Looking for good prices, plenty of space and an
authentic travel experience? Perhaps you should rethink checking into a hotel
chain. Your next hotel might not be a hotel. It could be a
condo. Or a rental apartment. Or a home. And maybe it should be.Here are five reasons why:
1. Lots and lots of
roomRenting a house or condo almost always gives you more room for less
money. That’s the experience of travelers like Linda Frappia, a health care
manager from Irvine, Calif. She has rented homes in Europe with two bedrooms
and kitchens for as low as $500 a week during off-season. That’s about as much
as it costs for a comparable suite in a nice hotel — for one night. “I was
pleasantly surprised at how charming the accommodations were as well,” she told
me. In France, for example, she rented a 200-year-old house that had been
completely remodeled. “It was actually
nicer than the pictures on the
Internet,” she adds.
2. More privacy
Hotels are, by their very nature, public places, from the lobby to
the exercise rooms. If you want to go somewhere where you don’t have to rub
shoulders with the masses, you’ll want to skip the hotel. Rosanne Skopp did.
She’s a retired real estate broker from West Orange, N.J., who had spent one
night too many at a bed-and-breakfast. “It was too cozy. When we return from a
long day of sightseeing, we long for privacy and peace and don’t want to
chitchat with an overly friendly bed-and-breakfast owner,” she says. The
solution was to rent an apartment, which means, “comfort without intrusion.”
A better price
3. Hotels are expensive
Even cheap hotels can be pricey, once you
factor in taxes, “resort” fees and other surcharges. But that’s not necessarily
the case with one of the popular hotel alternatives. Lyn Clarke, a retired
nurse from Fairview Heights, Ill., finds that the rental apartments she and her
husband, John, prefer when they travel to Europe don’t only cost less. They
also allow her to save money in other ways, too. “We can enjoy our own
home-cooked food,” she says. “When we travel internationally, we always look
for apartments, and we generally homestead in one place for a week at a time. It’s
more cost-effective.”
4. You can go native
Most hotels are built in resort areas, and it’s difficult to get a
feel for what a place is really like when you’re miles away from any residents.
But rent a condo, home or apartment, and you’re more likely to be right in the
middle of everything. “It gets us out of the insular resorts and into the local
community a bit more,” says Dean Starovasnik, a director for an engineering
firm in Norcross, Ga. “Isn’t that part of the objective of travel — to
experience environments outside our normal comfort zone?”
5. Inconvenient
“convenience” fees
Imagine having to shell out a $2 “convenience fee” for using your
credit card to pay for your next hotel room? How about a surcharge for reserving
the exact type of rental car you wanted? Sound absurd? It isn’t, at least to
the travel companies that are just waiting for the right time to implement
these frivolous extras. People already cough up convenience fees for event
tickets or to pay by credit card at the Department of Motor Vehicles. At least
one carrier, Allegiant Air, is charging an $8.50 “convenience fee” for tickets
booked through its Web site or call center. Watch for more of them next year.
The Bolivar Peninsula's rental market is almost entirely beachfront and
bayfront 2nd homes. Renters love the family oriented atmosphere. The
rental demand is so strong the majority of rentals are booked up by
February. Homes simply rent better on the Bolivar Peninsula than on
Galveston.
Swede's Real Estate has so many properties available all along the
Bolivar Peninsula that they are able to run the operation like a
Bolivar Peninsula-wide hotel. With nearly 300 rental properties and
several hundred more coming on-line in the near future with new
developments, Swedes Real Estate is the largest property management
firm on the Texas Gulf Coast.
The
volume translates into savings for both the property owners and renters
- as well as - more variety and selection for everyone! Click Here to Read More
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By Christopher Elliott Travel columnist MSNBC contributor