Just wanted to mention that Kim Mance, editor-in-chief of the online women’s travel magazine Galivanting, linked to my advice on home swapping in an article for MarieClaire.com. Her story has lots of excellent advice for people looking to save money while travelling. And these days, isn’t that all of us? Thanks for the link, Kim!

Thinking about house swapping? The NYC TV station NY1 recently ran a good two-part report on the topic with lots of solid advice. Part 1 Part 2

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. You can discover new neighbourhoods. In many cities, hotels are clustered downtown or in […]

Couch surfing is getting a lot of attention these days–even here on this blog. The latest entry is a short report about the phenomenon by the CBS affiliate in Dallas. KOLN-TV in Lincoln, Nebraska, also posted a news report on couch surfing, which included an interview with local police chief Tom Casady. Casady pointed out that […]

Here’s a trend I like: hotels offering shared cars to their guests. Not only does it save guests the hassle and expense of renting a car, it also introduces many of them to the concept of car sharing. And it encourages travellers to use a blend of car trips and public transit–a great way to […]

Mahindra Homestays is a new venture from one of India’s most powerful families (they’re involved in all sorts of businesses, from auto making to finance). The website, aimed at European travellers, allows you to search by region, price, type of building or type of activity–you can specify that you’d like to stay somewhere where you […]

As regular readers of this blog know, I’m a huge fan of vacation home and apartment rentals. I’ve rented properties on three continents and, fortunately, have never been the victim of a scam. But fraudsters are out there, as shown by this recent CBC story about a Gatineau, Quebec, family who lost $4,000 while trying […]

As the sun came up, I peeped through the window of our guest house onto a timeless vista: fields of potatoes and other crops, rimmed by hills and mountains. In the distance, a farmer was already at work behind a horse-drawn plow. In the village of Huamacchuco in the Peruvian Andes, many people wake and […]

The Association of Scotland’s Self Caterers (ASSC) has launched a well-designed website, Embrace Scotland, to link travellers with more than 2,500 vacation rental properties. You can search by region, number of people, property type (apartment, lodge, cottage and so on) and star rating (currently assigned by VisitScotland). Check boxes allow you to specify that you’re […]

The vacation home rental industry must be coming of age: it’s poised to get its own reality show. PineRidge Film and Television (producers of Samantha Brown’s show “Passport to Europe,” among other programs) and Discover Vacation Homes have created a promo video for a proposed new show, “Living Large on Vacation.” According to Discover Vacation Homes […]