Picture this: your entire family – grandparents, sisters, brother, nieces and nephews, perhaps a cousin or two – waking up together on Christmas morning in a huge house in the mountains. Or at the beach. Or in the woods. One house with enough room for all. A recent, growing trend is the availability of private homes for rent with support services that range from pretty much non-existent to concierge level.
At the one end is VRBO and if you’ve not yet explored the site, you should. There, individuals post private vacation homes for rent. You can find everything from ski condos for two to Italian villas for 20. You can search by area, by travel dates and by number of bedrooms, then a variety of filters let you further customize. Generally, you make your arrangements directly with the home owner, but a new feature allows many properties to be booked right from the site. The extensive reviews tend to be pretty honest, so read them all before making a selection.
Far at the other end is Portico, “a private luxury vacation club that provides the best homes in the world's most sought-after destinations.” Your $5,000 “initiation” fee and $2,500 annual membership dues give you access to Portico’s worldwide collection of luxury homes and includes personalized pre-trip planning, 24-hour concierge and daily housekeeping. This kind of luxury doesn’t come cheap … a recent search of three fantastic homes in the mountains of Sun Valley, on the beach in the Cayman Islands and on the Sea Island on the Georgia Coast shows rates around $1,000 night. But if you are traveling with a few families who share the home and the cost, those rates can be within the realm of reasonable. And, of course, if grandma and grandpa want to treat the entire family, well … who’s to stop them?
