If you own or manage vacation rentals you have at least one or two vacation rental ads posted out there in cyberspace and most likely a personal website to promote your properties. So what is all the hype surrounding Vacation Rental Websites?

Why have vacation rental sites become so popular? First because more vacation owners and second homeowners have invested in these get-away properties and secondly because they want to rent them to generate income or off set the expenses of ownership.

The biggest reason for the growth of vacation rental websites and directories is simple - owners advertise to a larger audience for less money than traditional advertising and renters can see detailed listings with ease and contact owners and managers directly. Owners and renters connect at vacation rental directories.

The success and big business of vacation rentals portals and directories is evidenced by the recent consolodation in the industry. According to VentureCapitalReporter.com Homeaway, Inc. of Austin, Texas recently secured $160 million dollar financing to fuel its growth and consolidations. Read the Homeaway Article Homeaway recently acquired VRBO.com - Vacation Rentals by Owner, VacationRentals.com, Cyberrentals.com, Greatrentals.com to name a few. In addition, Homeaway has teamed up with notable author and vacation rental industry expert Christine Karpinski. Karpinski authored “How to Rent Vacation Properties by Owner” - The complete guide to buy, manage, furnish, rent, maintain and advertise your vacation rental investment.

There are new players entering the vacation rental advertising arena almost daily. Two notable players to watch are Vacationhomerentals.com with nearly 12,000 listings and Furnishedhomes.com - The Place to Find Furnished Rentals. Vacationhomerentals is an easy to use site and you can list for $99 annual compared to $229 annual at VRBO. Furnishedhomes.com is trying to develop a base of listings and is simply taking all listings on free of charge. View the FurnishedHomes Owner Demo

Offering free listings is not a surprise, however, with Furnished Homes technology and use of the Google Maps search, owners should consider listing on this new site. The downside risk is about 10 minutes of your time to list for free. It would be nice to see a ground swell of owners add their vacation rentals listings to some of these new sites to create more competition and help to drive advertising rates down.