The couchsurfing craze continues to spread, as this recent article from the Times of Malta shows: Want to become a couch-surfer? The Maltese traveller profiled in the piece fits the usual couchsurfing stereotype–20-something, single and footloose–but he claims even families are jumping on the bandwagon.

Sadly, I haven’t had the chance to stay in a Japanese ryokan (guesthouse) yet. With luck, I will in the future. In the meantime, I did stumble across an English-language website that handles bookings for ryokan across the country, JapaneseGuestHouses.com. It gets praise for good service in two reviews on Trip Advisor (even if the […]

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. […]

Think of London and what pops to mind? Big Ben, the West End, Piccadilly Circus? That’s how many tourists experience it, but most Londoners themselves live in rather more ordinary surroundings. And, if Monty Python is to be believed, few are more ordinary than the suburban Sussex town of Esher. (In one Python episode, Eric […]

Until very recently, if you Googled “house swapping,” you’d generally uncover sites such as HomeLink and Intervac: organizations that focus on helping vacationers switch homes for a few weeks at a time. Lately, however, I’ve been hearing about more people arranging longer exchanges. Swaps of six months to a year have long been a small […]

Interested in renting a house or apartment for your next vacation, but nervous about dealing with total strangers in a rent-by-owner arrangement or a big agency? Don’t despair. According to a new PhoCusWright study of the vacation rental market, there are 1.26 million homes available for short-term rental in the U.S. alone and–here’s the interesting […]

Roomorama.com, a peer-to-peer site for arranging short-term room and apartment rentals, is expanding. The site, founded last fall, matches travellers with renters in several North American cities. Its new incarnation–dubbed, not surprisingly, Roomorama 2.0–adds a new calendar, new pricing options and a jazzier design, among other tweaks. The latest upgrade also expands the service to […]

Is couchsurfing is too cushy for you, with all that central heating and indoor plumbing? Then check out SingleSpotCamping.com, a Swedish-based site that matches DIY travellers with the owners of backyards and garage entrances where wanderers can pitch their own tents. You still meet locals–you just don’t have to sleep under their roof. For more, […]

Stacy Johnson of MoneyTalksNews.com is the latest in a series of reporters who have realized that house swapping makes financial sense in a tough economy. His video focuses on a Florida couple who have swapped 20 times.

On both sides of the pond, vacation rental companies are reporting a spike in business from value-conscious travellers. In particular, people seem to be looking for self-catering digs close to home. Boston-based FlipKey says that vacation rentals in ski resorts that draw largely from a local area–such as Loon Mountain in New Hampshire, whose clients […]