The "VBRO" Story

It was an ordinary day. Setting up a "Count-Down" calendar for our next vacation. Not for a couple of months, but it gets us in the mood for the warm waters, warmer sand, and the really warm weather. Can hardly wait! Our next vacation, or holiday as the Europeans say, will be in a condo that we have rented before. We liked the place and decided to return to again this year. A little farther to the beach, but the place has great views from above Orient Bay in St. Martin. We did search the Internet to see what else was available, but choose to return to a favorite. One of the best places to search for a vacation rental is the website VBRO. This stands for Vacation Rentals By Owners and was established in 1995 by vacation rental owners who self-manage their second homes. Today, VRBO provides vacation home owners and property managers the ability to advertise on one of the most visited vacation rental websites in the world and makes it easy for travelers to search more than 160,000 rentals in over 100 countries worldwide. The website is recommended by Arthur Frommer who writes a column for our local newspaper every Sunday. Here's how it works: When you first access the website you have to search their inventory of properties. Want to rent a place at the Jersey Shore? Click on New Jersey, Delaware or whatever and a map will appear with the towns along the shore. Click on the town, such as Sea Isle City in NJ, and you will find all the listings that they have in that town. You can click on any one residence to see photos of the place, find the location, what the accommodations are, a calendar showing what is still available, the owner' information with his email, the features of the vacation rental, the prices for the rental and in most cases "Traveler Reviews" that tell you what others thought of the place. My guess is that you will find only positive reviews, but then again, maybe the owner cannot remove any of the reviews. We have found a few rentals this way and have only positive things to say about the adventure of renting through VBRO. Our last trip this past October found us in Barbados in a fantastic condo on Dover Beach that we found through VBRO. Now, we did know something about the island and the location of the condo as well as knowing that the units were the condo was located was new, since we saw it in the building stages when we last visited the island in 2008. We were not disappointed with the condo or the price. Remember, you deal directly through the owner and pay no realtor or management charges. Would we do it again? Without a doubt, but not without a little research. It's fun to search the website and all the interesting areas of the world to see what it costs to rent in different locales. Give it a look sometime and see what I mean. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy. PS - copy and paste the following address in your address bar and take a look at this news story about VBRO - http://vimeo.com/8262164