telling us it is in our best interest to do so and if we don’t well, we just won’t get the exposure that other property owners who comply will have. And really the only thing they offer is the venue with minimal protection, no screening, no safety measures, and the venue is the only show in town. It is like blackmail for the homeowner. A love it or leave it proposition.
AirBNB does NOT have its hosts backs. Check the fine print – you must file a claim with the “guarantee” before the next guest checks in AND you must have supporting documentation and photographs and the whole bit. How in the world are you supposed to make these calculations and get this documentation together, and draft a narrative letter and such, in a 3 hour window in which you are supposed to be cleaning for the next guest? As another commenter noted below, customer service is basically useless (the word Kafkaesque comes to mind). They just copy and paste the same words to you over and over and call denials of your claim “compromises.” And it’s not a matter of me being a little guy. I’ve had multiple AirBNB properties for years and have asked for very little. They don’t care. It’s a fine platform, just don’t expect them to actually guarantee anything, despite their assurances.
K Pen, thanks for sharing your personal experience with us to further help our readers!
Airbnb still owes me thousands of dollars as a host. I found that when you actually need help, customer service is basically useless when it comes to money. I will not be doing Airbnb again.
L Dem, so sorry to hear that’s the case with you and you had a bad experiencing hosting on Airbnb. Thanks for letting us know and good luck getting your money!
Hi Sally,
Thanks for the great info on the various homesharing sites. Here’s an update: HomeAway and its subsidiaries was recently bought by Expedia. They’ve decreased the pay per visit fee for owners, but have added a booking fee for travelers. Best, Rick
Rick, thanks so much for letting us know! We appreciate it!
Got your acknowledgment a month ago, but the latest email of the article still says that HomeAway doesn’t charge a booking fee. Check it out- they definitely DO now charge a booking fee. Yours for consumer service, Rick
Thank you Richard, we have updated it. It may take a day or two to show up on your end do to caching. Thanks for staying diligent and notifying us and our apologies for not updating it the first time! Have a great weekend!
Does anyone know anything about the booking site Tripelli tha appears to be new. No Service fee charged. Free listing for a trial period.