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What is the perfect holiday for you? Waking up early to book a poolside chair and have breakfast before they stop serving at 10am? Being rushed up and down a tour bus and following an umbrella like a sheep? Having to put up with generic buffet meals and putting up with fellow travellers who do not fail to annoy you. Being woken up in the middle of the might by someone leaving the hostel to catch the early train? Stuck in a tiny cookie cutter hotel room on a business trip or with your entire family? It is no wonder many of us need a holiday after our holidays! There are many reasons why many travellers choose to travel in the same way as how the first travellers went about when Thomas Cook first introduced packaged holidays to the world back in 1841. The lack of knowledge, inspiration and direct interactions between the different travel suppliers made it difficult for travelling according to how each individual wanted to. With technology bridging these gaps, it is still bewildering that many are still choosing mass travel similar to that in the 19th century. Travel in the 21st century is not just about price, but also about choice and convenience. One might think that a packaged tour or a hotel stay is the most convenient. How wrong can they be. Convenience is not about having to follow the tight schedules and fixed itinerary of the tour group, or restricting oneself to the check in/out times, breakfast times and designed for the masses feel of the hotel. Travel is about enjoying your time off, enjoying it your way. There is also the misconception that packaged holidays and hotels are value for money. But what exactly is value? Is it what remains after the marketing costs of the packaged holidays and hotels are taken into consideration? By staying at a holiday rental property, travellers are able to save more and have more to spend on their holidays! Up till now, individuals and individual property owners have not been able to compete on a level playing field with the hotels, tour operators and travel agencies due to the lack of marketing budget and the means to communicate their offering to the wider audience. A new breed of vacation rental sites, which taps on the current collaborative consumption trend now allows property owners to do exactly that, with no upfront listing fees to promote their properties and local activities. Properties can be anything from a spare room, to a tree house, an igloo, kelong, ryokan, castle, campervan… the list goes on. Local hosts also have the option of providing their guests with local activities – local tours, cooking classes, trekking, yoga, meals… whatever, whenever. The benefits of tourism are thus brought to the local communities, not just in the form of paying local meagre wages to work in resorts, where most of the profits are repatriated back to the home country of the resort or hotel investors. With each holiday rental stay, you are helping local communities around the world, while having a good time. Travel your way. Stay and play local. Author: Clement Wong is the Founder & Chief Host of BeMyGuest.travel, a vacation rental site. Having worked in strategy and market intelligence for travel related companies, he maintains close ties with the travel industry through industry commentaries, press & TV interviews (CNN, BBC, FT, CNBC, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, International Herald Tribune, The Guardian, The Independent, Business Week, ABTA, Kommersant, the Marketing Society & Travelmole). He is also a regular conference speaker (WTM, EyeforTravel, Web in Travel, UITT). To list your local properties & activities for free, visit: www.bemyguest.travel
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