Getaway rentals by owners booming on the Web

Five years ago, I found my perfect vacation rental on the island of Kauai -- a tidy cabin on a dead-end road. Getting to the beach was as simple as rolling out of bed and walking out the front door.

Last year, the owners retired from the rental business. My wife and I still wanted to make our annual trip to Kauai, and we wanted to find a close substitute for the home away from home we'd come to love. Five years ago, we'd used a phone and a bed-and-breakfast agent to find a place. This time, we used VRBO.com.

VRBO stands for Vacation Rental By Owner. The site, by far the most popular for vacation rentals, lists more than 72,000 apartments, houses, cabins and villas on every continent except Antarctica.

The home page presents a world map. In three clicks, we were looking at photos of rentals on Kauai near the town of Kilauea, exactly where we wanted to be.

We spent a couple of hours poring over dozens of offerings before settling on one likely choice, a one-bedroom, one-bathroom studio on stilts just off the beach at Moloa'a Bay.

The photos showed a white wood-frame structure with a roomy deck and two sets of sliding glass doors rising over a lush garden. The interior looked spacious, with a king-size bed, big windows and a ceiling fan twirling from the exposed rafters. The tiled bathroom had a two-person shower. A photo from the deck showed that there was an ocean view, but that it was somewhat obstructed by two larger homes in front.

The choice was a compromise; we couldn't find freestanding lodging right on a quiet beach for less than $200 a night. The studio on Moloa'a Bay was $900 a week. We exchanged e-mails with the owners, then called with more questions, and finally decided to take it.

VRBO operates like a global classified ad service for people with second homes who want to earn rental income. Property owners pay an annual fee of $179 (with additional charges for extra photos). As with classified ads, the final transaction is between the seller and the buyer. VRBO does not mediate disputes (although the company manager said VRBO has removed rental owners who get too many complaints).

Even without much of a quality control system, the site has seen phenomenal growth; it started in 1995 with one listing -- the original owner's ski condo in Breckenridge in Colorado.

"Our listings grew by 43 percent last year and 45 percent the year before," said general manager Marvin Floyd. "We had more than 5.5 million visitors to the site last month alone."

There are dozens of other sites that operate like VRBO, but none approaches its number of hits, according to Alexa.com, a website that ranks the popularity of other websites. Competition is fierce, however, and much is likely to change in the field during the next year.

Homeaway.com, another rental website, bought VRBO last year, adding it to an existing portfolio of 10 rental sites. Most of Homeaway's sites, like VRBO, operate independently. Among its holdings: vacationvillas.net, cyberrentals.com and A1vacations.com.

Combined, Homeaway.com's sites have more than 140,000 listings, though they can't all be searched at once. According to Floyd and other industry observers, some merging and redesigning of Homeaway's sites is likely.

Floyd said that he doesn't see other rental sites as the opposition in any case.

"Our competitors are hotels and resorts," he said. "We believe we can offer better amenities and locations at lower prices. ... You can also personalize the experience in a way a hotel can't."

That was the case for us. Several miles off the highway, the house on Moloa'a Bay exceeded our expectations. Built with loving care by the owner, the studio was a testament to the carpenter's craft, with clean lines, exposed woodwork and expertly chosen sightlines. The house did not have a full kitchen, which was another compromise we'd accepted, but there was a grill on the big deck, where we cooked fresh fish and enjoyed our slightly obstructed ocean view.

The beach was a three-minute walk away. We spent a few hours each day in the shade of a huge old Australian pine, reading and listening to the waves. Each day, we observed a puzzling ritual.

Late in the morning, a group of 10 to 15 people appeared on the beach, stood in one place for about 10 minutes and then left. Other than our neighbors and a few locals fishing, they were the only people we saw on the bay.

On our fourth day, I walked over to the group and asked what they were doing. "This is the original site of 'Gilligan's Island'," a young woman in an Aloha shirt said. "I'm leading the movie set tour. This is where the opening shot for the pilot was filmed."

Maybe that's why Moloa'a Bay seemed so familiar. It seemed appropriate that our island hideaway had once played a hidden island on TV. Sharing the beach with a dozen "Gilligan" fans for a few minutes a day seemed like a small price to pay, all things considered.

Chris Welsch • 612-673-7113 • cwelsch@startribune.com