25% off Paris apartments

Welcome2France.com, which specializes in luxury apartment rentals in Paris, has just announced last-minute discounts of up to 25% on some of its properties. Most of the deals are valid February 1-15 and March 1-15, but there are a few available in late March. Many owners require a minimum stay of five days or a week. See the special offers section of the website for details.

Top five perks of vacation rentals

I've been raving about the benefits of vacation rentals for years to anyone who will listen. So what's so great about staying in a house or apartment instead of a hotel room? Here are my top five reasons to go local.

1. You can discover new neighbourhoods. In many cities, hotels are clustered downtown or in touristy areas. Not that there's anything wrong with either, but sometimes it's nice to see another side of things. In Paris we stayed in Montparnasse, on a street where we could watch chic young moms taking their equally chic children to the local primary school. (For more details, see the article about that trip on my freelance writing website.)
2. You get more space. Hands up, all of you who have tiptoed around a hotel room trying not to wake your sleeping spouse, only to trip over a half-open suitcase and clatter against the dresser. OK, maybe it's just me. But our apartment in Buenos Aires (see photo above) was about three times the size of the hotel room our friends had booked downtown. That meant while one of us slept, the other could be reading a book in the living room, enjoying a snack at the dining table or soaking up the view from the balcony.
3. The price is often right. That apartment in Buenos Aires cost less than our friends' hotel room. Especially if you're travelling with a family or a small group, rentals can be a great deal.
4. No more trying to outwit the maids. I like getting my bed made as much as the next person, but I hate having to try to second guess where the cleaning staff is going to be at any given time. Forget to put the "do not disturb" sign on your door, and the next thing you know, the maid is at the door at 8am, brandishing a vacuum. In a rental, your tidiness is your own business (unless, of course, you choose one of those high-end rentals where maid service is included).
5. Brekkie in your PJs. One of the most luxurious things about being on vacation, for me, is the chance to linger over breakfast in my 'jammies with a good book. But in a hotel, unless you feel like springing $15 for room service bacon and eggs, you have to get dressed and get yourself down to the restaurant before the breakfast hour ends. In a rental, you can have all the fixings for a fine breakfast waiting in your own kitchen, from fresh fruit to croissants. And you can have breakfast at 2 in the afternoon if you like (not that I've ever done that, oh no).

Interested in a vacation rental? Check out some rental tips on LaVidaLocal.com, my website for people who want to live like locals while travelling.

Of course, no vacation option is perfect; rentals have their drawbacks, too. But that's the topic of a future post.

Bed down in a Korean temple

The Korea Tourism Organization is making it easier for visitors to find accommodation options beyond hotels.

An easy-to-search section of the KTO website includes lots of English-language details on unusual places to lay your head. For instance, there are links to over a dozen hanok--traditional Korean homes, usually featuring wide porches and sloping roofs--where you can book a B&B-style room with the resident family. The information on short-term rental apartments focuses mainly on apartment hotels and similar facilities for business travellers. The KTO site also provides a link to the Templestay program, which allows visitors to stay at one of four Buddhist temples and participate in the monks' daily life. 

New website for NYC vacation rentals

Looking for a studio in Midtown or a temporary pied-a-terre in the West Village? Try Roomorama.com, a new peer-to-peer service that helps travellers find short-term apartment rentals and spare rooms in New York City. Properties include a Williamsburg house owned by an actor who appeared in "The Departed," complete with its own Zen garden, for US$189/night. 

There's a bit of everything here, from straight vacation rentals to requests for short-term roommates and sublet tenants, so you need to read carefully to make sure you're getting what you're looking for. And the interface needs a bit of work--for instance, when you move between pages, the screen goes unnervingly grey for a few moments. For all that, it looks like a useful new addition to the New York vacation rental scene.

The service, started by two New Yorkers who've rented out space in their own Lower East Side apartment in the past, plans to expand to Boston, Chicago and Toronto this fall.