More and More Smart Tourists Are Using Low-Cost Apartments for Their Overnight Stays

When it comes to searching for advantageous airfares, we now have eight websites that are widely acknowledged as being the best possible tools for doing so: Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity, Dohop, Momondo, Kayak, Hipmunk, and Google's Flight product.
 
When it comes to searching for rental of a short-term apartment in the destination you are considering, the options are far more numerous. That's because each destination has numerous local real estate agencies that offer apartments for rent. Trouble is that these agencies are either unknown to you, or difficult to assess, or lacking in their ability to communicate in English, or perhaps unreliable.
 
Apart from the local firms, six apartment-searching websites are now established as worldwide in the areas they search, and quite effective in finding a good value in the short-term rental of an apartment. These are: Rentalo.com ( www.rentalo.com ), Airbnb ( www.airbnb.com ), Wimdu ( www.wimdu.com ), VRBO ( www.vrbo.com ), HomeAway ( www.homeaway.com ), and Enless Vactaion Rentals ( www.eventals.com ).
 
Travelers making use of these six websites are, in my view, the most likely to enjoy an affordable vacation. With international airfares skyrocketing, it has become necessary to offset those fares with low costs for accommodations, and the most effective way to do so is to take advantage of alternative lodgings in place of high-priced hotels. For travelers who are unwilling to stay in hostels (the other alternative means of cutting your costs for accommodations), the apartment offers spacious and comfortable lodgings, a non-tourist residential location, and the ability to prepare an occasional meal in the kitchen that comes with almost every apartment. Quite often nowadays, the ability to continue making international trips depends on your decision to seek out an apartment for your overnight stays -- a decision that often requires that you schedule a stay of at least a week in each of the destinations you visit.