These days most people are familiar with the concept of vacation rentals and the benefits they provide over traditional hotels. Staying in a vacation rental gives you the chance to immerse yourself in the authentic local experience while taking advantage of the extra space and amenities like a full kitchen or hot tub, all at a generally lower cost. Today, when someone wants to book a vacation rental they usually jump online, browse photos, read reviews, maybe email some questions, and finalize their reservation right from their computer.

In our modern age of convenience, it might be hard to conceive of a time when vacation rentals weren’t booked with phone apps or even snail mail, but with actual horse-drawn carriages. That’s right, the very first vacation home was built nearly 400 years ago, a charming hunting lodge in the French countryside. You probably know it as the Palace of Versailles.

Europeans continued to stay in vacation rentals through the mid-1800’s, when the reservation process was revolutionized with the invention of the telegraph. Renters no longer had to wait weeks for their inquiries to be delivered and even longer to get a reply. Now they could send their messages instantaneously and receive a much quicker response. The arrival of the telephone soon afterwards made communication even easier, and newspapers and real estate agents began carrying rental listings. This method of finding vacation rentals was the standard right up until the end of the 20th century.

In 1995 the advent of dial-up internet access brought about the next step in the evolution of vacation rentals, beginning with VRBO which started by listing one property: the founder’s Breckenridge ski condo. Fast forward 10 years and HomeAway has become the first behemoth vacation rental site, eventually acquiring VRBO and creating an inventory of over 120,000 listings.

The creation of Airbnb in 2008 and the birth of the “sharing economy” launched the next phase of the industry. The term “vacation rental” became a household name. Now everyone with a spare bedroom can get into the game, not just those with a beach house or ski chalet that they only use for a few weeks out of the year. Companies like Stay Alfred are taking the vacation rental concept out of their traditional remote locales and into the heart of urban centers. HomeAway alone now has more than 2.8 million rooms across 190 countries. It makes you wonder if King Louis XIII could have imagined his original idea would become the basis of an industry worth an estimated $85 billion.