Budget Travel Dishes Planning Advice
January 18, 2008. One key to a great trip is good planning. Another is a luxury vacation rental. So says Budget Travel magazine, in an article reprinted this weekend in the Washington Post.
"Think outside the hotel-room box," the article advocates. "Renting a house, condo or apartment -- or swapping homes -- may be better, especially for groups. The Internet has made locating such non-hotel options a million times easier."
VacationRental.org is a great place to locate those options, in our opinion.
The article also had something important to say about online research: "Don't rely on any single source; look for consensus."
This can be especially important in the age of user-generated sites and sponsored articles. One person's bad review might not mean much, for example. Customers aren't always right, but if they fell slighted, it's easy for them to distort the truth online. Look at several reviews, and use good judgment to decide where the truth lies.
On the other end of the spectrum, watch for articles that may actually be placed by the companies being written about. These articles may have merit, but you'll want to check several sources to get the whole picture.
