Hello New Zealand MMMers,
We are planning a trip to NZ in June and July and looking for vacation rentals. We are using VRBO right now but having a hard time figuring out the bottom line rental cost. When we get to the booking page, that nice per night fee results in a much more expensive total stay cost because of added charges.
The VRBO site has also pushed us along to two NZ sites: Good Stays and Book a Bach. We found that Good Stays adds quite a bit with booking fees, linen rentals, cleaning fees, etc. The Book a Bach site adds $30 per night per child.
For example, we found a cool place which sleeps 4 and is advertised for $106 per night. By the time we got to the booking page, it turned out it was over $160 per night. Although the place slept 4, they charged us $30 per person per night for each person over 2 adults.
So, I have a couple of questions -
- is it common to have a surcharge for more than 2 people?
- are we idiots for telling them we have 2 kids? Should we not mention having 2 kids (15 and 10 years old)?
- are there other/better sites locals use to set up vacation rentals?
Thanks for any insight you can offer.