Vacation Planning Websites
(Three Cool Online Vacation Planning Tools)
These three vacation planning websites are smart, fun and made for renters.
Most of us opt for online vacation planning over more traditional methods simply because there’s so much great information at your fingertips. Google is a great place to start. But new with interactive tools and calculators -- plus a slew of new iPhone apps -- are popping up to enrich your explorations. Here are three of my current favorite vacation planning websites. These online vacation planning resources are not only easy and lots of fun to use, they’re free. And the feedback they provide is spot on in my experience.
#1. An Interactive Vacation Planner
Explore Your Destination and Build a Custom Itinerary
This innovative
virtual vacation planning tool
-- created by Home&Away, rated one of the top 25 vacation planning websites by Travel & Leisure magazine in 2007 -- makes it easy and really, really fun to do nuts-and-bolts trip-planning. I put it through its paces using San Francisco and Carmel, California as my intended destinations. There are more than 100 destinations to choose from -- including more than a dozen beach locations in California, Hawaii, Florida and South Carolina. I couldn’t have built a better itinerary myself! Even when I'm using vacation planning websites to research my trip, I like to be in the driver's seat. What would have taken me a hour using the narrowed list provided by the tool (probably many more using a general Web-search and manual consolidation) took less than 10 minutes -- from quiz to final plan. All I had to do was click on the “Add” button to the right of any sight or activity that appealed to me. I also was presented with a day-by-day itinerary that matched my interests perfectly: - Daily sights and activities where arranged according to geographic proximity.
- Costs were noted to the side. (I'd noted I was on a budget.)
- Not too much planned for any given day (I said I preferred a relaxing pace).
I also got: - Detailed descriptions of what I’d see - Live links to relevant media–novels, guidebooks, coffee table books, movies - Ideas for activities that would help me get the most from my visit - Practical information: times of operation, bathroom locations, best modes of transportation - a short and thoughtful list (not the typical non-vetted dump) of recommended restaurants And that's just my trip. I could easily see that a hundred different people would get a hundred different results. Really, there's is so much going on with this tool, I can't cover it all. Give it a whirl for a place you already now and tell me know how it works for you.
#2. A Quick Calculator
Compare the Cost of a Vacation Rental vs. a Hotel Room
Renting a vacation home is not always cheaper. It depends a lot on location, the composition of your group and how often you're willing to cook instead of eat out (a prime vacation activity). The granddaddy of vacation planning websites, TripAdvisor invites you to “See which stretches your budget farther” by plugging some basic information into its handy
“Rental vs. Hotel” calculator.
Here’s what I found when I put it through its paces for some California coast locations I'm currently scouting for great beach vacation rentals. Just Us...
First, I input my own scenario: two adults, no kids and "We'll eat some meals out" during a week's stay. According to the calculator, the clear winner is Bodega Bay. We'd save $510! Rounding out the top three were San Francisco, where we'd save $420. Not too shabby! And in Santa Cruz, we'd save $290. A vacation rental in San Diego (coming soon to the pages of Beach Vacation Rental Scout) would save us $430. With Kids...
I decided to add two kids and see if that would change the equation. Bodega Bay was once again the clear winner. In Bodega Bay, our imaginary family of four would save $400 for the week. (And $800 if we did all our own cooking!) In San Francisco, we'd have an extra $240 to play with, even eating out some of the time. And $590 more if we did all our own cooking (which begs the question: why travel to San Francisco at all? But, it's an option.) But in family-friendly Santa Cruz, it turns out we'd be better off in a hotel room. (Although, can you really put a price on sanity?) In upscale Santa Barbara, I was a little surprised to find that my husband and I would save $250 for the week, eating some meals out. But in Pacific Grove, tucked between Monterey and Carmel, I was told we'd be better off in a hotel. Ouch! Okay, there are just some places you love enough to splurge.
#3. A 22-Point Worksheet
Do An Apples-to-Apples Assessment of Local Rental Property Managers
While it's not interactive like the vacation planning websites above, this worksheet designed by Wendy Perrin, an editor and columnist at Conde Nast Traveler, effectively takes the guesswork out of choosing the right vacation rental manager with her comprehensive evaluation checklist:
How to Identify the Right Villa Rental Agent and Villa for You
-- 22 questions to ask a rental property manager, along with tips on interpreting the answers. As the author of Wendy Perrin's Worldwide, Soup-to-Nuts, Get-It-Right-Every-Time Villa Rental Guide," Wendy specializes in villas rentals abroad, so don't let the different terminology confuse you -- "villa" is synonymous with "vacation rental." Same with "villa rental agent" and "rental property manager". With these worksheets, she does a superb job of organizing the important details and providing questions to ask and spot-on guidance through the evaluation process.
Click here for more on the
benefits of working with a Rental Propery Manager.
When you click on the link download How to Identify the Right Villa Rental Agent and Villa for You, you'll also get What You Need to Know About a Villa Before you Arrive as a bonus. It's an exhaustive checklist, with a special appendix related to Villa Security.
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