Get a great deal on a vacation rental

— -- From a lakeside cabin in the Wisconsin Northwoods to a villa in the Tuscan hills, vacation rentals are a more appealing travel option this year — thanks to a tanking economy, a proliferation of second-home owners trying to cover their mortgages through rental income, and a growing number of Internet-based listings and resources.

The industry is touting greater flexibility, last-minute deals and more hotel-like services and amenities, coupled with the old standbys of extra space and privacy and a kitchen to save money on bar tabs and restaurant bills. And with more consumer reviews and website guarantees, the risks of checking into a musty dump furnished with Grandma's cast-offs are diminishing.

"It's a whole new ballgame," says Douglas Quinby of PhoCusWright, a travel research firm that issued a report this year on the $25 billion-plus market.

According to PhoCusWright, only about 10% of adults in the USA have booked a vacation rental, which can be anything from a one-bedroom, $50-a-night Myrtle Beach condo arranged directly through an absentee landlord to a $15,000-a-week Caribbean villa with private pool and butler. The firm estimates there are 1.2 million vacation rental units in the USA, with just over half arranged through individual owners and the rest through real estate or property management companies. In Europe, the possibilities range from modest French gîtes (farm cottages) to palatial Parisian apartments.

"As the economy heads south, vacation rentals are more recession-proof than hotels because you get a much better value," says Baer Tierkel of Otalo, a just-launched search engine that bills itself as a "Google for vacation rentals."

And like hoteliers, the growing ranks of vacation rental owners — many of whom had never intended to rent out their second homes — are responding with price cuts and other incentives. Those include shorter stays and last-minute discounts of up to 20%, says Bob Barnes of Zonder.com, a network of professionally managed rentals. One Orlando company is giving away Walt Disney World tickets for bookings of a week or longer.