Accommodations

Again, I say have fun and enjoy finding a place to lay your head, that’s why you are traveling in the first place. The two sites I have used the most for places to stay are VRBO.com and AIRbnb.com. Wether we travel an hour away or hop a ten hour flight, I have not been disappointed with the amount of choices for lodging. We have found places for 2 to 12 people without difficulty. The sites area easy to navigate and we have found the owners and managers of the properties area accommodating to our requests and needs.

When requesting information about the property, always choose multiple properties and send out inquiries letting them know we are looking in the area and what is the best price they could offer us. We cap our inquires at about 10% above what we are looking to spend on lodging. Sometimes, they are not able to make a price adjustment due to time of year or their overhead costs. We have found the majority of owners and managers are willing to give a discount on their rental fees.

Another avenue to use is a local real estate agent. These agents sometimes have different properties for rent or take lower rental fees for renting the property out. We have used local real estate agents to find properties and have found they very accommodating as well. I would caution to do your due diligence in your property research, especially when putting down a large payment on the property you choose.

When we travel and want to book a resort or hotel, we use websites like cheaprooms.com and hotels.com. Here we can get a view of multiple hotel prices, amenities and locations for a specific city or area.

For the fun of it, we throw in a “hailmary” property in our inquiries. This is the one dream property that is just past the affordability scale, even if a small discount is made. Have we made that leap? Let’s just say it was well worth the extra time filling out an inquiry and negotiating………..just remember, you don’t know unless you ask.