“We switch houses, cars – everything. I haven’t done it but friends of mine have.”
So starts a beautiful friendship in 2006 festive classic The Holiday. In the film, a chaotic Hollywood type (Cameron Diaz) swaps houses and lives for two weeks with a lovelorn Surrey cottage owner (Kate Winslet).
Ever since Diaz and Winslet exchanged front door keys and hometowns, the concept of home swapping has been steadily growing – and, with living costs sharply rising in the UK, it’s set to become even more vital for Britons seeking affordable travel options.
Love Home Swap, which launched in 2011 after the success of The Holiday, charges an annual membership (from £96) to access its listings, for which users “can enjoy an unlimited number of home swap holidays for less than the cost of one night in many hotel rooms in the UK’s capital cities”.
The company predicts that home swappers save an average of £2,000 per week on accommodation alone; they could save even more when you “add in the fact that swappers generally also have access to a full kitchen, plus they can often borrow additional extras such as bikes,” says a spokesperson. The catch, of course, is that you need your own home in order to join the website and take advantage of swaps.
Browsing LHS, it’s far from just city flats and suburban homes: in one quick search I find period townhouses in New Orleans’ glorious French Quarter, a solar-powered grand design of a hideaway in Hiroshima, Japan, and a thatched poolside chalet hidden in the mountains of Sri Lanka. Other platforms include HomeExchange, Switchome and Holiday Swap.
Love Home Swap predicts that home swappers save an average of £2,000 per week on accommodation alone
Generally speaking, there are two ways to swap: mutual exchange (what The Holiday ladies did), where you stay at each other’s homes simultaneously; and swapping for points, where someone from the community stays at your place while you’re already away, and you accrue points to “spend” at another house swap property in future.
But home switching as a budget travel hack is becoming ever more visible in belt-tightened 2022, especially with families. Consumer travel expert Rory Boland recently raved on Twitter about “paying zero pounds” to stay in a huge, detached family home in Australia for a month this summer, while its…
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