HomeExchange – an affordable alternative to Airbnb
Source：HomeExchange.com, Wikipedia, The New York Times
From：Taiwan Trade Center, New York
Update Time：2024/02/28
Home exchange, or house swapping, is a lodging arrangement where two parties exchange homestays for a specified period without a monetary transaction. It encompasses various types of residences, such as apartments, houses, vacation cottages, boats, and RVs, and can involve swapping the entire home or just a room. The duration of the exchange can range from a weekend to more than a year and can be simultaneous or non-simultaneous. House swapping is particularly popular during the summer, coinciding with school breaks when families tend to travel. Typically, these exchanges are facilitated through social networking platforms, such as HomeExchange.com and HomeLink, most charging a membership fee.
The concept of organized home exchange was created in 1953 when a team of European teachers seeking economical ways to travel abroad during their summer breaks established Intervac International. Concurrently, in New York City, teacher David Ostroff founded the "Vacation Exchange Club", now known as HomeLink, to further the idea of home exchange networks. Today, HomeExchange.com, headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is one of the most well-known platforms in the home exchange world.
Founded in 1992 by Ed Kushins, HomeExchange.com is the world leader in home exchange vacations, boasting a vast network of over 150,000 members across 145 countries. To sum up, here is the process you would have to go through to finalize your first home exchange with the platform:
- Create your free listing and fill out your profile.
- Browse for homes in your preferred destinations and send exchange requests.
- Become a member ($220/year) and finalize your exchange.
Two kinds of exchanges are available: the “reciprocal exchange”, when two families trade their homes either simultaneously or on different dates, and the exchange with “GuestPoints” if a member doesn’t want to stay at your home in return. Each member earns GuestPoints upon registration and when they host other members. For example, if you stay at another member’s home for 6 nights at 100 GPs a night, you will give your host a total of 600 GPs, that he can then use for his own vacations. If you don’t have enough points to trade for your stay (and don’t want to host people in your home), you have the possibility to purchase GuestPoints.
The annual membership gives you several benefits, including 500 GP bonus for your first year, unlimited number of exchanges, member support, assistance in case of cancellation or non-compliance, property damage coverage, and access to private HomeExchange Facebook groups. And if you don’t find an exchange in your first year, the second year of membership is free.
Even though this affordable, authentic, and safe way to travel is becoming more and more popular, it represents only a small fraction of the traveling world, according to Douglas Quinby, Research Vice President at PhoCusWright, a travel research firm. This can be explained by the inherent obstacles to exchanging homes. “You’ve got to find a home that’s available where you want to go, you’ve got to match and marry dates, you’ve got to match for an equitable home,” he said. And “you have to be somewhere that other people want to go.”
When searching for the destination “Taipei, Taiwan” on HomeExchange.com, only seven results appear. A look at the demographics of the members located in Taiwan reveals that the concept is mostly popular among the expatriate community. Home swapping has yet to be developed in this area of the world, but it has the potential to revolutionize the travel industry by giving the opportunity to travel more while staying on budget.
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Source: https://www.homeexchange.com/p/how-it-works-en