With the economy only just beginning to recover from the recent crisis, many people are still not keen to shell out for costly hotel accommodation on their holidays. In place of expensive hotels, vacationers are turning to self catering apartments in Amsterdam,. Paris and other major cities throughout Europe.

There are numerous benefits to choosing self-catering over hotel lodging on vacation, most prominent among which is the often-cited sense of freedom that comes with independent living. Unrestricted by hotel rules and regulations, holidaymakers who have taken apartments and villas can come and go as they please.

In addition, self-catering units in the world's cultural centres allow for a more authentic holiday experience in many respects. An hotel often involves planned tourist excursions and en masse visits to heritage sites, whereas self-catering encourages holidaymakers to explore for these themselves.

In a similar vein, self-catering, as the name suggests, requires that cooking is occasionally done in the rented apartment or house and this gives visitors the chance to really burrow into the cultural practices and daily life of a certain city. Vacationers will visit supermarkets and fresh produce markets to find ingredients for their meals and this results in a rounded cultural experience.

In short, while in hotels, emphasis is placed on luxury, in self-catering accommodation visitors are afforded opportunities to see the city in which they are staying from the inside out; not as tourists, but as if they were, for a few days, actually living there.