This is a bit of a follow up to the post on who is and who is not going to Italy this year. Given the bad US economy, we'd like to target European countries with strong currencies and economies - england, ireland, germany, norway etc.

So, fellow slowtravelers from those countries, where (other than slowtrav) do you go for your villa rental information?

PS I'm doing this anonymously because I wouldn't want anyone to think that I'm pushing our villa

Nowadays, unless I know somewhere by word of mouth I use nothing but the internet to find somewhere.

We are going to Austria in a few weeks and in countries like Austria and Germany I email tourist offices for lists of options as I find them very helpful but then I only follow up places I can email.

I was looking for a villa in the South of France for June (our daughter is getting married there). I googled something like 'villa, 6 people', and the name of the place and found various places that way and then emailed them. They were not agencies, but privately owned places that advertised on holiday letting/rental sites. I like to liase with an owner. I never find agencies (which in the past, I have used) satisfactory with things like collecting keys, knowing the ins and outs of a place etc. I do it this way in Italy also.

Just my way of doing it but I may not be typical - a lot of people must find things in magazines as the Sunday supplements in the UK are full of ads for holidays in villas. However I expect most people end up on the internet by this route. I hope this helps

Our guests most often mention Owners Direct as being a site which they find very trustworthy. You deal direct with the owners but they seem to be very reliable. VRBO seems to be another popular one. But you need to ask for the owner's own website as you can very easily from that what their attitude to letting is and how much they care about their guests!

I suspect that most people from the British Isles and northern Europe look for vacation rentals the same way that Americans do: through the Internet. But they use their own language. If you google “holiday let Florence” or “Ferienhaus Florenz”, you get quite different results than if you google “vacation rental Florence”. In all cases, the results include a mix of listings-by-owner Web sites, agencies and individual rentals.

You could list your villa through some of the more popular Web sites or agencies or, if you have your own Web site, make sure that it's 'googlable' for your prospective renters' preferred terminology.

Thanks so much for the responses so far. Our website is in 4 languages to encourage google in german and french as well as Italian and English. We're on VRBO and Homelidays and Bertrand Vacances (a big push for the French market last year got a few reservations), and I use Craigslist weekly. The "Homeaway" network is just beyond our budget. And of course slowtrav! We avoid agencies. We were on a few free sites, but I found that we got no requests and it was too hard to keep up with them all.

What I wonder is what sites are prefered by people from these other countries, if any. For example, a French person told us that her favourite site is Homelidays, so we advertised there and have had responses from French as well as other northern europeans. As an American, I use the more direct google approach described by Felicity, but sometimes look through VRBO first.

thanks again, I look forward to more tips!

I've got a couple of friends with Italian holiday houses who use the Owners Direct listing site and are happy with it. I've used it myself to find somewhere and it is popular with the independent UK traveller.

I've also used Interhome, but it can be a bit confusing.

This thread is a little too business-oriented for us mods, so I am closing it. If anyone has further advice for Tomale, please email her directly.