OldShooter
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
+1 for AirBnB. We meet nice people who can help us select a restaurant for dinner and give us other local advice. One time, in Trondheim, our hostess invited us to have dinner with her. Plus AirBnB spares us the cookie-cutter grimness of many of the properties mentioned here; obviously they have their market but it is not us.
Re flexibility, making a decision on where to stop when it's 7PM is a little problematical, but many hosts have very liberal cancellation policies. If you have pre-booked with one of them and have a change, you can cancel and hit one of the chains instead.
Re selection, we do not use AirBnB to save money though that is the stereotype and we often do. We pick a location, sort the properties highest-price first, and look for a property where we have private space including a private bathroom. Sometimes this is a large bedroom with an attached bath. Other times it is a mother-in-law apartment. One time in Vancouver we stayed in a pleasant little guest house that the host had built in his back yard. In Reykjavík we had a full two-bedroom apartment with a kitchen and ocean view. Occasionally there is a disappointment, but for us the plusses of using AirBnB really outweigh the negatives.
The only recurring problem we have had is making contact with the host where we have to pick up a key or get a lockbox code. We have learned that having a cell phone is imperative, including when outside the US. (There is an active thread here on getting SIM cards when traveling.)
Re flexibility, making a decision on where to stop when it's 7PM is a little problematical, but many hosts have very liberal cancellation policies. If you have pre-booked with one of them and have a change, you can cancel and hit one of the chains instead.
Re selection, we do not use AirBnB to save money though that is the stereotype and we often do. We pick a location, sort the properties highest-price first, and look for a property where we have private space including a private bathroom. Sometimes this is a large bedroom with an attached bath. Other times it is a mother-in-law apartment. One time in Vancouver we stayed in a pleasant little guest house that the host had built in his back yard. In Reykjavík we had a full two-bedroom apartment with a kitchen and ocean view. Occasionally there is a disappointment, but for us the plusses of using AirBnB really outweigh the negatives.
The only recurring problem we have had is making contact with the host where we have to pick up a key or get a lockbox code. We have learned that having a cell phone is imperative, including when outside the US. (There is an active thread here on getting SIM cards when traveling.)