Make your next trip more relaxing with family vacation rental homes! Save money, sleep and eat better, and have more space for less than the cost of a hotel. Our sponsor HomeAway is the perfect resource for families looking for a better way to vacation.
A few years ago my parents took my family and my sister to San Diego for a mini-vacation. We had 3 separate families going so we needed at least 3 hotel rooms, which got really expensive. So we started researching family vacation rental homes. We looked at several online sites including HomeAway and VRBO.com. Both sites are completely free to use for travelers so you can poke around and see prices, availability and tons of photos of the properties. We were surprised to find that it was much cheaper to rent a vacation home than to stay at a hotel. In fact, it was half the cost to rent the house than it would cost to stay at a hotel. We decided to give it a try and it was perfect. Since that first trip, we’ve used rental homes for family vacations whenever we can.
Aside from the cost of the house being less, there are a few other reasons I prefer to rent a home for family vacations. The biggest factor is food. One of the largest expenses on vacation is food. At the very minimum, when eating very inexpensively, I have found that I need at least $100/day to feed my family of 4 when on vacation. That’s a huge budget buster for us. When you rent a house, you can save a ton of money by eating in. Now, part of the vacation for me is to not have to cook every day. So we compromise. We have breakfast and usually dinner at the rental house and then eat out for lunch. Lunches are generally cheaper than dinner and we are generally out and about anyway during the day. If you have food allergies in your family, then eating in your vacation home makes life so much easier, too. We also sleep better in a rental home. Let’s face it, no one really sleeps well when on vacation. I have found that we all sleep much better in a home than in a hotel. There is less noise (no banging doors at 3 AM) and so far the beds have been way more comfortable. It also helps that there is more space so everyone has a bedroom. The kids can go to sleep at their normal bedtime and I’m not stuck staring out in the dark at 8 PM.
Another great bonus of a family vacation rental home is the space. Nothing is worse than an entire family being cooped up in a hotel room while trying to get a 1 year old to take a nap. The home we rented in in San Diego has a great backyard and lots of space inside for the kids to play, the adults to hang out (or take a nap in the hammock), and the baby could nap away in his own bedroom. It was beautiful.
Why not give it a try? Head over to HomeAway and check out the rental homes available in your favorite vacation spot.
This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of HomeAway.
I would also prefer staying at vacation rental homes than hotels. The convenience is like home and you have more freedom inside. This is also perfect for a family of 5 and more because of its space and rooms.