Foreign Perspectives

One of the things that constantly amazes me is that many people have a “hotel mentality” and never really think about other alternatives to hotel accommodation when they’re looking for somewhere to stay on their vacation.

Perhaps one of the difficulties is in the terminology. In America, it’s “vacation rental“, in the UK it’s “self-catering” and in France it’s “gites” (pronounced ZHEETZ). Usually America vs British English isn’t a problem but this is very much a global market and searching for “vacation rentals” in the UK isn’t going to find many and likewise there aren’t many “self-catering” places in America.

However, the name doesn’t make a difference. The big difference is between hotel and self-catering or vacation rental style accommodation. Essentially in the vacation rental arena you’re going to be renting a house (or apartment (condo), or castle, or even a houseboat) and living in the area whereas in a hotel you’re always just a visitor. That makes a surprising difference. Not only that, but many of these places are in areas outside the city and offering stunning views without any other properties to block the view.

Pricing is always important of course. If you’re comparing a two person hotel room to a vacation property rental then clearly the hotel will be cheaper. But, if your group is, say, three or four then often you can get a much nicer property than you could get a hotel room for at the same price level. With larger groups, it’s pretty much certain that renting a reasonable sized house will be cheaper.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, September 4th, 2008 at 5:46 pm and is filed under Miscellaneous, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.