CIO Bulletin

Discover new and exciting places and begin your next adventure by exchanging homes—Holiday Swap

When trading homes for a week or two with someone else, you stay in their home instead of staying in an anonymous hotel, and they stay in yours.

While the concept of staying in another family’s home while they bed down in yours isn’t exactly new, millions of people swap homes every year all over the world. Many frugal holidaymakers have been doing it for years to save on accommodation costs while enjoying a different type of vacation experience.

The old saying goes: sometimes you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. With shutdowns, travel restrictions, and social distancing, the COVID-19 pandemic made countless people worldwide realize that all they want to do is travel the world. While buying a second home can allow you some escape from the hustle and bustle of daily life, there is still an unscratched itch of exploring a new destination entirely.

With home exchanges, this becomes possible. You can team up with another homeowner in a location you’ve always dreamed of visiting and swap homes with them.

Home exchange sites connect individuals looking to do a home swap with each other. One of the top services swappers use to exchange homes is Holiday Swap. Holiday swap allows users to browse spaces, locations, and destinations through the Holiday Swap app, bringing them one step closer to their next adventure. It is the largest home exchange platform by the number of users, allowing peer to peer marketplace where people can save on the cost of accommodation and swap their homes almost anywhere in the world.

Following are excerpts from the conversation with James Asquith, CEO, and Founder of Holiday Swap

Q. What are the challenges faced by the tourism industry?

Undoubtedly, the pandemic was a difficult couple of years for the travel industry, with many airlines and hotels adversely affected. Still, where they have suffered, Holiday Swap as a company was able to grow and expand the homes on our platform and the staff in our international team.

Q. Do you think Holiday Swap is something different in travel and tourism?

Holiday Swap believes that your home is your passport to the world. Accommodation is typically the single most expensive cost of any trip. We strive to democratize this market by empowering homeowners and even those who do not own accommodations to leverage what they have and travel the world for much less. Home swapping was the core of our business in the first four years of growth, and in 2022 we introduced our in-app currency, Tokens, which our users can earn and spend easily on future bookings, lounge passes, and more. An example of how this works is simple; a new user lists their home on the app, fills out their profile, uploads enticing photographs of the property, and automatically earns hundreds of tokens. The average nightly rate worldwide is only 30 tokens per night, so just by getting started, the average user has already earned several free nights of accommodation somewhere. And by referring to friends or family, their token earning ability is unlimited!

To make things even more competitive, unlike other big accommodation suppliers in the industry, we do not take any commission on transactions. Hence, hosts keep 100% of the tokens they earn from travelers.

Q. Swapping homes can make the tourists feel unsafe as they have to live with strangers. How good is Holiday Swap in making customers feel safe?

Safety is paramount in every good business, and we take it seriously. Firstly, before the trip takes place, we encourage our users to get to know each other by chatting and checking out their profiles. These days, many users connect their social media platforms to their profiles on Holiday Swap, so that is another level of transparency.

When swapping homes in a mutually agreed swap, our guests won’t be sharing with any strangers. If a traveler books a room inside a home or apartment with the hosts, we encourage sufficient dialogue before the trip to ensure both users are comfortable with the home rules.

Q. What tips/suggestions would you give your customers before swapping homes?

We always strongly recommend users get to know each other via our in-app chat feature before their trips. Common things to discuss are house rules, health and safety issues, Wi-Fi passwords, and of course, the keys. How users exchange keys is up to them, but there are many ways to do this, such as using a lockbox, sending via DHL, using a neighbor, and self-check-in.

Q. How do you make swapping homes on a vacation pocket-friendly and comforting?

Subscribed users have unlimited swaps all year round, so there is no stopping how many nights they can save on accommodation worldwide!

Q. What do you think about the recent developments concerning “accessible tourism”?

Back in 2018, Holiday Swap acquired a small home exchange platform for disabled users as part of our mission to make travel accessible for all. Currently, with our home listing section, we encourage homeowners to describe their property and say whether or not it has wheelchair access or has any access issues whatsoever that could present a challenge to some of our users.

The man making home swapping vogue and attractive

James Asquith is the CEO and founder of Holiday Swap and the Official Guinness World Record setter and holder for being the youngest male to visit all 196 sovereign nations worldwide. He has had a successful career in investment banking in London at HSBC, becoming Vice-President at Deutsche Bank and then Head of Corporate Bond trading at Sumitomo Mitsubishi (SMBC).

James then founded Holiday Swap, the largest home swapping platform globally, in 185 countries with nearly 1 million users and one of the most disruptive travel and sharing economy companies. James has also featured as a keynote speaker at The New York Travel Show. With nearly 2 million followers across social media, James has a prominent presence globally, having raised significant capital for a rapidly expanding company across six continents.