article: These days you can ditch hotels and stay in a real house just about anywhere in the world - find the one that best suits you with our guide. Host with the most . The concept of a homestay holiday is that rather than renting an empty house or apartment, you stay at a reasonable cost in the home of your hosts. Web-based company Homestay.com lists options for single people, couples and families in cities, established holiday areas or farther afield. At best, homestays are offered by hosts who want to help you understand their country or district. We can all find the Dordogne or Lake Garda on a map but this gets you closer to the real region faster and cheaper. More information: www.homestay.com . Dive in: This light-filled apartment and swimming pool in Los Angeles can be rented through onefinestay.com . Rich pickings . Rent posh private apartments in some of the world’s most glamorous cities while the owners are out of town. These luxury homes are on offer through the website Onefinestay.com in London, Paris, New York and Los Angeles. The firm’s latest venture is a deal with travel firm Carrier to offer accommodation complete with flights, transfers and financial protection. More information: www.onefinestay.com . Head for the west coast: Take a trawl online and you could be hitting the surf on a board before you know it . Bed-and-breakfast extravaganza . An online company that started out as a website offering airbeds for rent on living room floors in San Francisco, with breakfast thrown in, now claims 800,000 listings in towns and cities worldwide. Its name, Airbnb.com, remains unchanged in homage to its origins, and with so many listings, no doubt the occasional inflatable mattress still features. These days, it is people wanting to raise cash from their spare room who form the great majority of hosts. But a thorough search of Airbnb will yield yurts in Mongolia, castles in the Alps, treehouses in New England, igloos in the Canadian Arctic and innumerable boats (where an airbed doubles as a life raft, naturally) to stay in. Back in San Francisco, where it all started, search through thousands of listings ranging from £7 per night on a sofa to £500-plus for a whole apartment. More information: www.airbnb.com . Diverse: Airbnb.com offers an array of accommodation, from spare rooms to igloos or even a Mongolian yurt . Home from home . Book a villa or city apartment, then sit back and relax in the knowledge that even though you are paying far below top whack, every little thing will be fine. Owners of the thousands of properties listed on the Housetrip.com site are so confident you’ll be happy, they take payment 48 hours after guests arrive. If you get there and are dissatisfied, the company will find an alternative or give you a refund. More information: www.housetrip.com . Ethical getaways . The squeaky-clean agency Responsibletravel.com specialises in ethical travel by connecting tourists with local travel companies all over the world, particularly in developing countries. Homestays are at the core of its business culture, whether that means sleeping in a Masai hut in a Kenyan village or getting to know your Indian hosts in a palatial old merchant’s haveli in Rajasthan. Other options include staying on a coffee farm in Costa Rica and hanging out in the Australian outback. Nearer to home, you can share in the life of Berber villagers in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco (avoid Ramadan, 30 days from June 18) or stay with a family who grow herbs at an eco-home in Slovenia’s Soca valley. More information: www.responsibletravel.com . Far away: Stay in a Masai hut in a Kenyan village (above) or a haveli in Rajasthan with Responsibletravel . Get put up for free . Finally, the social-networking and ‘hospitality exchange’ website Couchsurfing.org enables registered users to contact host members and stay with them, free, for a day or two. This may be on a sofa, though more commonly a spare bed is offered. Guests then ‘surf’ on to their next venue. The ‘free‘ part is not necessarily as important as sharing briefly in the life of the host, who will typically take you on a tour of their city and introduce you to friends. Although no fee is paid, it is common for the guest to bring a gift or invite the hosts out for a restaurant meal. The scheme suits travellers on a tight budget interested in engaging with locals rather than fellow residents of backpacker hostels. More information: www.couchsurfing.org .
highlights: Travellers are increasingly ignoring hotels for 'homes away from home'
  Homestays, with and without hosts, are available for all budgets .
  Sites like Homestay and AirBnb are catering to this different style of travel .
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