I came up with the idea for holiday-rentals.ca in fall 2003. As I enjoy renting cottages myself, my aim was to bring owners and renters directly in contact for the rental or exchange of cottages, houses, apartments or rooms. I also wanted to create a site that was different from the ones that already existed. One of my principal concerns while creating the site was to give access to property descriptions and photos in a single click. With our new home page, the link "All our offers", the quick search tool and the geographical map allow that. I created holiday-rentals.ca with the aim of presenting offers as objectively as possible. All offers are treated on an equal basis. When offers are posted for the first time, they are presented in random order, which allows each one to appear at the top of the list at some point. Once offers are posted, the user can then choose to display them in chronological order ("show most recent offers" button), according to price ("sort by price" button), or by region ("sort by region" button). In addition, there are no registration categories such as "gold-silver-bronze" for example, which favour certain offers over others. In addition, it includes properties for rent and exchange in urban areas, whereas other sites generally list only cottages. With the help of experienced programmers (thanks to Henri, Huy and Thean), we invested a lot of energy in developing a highly sophisticated research tool. As all the property details are listed in a database, clients can make specific searches such as "I'm looking for a cottages in the Eastern Townships located within 300 feet of a lake with a sandy beach, with two bedrooms and a log fire." Very few sites offer such precision. The site is bilingual in English and French. When you place an ad in English, a French version is automatically created on locationvacances.ca. Since photos are important when choosing a cottage, I left a lot of room for these: each ad comprises six photos of 400 x 300 pixels. There is also a calendar of availabilities that can be updated at any time. Another point worth mentioning: all the units of measurements are converted automatically to imperial for North American clients and to metric for Europeans. It's very easy to place an ad. Simply fill out the registration form in the Advertise Your Property menu. When you're done, your ad will appear on the site automatically. You can alter the ad free of charge any time after that, as many times as you want, using the updating module in the Members section. I hope you will find the site useful. Enjoy your stay! Gilles Thibault http://www.holiday-rentals.ca E-mail: info@holiday-rentals.ca