Author's product rating: 
| Advantages: |
Massive worldwide choice of properties |
| Disadvantages: |
Sometimes too much to choose from ! |
| Recommend to potential buyers: |
yes |
Holiday-rentals.co.uk. may be the website for you if you like to book your self-catering holiday accommodation independently. It is a part of a company called Homeaway.com based in the States specialising in online vacation rentals. Their global marketplace consists of 130,000 vacation rental homes across 100 countries under various rental sites.
# Overview #
The website works two ways, property owners can advertise their properties here and potential
holiday renters can view what is available and of interest to them and make bookings. Each property has a reference number which can be saved as a personal shortlist to go back to later.
The opening page gives the following easy search options:
Click on the map - for a destination and search from there, click World, Europe or North America. For example if you click Europe, everything in every European country will appear in alphabetical order and then you can click on what you are interested in. There are places there that you have probably never even thought of!
Search for holiday homes – here all the destinations are listed once again alphabetically from Andorra to Wales. Go from there where everything in that country is shown and the search can be refined by you to destination(in that country), number of bedrooms required, number of people it will sleep, property type (apartment, house or villa) , facilities( air con., pool, internet access, dishwasher, washing machine, garden etc ) , activities ( swimming, golf, ski etc) , location ( beach , city centre, mountains, rural, town, village, resort ) and suitability ( children welcome, wheelchair accessible, suitable for elderly or infirm and pets considered) .
Late availability searches by various country.
New rentals – properties that have just been added to the site.
Spotlight on – it’s Spain this week, but changes.
Villas with pools.
Holiday homes near golf.
Ski Chalets and more.
So you can see there is a wealth of search options available on this site that I find are easy to read, negotiate and you could spend a pleasant few hours browsing.
# Properties of interest #
When you see a property that is of interest, to find out more click on the blue view details tab and several photographs, details of the location(and a map) and how near it is to the airport, motorway and if a car is advised. The owner gives a brief description of the property just to give you a taster. A booking calendar should appear also and this will enable you to see if the dates you are interested in are available(word of caution not all advertisers keep theirs up to date) and below this a rental price tariff should be shown but I have noticed that some owners are not always up to date ! Some owners state that changeover days are flexible or fixed and this is quite important if you have already booked a flight or want to travel mid week. The accommodation and facilities of the property are then listed in a table so you are able to see at a glance if the facilities that you require are there. The list includes property type, accommodation type, floor area, theme, general, kitchen, living room, dining room, bathrooms, bedrooms, entertainment, outside, swimming pools suitability, local activities and notes (certainly worth a read as may include things that incur and extra charge!). Below all this there may be more extra details and then the all important form to contact the owner if you have an interest and want to make a booking or find out more.
# Making an enquiry / booking #
Use the form at the bottom of the details page entitled make an enquiry. Just fill in the basic details required such as name, email, telephone, required dates and other queries you may have regarding the property. The advertiser’s name and telephone number is shown here if you need it. When you have sent the enquiry you will receive an email in response from holiday-rentals letting you know that your enquiry has been forwarded to the owner. Just keep an eye on your emails for a reply which is usually fairly speedy and should certainly be within 24 hours. When the owner gets back to you they should confirm your dates, prices, conditions and how to make the formal booking. This now becomes a transaction between the two parties. If what you had requested was not available they should still reply and may even come up with another property or offer you different dates.
# My experience/advice/tips #
I find searching this site easy and enjoyable and it is possible as with may websites to spend more time on there than you mean to!! The searching is easy and you can tailor it to suit your own personal requirements. There is also a facility for saving your favourites to a shortlist and it is also worth joining the email newsletter as this often has special offers.
Two years ago I made a booking for an apartment in Calahonda , Costa del Sol Spain via this website and it was highly successful. The owner agreed the dates and sent me a booking form by email which I filled in and sent to him with a 10% deposit and paid the remainder six weeks prior to travel. At this stage he confirmed details for keys which was straight forward enough, all I had to do was phone the key holder from Malaga airport to let her know we were on our way and she met us at the apartment and showed us where things were etc and just to contact her if there was a problem of which there were none! We had a great holiday there and have booked with the same person again for this summer through the website.
Be wary of a few things though….many of the owners(of the Spanish properties and this probably applies elsewhere) are either not flexible with their changeover days preferring Saturdays or say they are but when it comes to school holidays they are not. I found this very frustrating when searching this year as we wanted to travel outside of the weekend as the flights are cheaper and Malaga airport and its car hire are a nightmare at weekends. Having said that some of the owners offered other options such as other properties or dates. The other advice is to look for extra charges such as cleaning, laundry or electricity as some add this on at the end and it could considerably increase the price of your rental compared to one that included everything in the original rental price. There is plenty of helpful advice on the help pages. What I am not sure about is what happens if your holiday goes badly wrong-there is probably a disclaimer hidden there somewhere as the site is really just an advertiser.
If you don’t mind doing the booking of flights and accommodation yourself I think you generally get a better deal on accommodation this way than with a tour operator package for example if you are a party of four they always try to put you in a one bed apartment so two poor people have to sleep on a put me up! If you want more bedrooms you have to pay a silly supplement. Think about it. At least you can get the bedrooms you need with no supplement this way.
# For owners #
Just a little info for anyone thinking of registering their property here. The price for one year is £155 and includes four large colour photos, 27 searchable property features, customised map and availability features and free SMS alerts for email enquiries. There is a whole host of other services offered to owners that would just take to long to go into here. If you are interested just click the Advertisers button for more.
# Finally #
The website address is http://www.holiday-rentals.co.uk/index.cfm. Take a look and see what you think. I would certainly recommend it.
This product has not yet been reviewed. 
