Holiday home

Holiday homes on Lake Plauer

A holiday home is generally understood to be a house in which guests can spend their vacation for a certain period of time against payment . Sometimes such a house is operated exclusively for temporary rental to guests, and it is often built solely for this purpose. However, some families also own a holiday home for self-use ( weekend house, summer house), for example in scenic areas.

tourism

Hytte in Norway

Unlike in large hotel complexes or holiday parks, holidaymakers can get to know the country and its people more easily in a holiday home that is embedded in the region. Often cottages are created in local architectural style, such as a bath villa on the Baltic Sea, Reethus in northern Germany, alpine hut in the Alps, Finnhütte in parts of Central Europe, finca in Spain, Stuga or Torp in Sweden, Hytte in Norway, Mökki in Finland, as Forest Homes , Chalet , Cottage , Datsche or Trulli , as well as Chata in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

In the upscale hotel industry, one also speaks of a villa ; these holiday homes in a hotel complex usually have the same service as the rooms, but more privacy.

In many European holiday regions, especially during the high season, holiday homes are only rented out on a weekly basis, with Saturday often being the day of arrival ; this applies in particular to holiday homes in holiday complexes. In addition to the rental costs, which are usually calculated per day or per week, there used to be additional costs for final cleaning, water and electricity, but now it is legally regulated that final prices must be stated (costs for bed linen and towels can be billed separately, only for 4 -Star houses must also be included in the price). The rental can be done through a tour operator , travel agency , local agency or directly from the landlord. Many tourist offices also publish annual accommodation directories. In the past few years, vacation home rental has shifted more and more to the Internet, where online brokers and vacation home portals offer their services. Here, a distinction can be made between advertising portals in which holiday home owners advertise their houses themselves, organizers who look after the house owners themselves and have their own rating systems for their houses, and brokerage platforms that broker houses from different providers.

In individual cases, owners of works by famous architects also rent their houses to paying overnight guests. In the United States, for example, this is true of some of the homes designed by Frank Lloyd Wright , such as: B. the Louis Penfield House .