Saurabh Jain, a 30-year-old Mumbai-based banker, decided to do something different for his annual vacation to Goa this year — instead of booking a standard hotel room in the costly tourist paradise, he booked a one-bed apartment near Anjuna via TripAdvisor. “We paid Rs.15,000 for the week, almost half of what we would have paid for a single room,” he raves about the experience. “We cooked our meals in a kitchenette. The landlady was warm and helpful; she even sent a driver to pick us up and gave us local tips.” Vacation rentals of furnished homes, whether modest flats or expansive villas, offer a more private and economical holiday for a growing number of travellers such as Jain. And the Indian market for them is just about picking up.