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Next up is Susan from the Carolina Travel Girl.  A teacher by trade, she has been collecting ever since going on her first international trip to England and Wales a few years ago.  Her presentation was talking about alternatives to hotels when you’re traveling.

She mentioned that she likes to save her hotel points for family travel, but still does a lot of travel by herself.  When she does, she has used Couchsurfing and Airbnb as alternatives to traditional hotel stays.  She has stayed at many unique places around the world.  This goes back to some of the things that Shawn talked about in this morning’s presentation – you can really experience a lot of the culture around the world.

Airbnb

airbnb-logoI had heard of AirBnb, but hadn’t really considered it as a realistic option for family travel.  As one of the attendees here mentioned, I just considered it as more of sleeping on an air mattress in someone else’s living room.

But after checking it out, they have tons of options, and many of them are for full houses.  Susan talked about renting a studio flat right in the heart of Paris, for only $68/ night.

I was actually looking at this as a possible option for some of our family reunion.  We had talked about using VRBO.com to rent a house for a family reunion, but it was fairly expensive.  In just browsing through some of the options at airbnb, it was much cheaper.

Other options

Another option that I had not heard of was called Kid and Coe, which is run by parents for parents, and is geared towards family travel.  They have more strict guide

Welcome Beyond offers more exotic locations such as if you want to stay in a treehouse, or a yurt, or an igloo 🙂

Wimdu.com is similar to airbnb, but more popular in Europe.  Tripping.com is sort of a Kayak of the various rental sites – it checks places like VRBO, airbnb, booking.com, etc.

Next up!

Our final speaker for the day is Debra from Traveling Well for Less – talking about tricks to save money once you’re AT your vacation spot.


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