Most people have three reasons for choosing to rent a home instead of staying in a hotel for a week: it's usually less expensive to rent a cottage than a hotel room for a longer period of time; you can fit a bunch of family and friends into one comfortable place; and the setting is casual -- you can dress the way you like and never have to worry about getting up to greet housekeeping when they tap on your door to clean.

This latter brings up a big difference between hotels and rental homes: there's no staff on hand to wait on guests. No room service, either. A bed left unmade in the morning will stay that way unless you take care of it. Same thing for taking out the garbage, cleaning the bathrooms and doing the laundry. A vacation rental home is, simply put, your home away from home and you're responsible for how well it runs.