Holidays are my lifeline and the only thing that keeps me going through the bad times and the Irish weather. But the arrival of another baby this year meant the family holiday piggy bank was left very depleted. Determined to get away and spurred on by images of designer villas and bijou Parisian apartments bombarding my Facebook feed from a company called Love Home Swap, I decided to sign up to the online home exchange site.
They offered me a four-week free trial (before taking €200 from my credit card) which I wasted trying to get my act together, take decent photos of our home and write an alluring profile.
I was worried no one would be interested in swapping a three-bed-semi in suburban Dublin given many of the houses on the site were swanky mansions in trendy destinations. However, the minute I uploaded my house profile offers started coming in everywhere from LA to Singapore, many of which were from Irish families who had emigrated in the past decade and were coming home for a wedding or a family event.
The biggest plus of this site, over the traditional exchange services, is that you’re not limited to direct home swaps and can trade homes using a points system too.
For instance, if a French family contacted you wishing to stay in your home in August, yet you’ve no desire to summer in the Alps you can offer them an agreed amount of nights in your house and collect points instead. The points in your account can be allocated towards staying in another member house elsewhere.
Which is exactly how we ended up staying in a massive four-bedroom, stunning villa, with private pool and gorgeous gardens, overlooking the epic Foz beach in west Portugal last month.
Two weeks
Our trip just cost us the flights and 1,800 points and to pay them back, per se, we’ve two UK families taking our home in August for two weeks, which given we are heading to west Cork anyhow for these weeks is no skin off our nose.
Our swap was not without a few hiccups – mainly at the planning stage with the owners who even reneged at one point (you have very little security when you’re not paying for accommodation other than the hosts’ word) but we eventually got back on track and had no issues whatsoever once there.
Plus, because the villa was the holiday home of the UK owners, we didn’t feel as if we were in someone else’s private space or have to worry about our kids breaking their good china.
In fact, many of the properties listed seem to be owners’ second homes or holiday apartments and tend to be in places away from the obvious tourist haunts. This means you’re more likely to end up in beautiful parts of a country you wouldn’t otherwise visit – we’d no idea what Portugal was like outside of the Algarve until we ended up in Foz, and we’ll never go south again.
Decluttered
But there’s no such thing as a free lunch or holiday, and we now have the not so small matter of getting our home organised and decluttered for our incoming guests in August. We’ve included a small fee for cleaning and laundering the linen which both parties were happy to pay and seems the norm across the site, which should ease the workload.
Hearing our success story my dad and a few family friends have signed up to the service too, but have yet to tie down any swaps, at least not for this year as most members seem to plan exchanges very far in advance.
But there is lots of talk of Easter 2018, and we’re currently trying to find somewhere hot (Mexico or South Africa) to stay over the Christmas period. I’ve put out loads of request for direct swaps or points swap, so fingers crossed someone fancies spending the festive season in fun but freezing Dublin.
