What is a Casa Rural? Unique Accommodation in Spain

First, What is a Casa Rural, and how is it different from a B&B or hotel?

If comparing a casa rural to a hotel or bed and breakfast, it is closer to a bed and breakfast but the breakfast isn’t always a part of the deal.

In general, the thing that makes casas rurales different is their location. You can find a casa rural in remote areas of Spain where there are no hotels and very few commercial businesses.

Why Seek Out Unique Accommodation Like Casas Rurales in Spain?

These days it’s tempting to think that we all know every trick in the book when it comes to finding the best travel deals. After all, we have access to this handy thing called the world wide web and sites like Expedia, Travelzoo, and Booking.com. We can compare and contrast prices all day long!

We can even rent super cool homes, apartments, boats, or tree houses on sites like Airbnb. But so can everyone else in the world.. and they are seeing the very same places we are.

Here’s the thing. There are still places that don’t exist on big websites such as hotels.com, booking.com, and Airbnb. Places you won’t find with Google (unless you are specifically looking for them by name or in the right language). Places where there won’t be crowds of tourists and you don’t have to book months in advance. Places where you can find cozy rooms tucked away in the middle of nowhere (but somewhere beautiful) for a fraction of what a hotel would cost.

Staying in a casa rural, for example, offers the opportunity to experience places and regions you otherwise wouldn’t be able to, in a more intimate way.

For off-the-beaten-path, unique accommodation in rural Spain, like casas rurales, two of the best sites when I wrote this post originally in 2017, were Escapada Rural and Toprural. They offered a great selection of casas rurales in small villages and rural regions of Spain and Portugal. However, at some point after 2018, Toprural.com was sadly purchased by VRBO, making a lot of these places more accessible to more travelers. Almost nothing good can be created these days in the accommodation space, without Airbnb or VRBO purchasing it and turning it into something that is just not as good for consumers from a quality/value perspective.

Searching on Google for a Casa Rural in a specific region or near a certain town that you might not be able to find on booking sites

Another good way to find listings of casas rurales in specific regions of Spain is to type a search into Google like this: casas+rurales+name of region. This will wield some more localized websites that you may not find when simply searching for casas+rurales+spain.

For instance, when I traveled to the Ribera Sacra region in Galicia I found a couple of local sites (Galicia Turismo Rural and Tus Casas Rurales) with slightly different casa rural options by searching casas+rurales+galicia.

Toprural, Escapada Rural and Other Sites for Finding Casas Rurales in Spain

How do Toprural, Escapada Rural, and other local casas rurales sites find their properties and why are many of them nonexistent on other websites?

It mostly comes down to the number of casa rural owners that are still old school. They stick with the companies they know and have been listed with for years, they don’t want foreign tourists, or they simply don’t want the pressure of being listed on sites like Booking.com (where not only are very few people looking for places in these rural regions, but they take a huge % fee and attract a different kind of traveler).

Most people you find staying in casas rurales are Spaniards (in Spain) or from nearby countries. And most of these casa rural websites are in the local language, not English, though these days it is simple to translate any web page to English with just a click of a button.

Many owners of casas rurales are also not very tech savvy or ‘digitalized’. Some don’t even have credit card machines or the ability to book automatically online (I kid you not, I had to make a bank transfer to a casa rural in Galicia which I could only do because I had a Spanish bank account-don’t worry this isn’t always the norm!). With many casas rurales you have to email the owners your date requests, confirm the price, etc. before being able to confirm your reservation. Sometimes you can only do this by phone or email, not automatically.

This all seems suspect or scary to people in their 20’s and 30’s who’ve always been able to book hotels online and may never have had to transfer money or write a check. But it’s something that local Spaniards (at least those 40 and older) aren’t as bothered by. That said, over the past five years, more and more casa rural owners have gotten up to date as far as the way they are able to collect payment so what I experienced back in 2017 and 2018 when I first started staying in casas rurales isn’t as common now.

The benefits of staying in a Casa Rural

If you want to stay in some wonderful, intimate, and locally owned places off the beaten path in Spain, casas rurales are really the way to go.

The little inconveniences or differences in booking with these kinds of places are a part of the charm. In exchange for dealing with perhaps more old-school style hosts, you get amazing prices (especially compared to hotels and Airbnbs) and unique experiences. Prices are often as low as 30-55 euros a night for places in more remote regions (and this is for a very nice quality room with a private bathroom) but can also go up much higher and extend to more luxury properties (you can rent entire Villas, or old historic buildings with 10 rooms for groups, etc). But the best thing? You’ll be connecting directly with and putting money directly in the pockets of a local as well as avoiding that feeling of being a ‘tourist’ that comes with staying in more commercial abodes in larger cities.

An added bonus? You’ll get to brag to all of your friends about your superb travel-like-a-local skills :).

I’ve stayed in casas rurales in remote wine regions and coastal regions in Spain, where I was able to put myself in a position to easily drive to many scenic and historic sites, wineries, etc. My only option other than staying in a casa rural in these regions would have been to travel to the one nearest ‘city’ where there were sparse accommodation options but those came with inconveniences I didn’t want to deal with as well as higher prices.

In the end, the places I stayed were comfortable, well located for what I wanted to do, and gave me a completely different feeling as a traveler in the region than I would have gotten at a hotel thanks to being able to connect directly with regular locals from the region. In most cases, the only American anywhere as these places aren’t as often frequented by those from English-speaking countries as those from Spain, Portugal, etc.