Hotels aren’t always the ideal option for families and groups of people who are traveling together. When you are in need of conveniences such as a kitchen, a private pool, additional space to spread out, or the opportunity to live like a local, it is time to give serious consideration to renting a vacation home. If you’re looking for a beach house, an apartment in the city, a summer rental, or a vacation home in the country, you’ll be able to discover what you’re looking for on one of the most reputable websites for holiday rentals.
You may either scroll down and read our reviews, which outline what you’ll get from each platform as well as its respective strengths and shortcomings, or you can click on any site in the list below to go directly to the website where you can book your vacation rental and begin your search. Also, keep reading for some helpful hints on selecting the ideal website for your vacation rental needs.
Best Vacation Rental Booking Sites
o Agoda Homes
o Airbnb
o Expedia
o HometoGo
o Casamundo
o Tripping.com
o Hotels.com
o Tripadvisor Vacation Rentals
o FlipKey
o HolidayLettings
o HouseTrip
o Vacation Home Rentals
o Vrbo (formerly HomeAway)
The Most Trustworthy Online Vacation Rental Marketplaces for Large Groups and Families
There are quite a few websites devoted to holiday rentals, and it might not be immediately obvious what distinguishes one from the others in terms of quality. The fact that there are two distinct kinds of websites devoted to vacation rentals is another element that can make things more confusing.
1. Platforms for booking holiday rentals, often known as vacation rental sites or just vacation rental sites, which serve as a go-between for guests and property owners in the rental transaction.
2. Booking agencies for vacation rentals, through which guests can make direct reservations and which typically provide higher levels of protection and service.
Hotels aren’t always the ideal option for families and groups of people who are traveling together. When you are in need of conveniences such as a kitchen, a private pool, additional space to spread out, or the opportunity to live like a local, it is time to give serious consideration to renting a vacation home. If you’re looking for a beach house, an apartment in the city, a summer rental, or a vacation home in the country, you’ll be able to discover what you’re looking for on one of the most reputable websites for holiday rentals.
You may either scroll down and read our reviews, which outline what you’ll get from each platform as well as its respective strengths and shortcomings, or you can click on any site in the list below to go directly to the website where you can book your vacation rental and begin your search. Also, keep reading for some helpful hints on selecting the ideal website for your vacation rental needs.
The Best Online Booking Platforms for Vacation Rentals
o Agoda Homes
o Airbnb
o Booking.com
o Expedia
o HometoGo
o Casamundo
o Tripping.com
o Hotels.com
o Tripadvisor Vacation Rentals
o FlipKey
o HolidayLettings
o HouseTrip
o Short-Term Housing Accommodations
o Vrbo (formerly HomeAway)
The Most Trustworthy Online Vacation Rental Marketplaces for Large Groups and Families
There are quite a few websites devoted to holiday rentals, and it might not be immediately obvious what distinguishes one from the others in terms of quality. The fact that there are two distinct kinds of websites devoted to vacation rentals is another element that can make things more confusing.
1. Platforms for booking holiday rentals, often known as vacation rental sites or just vacation rental sites, which serve as a go-between for guests and property owners in the rental transaction.
2. Booking agencies for vacation rentals, through which guests can make direct reservations and which typically provide higher levels of protection and service.
In this piece, we will concentrate on the most effective online booking platforms for holiday rentals, such as Airbnb, Vrbo, and others. If you are still interested in going that route, have a look at our piece on vacation rental booking agencies for a straightforward explanation of the advantages they offer as well as a survey of some of the most reputable agency websites.
Even if you limit your search to just the most reputable websites for holiday rentals, you will still find a great deal of variety in the methods that are utilized by the various booking platforms. There are other services similar to Airbnb that combine renting out entire homes with renting out individual rooms in people’s homes. There are websites that act as online travel agencies (OTAs), such as Booking.com, Hotels.com, and Expedia. These websites allow users to make reservations for hotels as well as vacation rentals, and their listings combine the two types of accommodations. There are also thousands of smaller sites for holiday rentals, many of which focus on a particular region and offer short-term rentals in that area.
We are going to cover everything, and by the end, you will be an expert who is familiar with the process of locating the ideal vacation rental home for your family or party.
1. Agoda Homes
Although Booking.com owns Agoda, the user experience is distinct enough from that of Booking.com that we’ve decided to examine it separately in this roundup of the best websites for holiday rentals.
Agoda is the most popular and successful online travel service in Asia. It has a flourishing hotel business, but it also operates a separate website called Agoda Homes, on which you can locate holiday homes to rent for a short period of time in fifty various countries, including the United States.
You can immediately assess your requirements for a holiday rental property based on whether you are traveling as a family or with a group of people. If you click on the number of persons option after you have specified the place and dates, you will be able to choose whether you are a solo traveler, traveling with a partner, traveling for work, or traveling with your family. When you get the results of your search, you may narrow them down further by using filters such as “Family Friendly.” Agoda also provides the option to search for accommodations in certain locations that do not require a credit card at the time of booking, which is a convenient feature to have if you wish to pay as little as possible immediately.
On Agoda, filters are quite basic, and they include the opportunity to sort hotels according to price, rating, facilities, and so on. It is also possible to categorize the results according to what other visitors have deemed to be the property’s best features, such as “great location,” “good service,” and so on. This is a really convenient feature.
You will need to scroll up to the dollar sign ($) that is located in the top right of the page, click on it, and then toggle from the “Base price per night” to the “Entire price per night” option in order to view the total cost of the available rentals. Bookings made through Agoda are backed by an excellent best-price guarantee, much as those made through Agoda’s parent business, Booking.com. On the other hand, in contrast to Booking.com, Agoda may charge a guest booking fee; however, it is impossible to tell how much this fee will be unless you look at the specific price breakdown for a particular vacation rental property.
2. Airbnb
Airbnb provides a user interface that is uncluttered and simple to navigate, one that manages to look simple yet having a comprehensive set of filtering options available to users. Because this website for vacation rentals includes hotel rooms, private rooms, and entire houses for rent, you will need to specify (using the “Type of Place” button that is located at the top of the pages that contain search results) whether or not you want to have the entire rental to yourself in order to book it. The individual listing pages are likewise simple to navigate, with crucial information brought to the forefront at the top of the page, as well as a lucid breakdown of the overall pricing, which takes into account cleaning fees, service fees, taxes, and the like.
You can also use filters to bring to the surface accessible vacation homes, luxury holiday rentals, and rentals that are managed by “Superhosts” (Airbnb-speak for property owners and managers that are highly rated by guests). Also convenient? The map on either side of the listings allows you to scroll through them and see exactly where they are located within a city or region. There is a way to search for vacation home rentals on Airbnb that have flexible cancellation policies, but the search is not as specific as the searches that are available on Vrbo and other websites.
A variable service fee is assessed to guests, which Airbnb states is “usually under 14.2% of the booking subtotal” (the nightly rate in addition to the cleaning fee and additional guest fee, if applicable, but without Airbnb fees and taxes). Note that Airbnb has had some high-profile failures when it comes to protecting guests from last-minute cancellations and questionable booking behavior on the part of property owners and managers. This is something that should be taken into consideration. People keep coming back to this extremely popular website for vacation home rentals due to the sheer number of available alternatives as well as the generally positive booking experiences that previous visitors have had.
3. Booking.com
Although Booking.com is known mostly as a site for arranging hotel stays, it is also a site for booking vacation rentals, and it is a very good one at that. Booking.com provides a convenient way for you to make hotel vs. vacation rental house comparisons, so if you’re thinking about booking a rental property for your next vacation but also want to check out the hotels in the area, you can do so on their website.
However, if you want to limit your search to just vacation rentals, you will need to enter your search terms and then select the “Entire Homes and Apartments” tab that is located on the left side of the search results page. This will filter your search to just vacation rentals. Booking.com categorizes its accommodations based on type. Depending on where you go, you might find Chalets, Apartments, Holiday Homes, or even Aparthotels.
The search results on this website for vacation rentals can be narrowed down using a variety of filters, some of which include price range, amenities (such as swimming pools, air conditioning, and the ability to bring pets), property score, location, and an extremely detailed list of accessible features (including wheelchair accessible vacation rentals, rental homes with Braille visual aids, bathrooms with lower level sinks and higher level toilets, and more). You have the option of sorting by accommodations that provide a free cancellation option; however, free cancellations are typically only available up to a particular date prior to the date of your booking.
You can see a checklist of the health and safety measures that are in place on the individual home listing pages. These measures include contactless check-in, disinfected guest accommodations, the use of cleaning chemicals that are effective against the COVID-19 coronavirus, sanitized kitchen implements and cutlery, and other measures.
One of the things that can be frustrating about using Booking.com for vacation home rentals is that the site does not always display the total price. This can make it more difficult to compare prices across different vacation rental booking sites. However, there are a lot of great things about using Booking.com. However, Booking.com offers an excellent price-match guarantee on hotels, and they will reimburse you the difference in price (according to certain conditions) if you find a lower deal on another website up to twenty-four hours before the date of your reservation. Booking.com is one of the few vacation rental sites that does not charge customers a booking fee, which is another way in which it stands apart from the competition. Therefore, it is possible that the additional effort will be worth it.
4. Expedia
Vrbo is owned by Expedia, along with several other international vacation rental websites such as Homelidays, Abritel, FeWo-direkt, Bookabach, and Stayz. However, due to the fact that Expedia is a traditional online travel agency (OTA), the browsing and booking experience provided by Expedia is unique, so we are evaluating its vacation rental booking platform independently.
The process of searching for a vacation property on Expedia is quite similar to the process of searching for a hotel on a mega-OTA. You begin by entering your dates, destination, and the number of guests into the Stays field, and then you allow the results to appear. In point of fact, at first glance, they are almost impossible to differentiate from one another.
However, at that point in time, you will have the ability to transform your general accommodations search into a search that is specialized to vacation rentals by scrolling down to the Property Type filter on the left and entering your preferences. You may have the opportunity to select from a variety of vacation rental kinds, such as an apartment, apart-hotel, cabin, condo, condominium resort, cottage, home, private holiday home, and villa, depending on the location that you choose.
The listings for holiday homes that Expedia provides have some appealing qualities. When you enter more than two guests into an Expedia reservation, the website will begin to highlight properties that are suitable for families. Accessibility options (accessible bathroom, roll-in shower, and so on), neighborhood, and a box to check if you’re looking for family friendly vacation rentals are a few of the highly specific filters that are available in addition to the standard filters such as price, guest rating, amenities, and number of bedrooms. Filters are plentiful and include the usual suspects. You also have the option to limit your search to accommodations that permit free cancellations or have a reserve-now, pay-later payment option.
Photos are, for the most part, of a high quality and make it simple to see what it is that you will be purchasing. You’ll see a tiny map at the very top of the page that displays the findings; but, in order to make it large enough to view, you’ll need to click on it.
Within the search results, Expedia will offer both the total price as well as the nightly cost. Although Expedia does charge booking service fees, the amount of those costs is not made clear in the website’s Terms of Use page (the fees are bundled into taxes and fees in the total price).
5. HometoGo
HometoGo is a vacation rental metasearch service that offers more than 18 million listings from around the world. The company does not maintain its own inventory; rather, it is not a vacation rental company. When you conduct a search on this website for vacation rentals, the site not only pulls listings from large vacation booking sites such as Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, Flipkey, and so on, but it also searches thousands of smaller and regional booking sites to determine what accommodations are currently available.
The number of pop-ups on the website is more than what is considered to be optimal; nonetheless, the search results are well organized and simple to read, and you have the option to refine your results by using filters such as amenities, price, rating, and free cancellation. The search results include a map, making it simple for you to see the neighborhood in which each of the available rental homes is situated.
There is a box that you may check to indicate that you are going with children; this allows for more accurate pricing displays to be displayed to you when you are selecting the number of persons in your party. There are not any specific strategies to identify family-friendly vacation house rentals, other than the fact that you can narrow your search to find rental properties that provide family-friendly facilities such as cribs and fenced yards.
However, there are simple methods available for saving and sharing listings. After clicking “see offer” on a particular listing, one of two things will happen: either you will be taken to the website where you may book your vacation rental, or, in some situations (if the property is tagged “express”), you will be able to finish the booking without leaving HomeToGo. According to the terms and conditions of the website, it generates revenue through commissions on referrals.
Tripping.com is a metasearch vacation rental website that has features and listings that are comparable to those of HomeToGo, the parent firm. HomeToGo also owns Tripping.com. Additionally, the company operates Casamundo, a regional vacation rental website that features over 700,000 listings across the United States and Europe.
6. Hotels.com
Although the vacation rental booking service offered by Hotels.com is not without its flaws, the fact that the company has such a large number of devoted customers compels us to include it on this list.
Hotels.com has a user-friendly infrastructure in place due to the fact that it is a well-established online travel provider. You are able to view available properties on a map, conveniently verify the distance to well-known attractions, and find pricing that are competitive. You have access to a plethora of filters that let you to narrow your search to certain kinds of holiday rentals, such as cottages, houseboats, caravan parks accommodations, houseboats, cottages, and villas.
You can look for homes that include accessible parking, accessibility devices for the deaf, braille signage, wheelchair-accessible rooms, and more on Hotels.com, which has the most extensive breakdown of accessibility features of any website that offers vacation rentals. The website advertises its “free and easy” online cancellation service for the majority of properties and provides a variety of payment choices, such as the ability to pay online or at the location of the property. A price guarantee is provided by Hotels.com for bookings made up to the day before check-in.
However, there are a few negatives to consider. The pages that display search results are crowded with other content such as hidden costs to unlock, additional stamps to collect, and so on. This makes it harder to scan fast and see precise costs up front, which can be beneficial for savings (especially if you use the site frequently and collect loyalty points), but it can be beneficial for saves. It is also not always simple to scan for basic information; for instance, you might have to dig to find out the number of bedrooms a house has.
Properties on the default “Featured” listings are sorted by Hotels.com’s commission rates; therefore, it is a good idea to sort by guest rating, price, or another filter in order to receive an unbiased sort order. Hotels.com’s commission rates may be found here. In the search results, Hotels.com only displays the “average nightly price,” and it doesn’t include taxes and fees, which include service fees, until you reach the booking window. In order to see the whole price, you have to go down several pages.
7. Rentals on Vacation Property Website TripAdvisor
Tripadvisor is a key player in the vacation rental booking sector, yet surprisingly few people are familiar with it. Its size can be attributed, at least in part, to the enormous number of vacation rental websites that it manages. The company operates a number of vacation rental websites, including FlipKey, HolidayLettings, HouseTrip, Niumba (Spanish), and Vacation Home Rentals, in addition to Tripadvisor Vacation Rentals (the Vacation Rentals category on Tripadvisor). Because all of these sites share their inventories, searching for vacation rentals on Tripadvisor Vacation Rentals will give you the same results as searching on any of the other sites. There are a lot of possibilities available, as there are over 800,000 postings located all over the world.
When searching for vacation rental listings by location, it is simple to obtain information about the area, the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, the maximum number of guests, and the rating given by previous guests. The quality of the photographs varies greatly; some are obviously the work of an amateur, while others are obviously the work of a professional. You can scroll through the photographs without leaving the main page of the search results, and while you are still on the same page, you have the option of viewing additional information (such as a list of the available facilities). There is also a simple option to save properties that you like; all you have to do is click the love icon that is located on the listing page for the property.
You may check for anything from hair dryers to hot tubs while looking at the list of amenities, and the calendar allows you to scan through the available dates in a clear and concise manner. Tripadvisor is an authority when it comes to user reviews, and the reviews of vacation rentals on the website are, for the most part, specific and informative (as well as a wonderful way to get a sense of the customer service skills of the property owner or management). Prices for vacation rentals are displayed not only as a nightly rate but also as a packaged total cost, and there is a button that allows you to write a message to the property owner even before you book your stay.
However, navigating might be a little bit of a hassle at times. When we conducted our tests, we discovered that in order to change either the dates or the locations, we had to essentially begin the process all over again (by going to the main Tripadvisor page and clicking back into the Vacation Rental section). This was the case even though switching dates or locations isn’t as seamless as you’d expect it to be.
The network of vacation rental sites owned by Tripadvisor levies guest booking fees ranging from 8% to 16% of the total reservation cost. You are protected by a Payment Protection guarantee when you rent a property through one of the vacation rental sites owned and operated by Tripadvisor. This guarantee ensures that you will receive a full refund in the event that you are “prevented or denied access to your rental when you check in” or if the property was misrepresented.
8. Vrbo
If you’re looking for Homeaway on this list, click here. It is not going to be there: Expedia has made the decision to discontinue use of the brand in June of 2020 and redirect all of its efforts toward consolidating all of its vacation rental listings on Vrbo, the sister site of HomeAway. Travelers with children were a significant factor in this decision: “Over the years, the Vrbo brand has consistently outperformed HomeAway with family tourists,” noted Peter Kern, CEO of Expedia. Our ability to concentrate our efforts on giving families all over the world with the most enjoyable vacation possible is made possible by the consolidation of all of our vacation rental brands under the Vrbo umbrella.
Expedia now owns the popular vacation rental booking website Vrbo, which operates in the United States as well as 15 other countries. Together with the other vacation rental websites owned by Expedia, such as Abritel, FeWo-direkt, Bookabach, and Stayz, it provides access to a vast inventory of holiday rentals located all over the world.
Vrbo offers a user design that is streamlined and straightforward to navigate, and the platform’s Trip Boards feature makes it easy to save, organize, and share listings for a number of different places or vacations. The extensive availability of filters makes it simple to narrow down the properties. You can also specify the location, reviews, safety features, accessibility, property type, and amenities in addition to the number of bedrooms and baths.
You may also filter for homes that are particularly family-friendly or that allow events, and you can view and sort by “Premier Partners,” which are owners and managers that have received good ratings. On the pages that display the search results, the free cancellation date deadline will be presented. There will also be a filter that allows you to sort among the properties that accept free cancellations up until a particular number of days in advance.
Vrbo makes it easy to understand the whole cost of each listing, which includes all applicable taxes and fees, in addition to the nightly rate. You also receive explicit text regarding prices for damages and cancellation fees before you make the reservation. Vrbo provides fraud-screening procedures, money protection, and assistance with last-minute rebooking for guests whose hosts cancel their reservations less than 24 hours before their scheduled check-in time.
Booking Sites Specialized in the Local Area for Vacation Rentals
o Akilar is a website dedicated to regional holiday rentals in Spain. It features listings for homes, flats, and villas located all around the country.
o Casamundo: Casamundo, which is owned by HomeToGo and features over 700,000 listings in both the United States and Europe, is a giant among regional specialists.
o Clickstay is a wide network of rental properties, the most of which are located in the European countries of Spain, Italy, and France. However, it also has listings in Asia and the United States of America.
More than 20,000 vacation cottages and luxury residences may be found listed on Cottages.com. These properties are located in the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, and Italy.
o SnapTrip is a marketplace that claims to aggregate “over 60,000 professionally managed cottages from big name partners” in the United Kingdom.
What is the most reputable website for booking vacation rentals?
Although there is no one agency or platform that stands out from the rest for families, we were able to draw some conclusions based on our research and years of experience utilizing various booking platforms and vacation rental websites.
o If you’re looking for low-cost alternatives to traditional hotels, the best place to begin your search is on one of the many large booking platforms, as this is where the majority of the available deals can be found. If you want additional choices, you should use a site that specializes in your location.
o When looking for rentals in the United States, in addition to examining the main vacation rental booking platforms, you should also conduct a search in your area.
o Make sure to use a wide net. If you have the time and patience, check out as many different sources as you possibly can. Also, keep in mind that the majority of vacation rentals will post their availability on many booking platforms, but only a select handful will limit themselves to just one or two. Prices are virtually always consistent with one another.
o It is best to steer clear of renting vacation homes through Craigslist or eBay. Although both of these services list vacation rentals, they offer absolutely no protections for their customers.
Where Can I Look to Find Luxurious Vacation Rentals?
You should begin your search for a luxury rental property, particularly one that has a large number of bedrooms, with either a worldwide managed agency or an area specialist. You will have the piece of mind that comes with dealing with an established rental agency if you go with a managed agency rather than renting directly from the owner, who could be difficult to get in touch with if there is an issue.
When compared to renting through an online booking platform, renting a luxury vacation rental through a managed vacation home booking agency typically carries a lower level of risk. This is because, in the event that you run into a problem, you will know how to get in touch with the responsible party or who to ask for a refund from. If you are planning to rent an expensive house based simply on the photographs and descriptions that are provided online, this particular point is of utmost significance.