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Vacation Rentals / OpenThread / Santa Ynez Hotels / → All Tags

What Would You Rather: A House or a Hotel Room?

Over the weekend we headed to Santa Ynez, Calif. in Santa Barbara County where instead of booking a hotel room, we actually rented a house with two other couples (along with four children and one spoiled French bulldog.) Yet despite the idyllic location across from a small vineyard and the spaciousness of the house, we actually found ourselves missing a few of our beloved hotel creature comforts.

This surprised us since we were looking forward to pretending we were wealthy enough to own a giant piece of land and a picturesque home for the weekend. But while a house gave us the space we craved, not all the little amenities we are accustomed to at hotels are included.

Here's our Pros/Cons breakdown of renting a house versus booking a hotel room.

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Hotel Ads / Videos / Vacation Rentals / Super Bowl Ads / Super Bowl Hotels / → All Tags

HomeAway Tosses Babies But We Still Love Hotels

Super Bowl ads: There were some last night. Leading the bunch, at least for us, was the HomeAway shot across the bows of hotels everywhere which asked, bluntly, "Why hotel when you can HomeAway?" Fighting words, those are!

Featuring a rather loud and rather serious "minister of detourism" as a pitchman, HomeAway insists that "Families are getting swindled. Why? Because hotels hate your guts!" Thereupon, a baby is flung into a wall as if slapstick is the way to make an airtight argument in favor of this anti-hotel thesis. It is not.

Logical fallacies aside, HomeAway's premise is that families get more space and convenience when booking a vacation rental in lieu of a hotel. The former can be true but needn't always be the case. Rentals can be small, too, and families wanting more space than a typical room offers can always upgrade to a hotel suite. As for convenience, we're very skeptical that a stand-alone rental has higher service standards than a hotel with, you know, a full-time staff.

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Craigslist / Vacation Rentals / Matt Gross / Miami Hotel Mambo / → All Tags

Wheel of Craigslist: Good or Bad Source of Vacation Rentals?

Where: 763 Pennsylvania Avenue [map], Miami, fl, United States, 33139

The original condo-tel in SoBe?

When hotel hunting for our next vaca, we often forget to troll Craigslist--for vacation rentals that is, not missed connections. Perhaps the reason we don't often think of it is because it's such a crapshoot. For instance, we have friends who scored an awesome place in Chelsea for a weekend in New York off the site, but our own attempts to find a vacation rental in Spain netted nothing but scams.

Similarly, The New York Times' Budget Traveler Matt Gross, tasked with finding cheap lodging in Miami for a weekend, took to Craigslist, netting similar mixed results. The listing, which touted "HoT SOBE condo for rent inside a NICE hotel!!" showed a bright studio and sundeck with a Jacuzzi in the Royal Hotel. Gross bargained with the owner to "nix the cleaning fee, throw in a parking permit and let the place go for a tax-free $125 a night." Amazing for Miami Beach in-season. However:

"When we arrived on a late Friday afternoon....I wished I'd bargained harder. The Royal was three stories of fading Deco wrapped in scaffolding, and the lobby smelled like street-vendor incense. The studio was better, sunny and decorated with paintings in vibrant blues and oranges, but had its own quirks: the floor lamps could only be turned off by unplugging them, and the hot water in the shower was, well, not."

Given the mixed results of Gross' and our own experiences, we have to wonder if The List of Craig is even worth logging onto for anything else other than the comic missed connections. So tell us hotel mavens: Have you ever had luck with a finding a great vacation rental off the site? Put your stories in comments below.