Quick Pitch: Otalo is a search engine for vacation rentals that searches across the internet's many different vacation rentals sites & 200,000+ homes.
Genius Idea: Put simply, Otalo is like a Kayak.com for vacation rentals. The site scours a variety of other rental search sites and aggregates the results in one, easy-to-use search tool.
And like Kayak.com and other travel sites, you can specify what you want with great detail. Tell Otala when and where you want to travel, how much you’re willing to spend, how many bedrooms you need, and even details like pets, smoke-free, or waterfront property, and you’ll get plenty of results showing what you’re looking for. For example, here are the results on searching for vacation rentals in Miami, staying from 3/8 – 3/15, with a max of $1,000 week and smoke-free:
There’s also a Google Maps mashup, so you can navigate to different rentals based on where you’d like to stay, as well as an option to “favorite” listings you find that you might want to come back to later. Once you've found a listing you like, Otalo will direct you to the original listing, from which you can follow each site's directions on how to get more information or book the rental.
Ultimately, Otalo creates a better way to search for vacation rentals, which, can sometimes save you money versus staying in a hotel. If you're looking to rent out your own property, however, you'll have to list it with one of the sites that Otalo indexes.
Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark