Gina lives with her dog in one of those colorful art deco apartments in Miami, where she works remotely for a marketing company in front of a panorama full of palm trees and shirtless people. Despite living in one of the most vibrant cities in America, Gina needs something more, to find herself, perhaps a change of air oceans away.
For his part, George is a young man who has just lost his father and has dedicated the last few months to renovating the family home in Kerala, a tropical state in southern India. He needs a change, start from scratch. He would like Lisbon, maybe Berlin. Or Miami. You can imagine how the story ends, right?
The premise of Nancy Meyers’ film The Holiday, released in 2006 and starring Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet, set a precedent that has resurfaced in recent years thanks to social networks and the rise of new portals that promote home swapping, or the great idea of ??exchanging your house with another person on the other side of the world.
The benefits? An alternative to the Airbnb empire, a cheaper way to stay in another country for long periods of time – teletravel – and also to put yourself in the shoes of a local person during your stay.
In December 2021, marketer Grace Gagnon decided to upload a video from her Boston studio to TikTok asking if anyone in England was interested in trading their home over Christmas. What began as a nod to the film The Holiday – in which both protagonists exchanged residences in California and the United Kingdom – became a flood of requests from all over the world.
But Grace’s case is not the only one: just take a look at hashtags like
House exchange not only takes place spontaneously through various profiles on TikTok or Instagram, but also through digital platforms such as HomeExchange, a great reference for this trend with more than 150,000 active members in 145 different countries. A window to the world where we find various types of accommodation and also clients to match: from affordable accommodation for all budgets, to the luxury home exchange community HomeEchange Collection, where we find designer lofts in Canada or majestic haciendas in the Mexican Caribbean.
In turn, the platform offers two options for its subscribers: exchanging your house as currency, or paying with Guest Points, the HomeExchange currency, in case one of the parties does not want to stay in your house or city but you are interested in that property.
But HomeExchange is not the only ambassador of what they prefer to call – in order to get away from the long shadow of Airbnb – “a human exchange”: we also find other platforms such as Twin City, which has guests in Mexico City, Lisbon or Los Angeles, among 25 other cities, in addition to a program dedicated to exchanging activities with local people and even a store selling products to help you sleep better in your new home. Another platform, Kindred, has a system of credits that can be exchanged for stays through exchanges in 50 different cities.
Various options that allow us to show off our home as a bargaining chip when it comes to enjoying a season in another country without fear of ruin.
One of the main reasons that differentiates platforms like HomeExchange from Airbnb is their ability to allow us to save a lot of money during our vacations or long periods in another destination. At a time when more and more people are embarking on the adventure of telecommuting, exchanging our house allows us to have a person who takes care of the home while saving on the travel budget.
Obviously, home swapping also has its cons. Although the reliability offered by exchange platforms does not have to pose any risk when offering a home – in these cases, we must take into account the fine print contracts, suggestions and resolved doubts – we must also leave our house ready for the new tenant.
If, for example, you travel to a warm country but it is winter in yours, you will have to provide the new guest with blankets and duvets, in addition to refocusing your home thinking that you will no longer live there, which involves reorganizing closets or storing them in a safe place. valuable belongings. Nothing that a to-do list can’t solve.
As you can see, home swapping has come to stay as a perfect reflection of its time: a globalization that speaks of as many exchanges as there are ways of interacting, an economical way to experience teletravel and break the prejudice of an already planned life that, sometimes, , also deserves a match. Except that unlike what the dating apps promised, this time the date is with that future destination.
