Weddingbee Blog

The booking begins! Now I am really starting to get excited for the honeymoon because I am picturing the actual places we’ll be relaxing…I can almost hear the ocean waves! I’ll save my rental treasures for another post, though, because I want to outline some thoughts on the “Hawaiian vacation rentals versus Hawaiian hotels” topic. Clearly, I am biased…but I hope you find the post helpful!

Top image via Triprents / Bottom image via USTropics

We are heading to the Big Island of Hawaii first, to see the volcanoes and possibly go scuba diving. After that, we are headed to the old island of Kauai to do some serious hiking. Now originally, Mr. Funnel Cake wanted to stay in some hotels because we want to do a bit of overnight camping here and there while we are hiking. But after extensive vacation-rental searching, I came to the conclusion that:

1. The most basic hotels are more expensive than the cheapest vacation rentals you can find, and the nice hotels cost the same price or even more than amazing vacation rentals.
2. Hotels are much smaller and less private than homes. Many rentals have private hot tubs, jacuzzis, or soaking baths!
3. Hotels don’t have kitchens. I know, I know…I’m not going on vacation to play housewife by cooking, and we will probably eat out a fair amount, but I don’t necessary want to have to eat every breakfast, lunch, and dinner out…that’s also more expensive. I’m certainly looking forward to having taro bread and guava fruit for breakfast!
4. Did I mention the private hot tubs??

This pink monster, also known as the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, costs around $700 a night for a room! (Image via Honolulu Hotel Deals)

I wasn’t able to find any hotels on either island for less than $79–99 a night, and the ones I did find for that price had less than stellar reviews. At the same time, there were private cottages available for as low as $50 a night and B&Bs and single rooms available for as little as $39 a night! The idea of spending $99 a night for a semi-decent hotel was really not appealing to me after I found scads of mouthwatering rentals in the $99–150 a night range with amenities like private hot tubs, spacious lanais with grills, beach equipment, gourmet kitchens, Japanese furo baths, saunas, hammocks, etc. Some were within steps to the beach and others nestled up in private mountain areas. I was completely sold on the idea of a vacation rental, and with the price argument it didn’t take long to sway Mr. Funnel Cake to my side. Why pay more for less?

So where did I do my searching? In short:

• VRBO
• Home Away
• Vacation Rentals
• Flipkey

What did I find?

Tropical Hideaway Studio Apartment via Home Away

Japanese Furo Bath via Flipkey

Rural mountain cottage via VRBO

$50 a night…Yurt in the Mountains via Home Away

Hobbit House Living Room via Home Away

Granite Kitchen…Better than home! via Home Away

VRBO (Vacation Rentals by Owner) - One of the biggest sites for searching for properties listed by the owner. (It’s always cheaper to rent directly from the owner!) The site is not very search friendly, though. There is no sorting by price and the filters for searching are very limited, so you have to spend a lot of time really scanning the page looking for something in your budget/location. It is at least pretty good about guiding you to search in the correct location; I just wish you could filter out the crazy-expensive condos! I’m not considering spending $500 a night on a place, so I’m really not interested in seeing those in my search.

Home Away - This was my favourite site to look at of the bunch. It has a fair amount of handy filters to narrow down the price, location, type of property, etc. So you can search for an oceanfront condo or a mountain tree house, beach bungalow—whatever!

Vacation Rentals - Partners with Home Away, Vacation Rentals is an OK place to search, but I was a bit vexed that you had to choose a specific city/town to search in. I couldn’t do a general search over a whole island, so there was no browsing for rentals “anywhere” on the Big Island. I had to search each possible city that I would want to stay in, which was slightly irritating because I’m not that familiar with the Big Island so I didn’t have a location preference.

Flipkey - Flipkey is also pretty handy for narrowing down the search, but putting in locations is a little trickier because you have to run a search on the specific city…and you can’t just click on “South Kauai.” But at least you could do a general search over the whole area.

Not all the same rentals are on each site, and I ended up finding rentals from both Home Away and VRBO that I applied for. Sometimes it is a little frustrating to feel like you’re looking at the same condos and houses on each site, but after spending hours scouring all the sites, I found some very cool properties on different sites and I’m glad I did a thorough search.

Mr. Funnel Cake was frustrated early on, feeling like he was looking at the same search results over and over, so he was very appreciative of what I found when I showed him my results. I was able to pick out choices based on our interests, and so we had a large pick of rentals that were on the beach, in the forest, private and secluded, rural, mountainous, in town, in a condominium complex, a short walk to the beach, etc. I made a nerdy little Excel sheet to document the vacation rentals I was thinking of, including which area of the island they were on, what city, what type of home they were, how much they cost per day/week, amenities, and anything special about them. From there we could narrow down which choices suited our holiday best. We might not have chosen the most unique listings in the end, but Mr. Funnel Cake was glad I found them and we could think about them to figure out what our options were.

Very organised…

What kind of accommodations are you looking at for your honeymoon? Do you know any more helpful search sites?

**Images personal unless noted**