Trading Places

Why stay in an expensive hotel room when you could be swapping your home or sleeping on a sofa anywhere in the world for free? Mike Peake finds out more.

Geoff McConnell is not a cheapskate. When he buys a bottle of wine at the supermarket he expects no change from a tenner, which is no mean feat for a medical student. And were the 25-year-old to get lucky with a lucrative consultancy gig after completing his degree at University of Leeds, he insists that even then he would still seek out strangers’ sofas – and not hotel rooms – whenever he’s in a far-flung corner of the world.

Geoff is an ardent “couchsurfer”, a term that may not yet have made it into the dictionary, but has made its way into the hearts of hundreds of thousands of (mostly young) people from Liverpool to Lima. Add couchsurfers to “home exchangers” and “vacation-home swappers” – two other breeds of savvy, budget-conscious holidaymakers – and the face of travelling as we know it starts to look decidedly different.

The idea of “hospitality sharing” began in the US in the 1950s, and at its most fundamental, is an agreement to offer someone a spare bed or sofa for the night (couchsurfing) in the hope that somebody somewhere will do the same for you. Even when it gets a bit more grown up – home exchanging – the idea is simplicity in itself. The 100,000-plus active home exchangers in the world are a network of like-minded people who are in the market for swapping homes with another family somewhere else for a week or two. Sometimes, the exchange may include a free loan of cars, fishing tackle and other little extras that make going on holiday that bit easier. It’s the chance to swap your own life back in Birmingham, say for that of the Bouchard family in Burgundy.

Geoff has slept on at least 20 sofas and sofa beds abroad, and let 40 like-minded souls from all over the planet crash down on his own sofa, which he modestly describes as “a couch that dreams are made of.”

“What I really like is that you get to meet people who live and work in the area and get a bit of an insider’s view,” he explains.

In other words, if you want to see a place like the locals see it, Geoff and the like are tapping into something most of us have only previously dreamed of.

HOME EXCHANGING
Kevin and Julia Yong, both 32, have a nice flat in Westminster, London, which does admittedly sound more swish than a semi in Stockwell and may explain why they have no shortage of people wanting to swap homes with them. They signed up with service www.homelink.org.uk a couple of years ago and have since been to Vancouver for three weeks, Copenhagen for a long weekend and New York – trendy Greenwich Village, no less – for seven days.

“I was sat there one day idly Googling, when I came across the HomeLink website,” says Julia, a civil servant. “Once I realised how massive it all was and the scope it gave to see the world, that was it.”

By their own reckoning, the couple have saved more than €4,000 in accommodation on those three trips alone, and with the cash they pocketed were able to do things that might otherwise have seemed a tad extravagant. “In Canada we took a floatplane to Whistler,” Julia says. “We also took a trip on the Rocky Mountaineer. Even before the credit crunch it seemed like a good idea.”

To get the most out of home exchanging you have to be adventurous, open-minded, and not the kind of person who’s going to freak out at the idea of complete strangers wandering starkers in your bedroom.

“I think it’s totally split our friends 50/50,” says Julia. “Half say home exchanging is a brilliant idea and that they can’t wait to try it, and the other half say there’s no way in a million years they could have someone in their home.”

Prior to exchange, house swappers often sign an unofficial “contract”, available as a download from whichever club they use, but it’s ultimately all a question of trust. “I guess you are taking a bit of a chance,” says Julia. “But they’re in your house and you’re in theirs. So far our guests have been amazing and respectful, and there have been no disasters at all.”

Membership of a home-exchange club typically costs about €100 a year, and once signed up you’re free to do as many swaps as you like – providing you can find other members who want to swap with you. “Being in London is a huge plus,” says Julia. “People tend to contact us first, and with Vancouver we emailed five places and they almost ended up in a bidding war.”

COUCHSURFING
Down a notch (or two) from home exchanging is couchsurfing, which at the time of writing had just over 1 million adherents worldwide. Unlike home exchanging, it’s free to sign up at www.couchsurfing.com. Once registered, you find a place that you’d like to visit and ask individual members there if they will give you a bed for the night. Even the tiny island – and Ryanair hot spot – of Malta has more than 300 happy souls who will gladly let you doss down in their front room.

“Quite often your host will show you around town,” says Geoff McConnell. “It’s a great way to make friends and meet people.”

And it’s not just young people taking part – Geoff knows of a 60-something lady who regularly puts people up on her sofa.

He also tuts at our suggestion that the system is wide open to exploitation by randy young souls looking to get their leg over.

“There’s been no romantic encounters for me, I’m afraid,” he says. “There’s quite a lot of rules about that kind of thing, and it’s definitely not what it was set up for.”

Geoff’s top couchsurfing tips are to contact your host well in advance, find out as much as you can about them, and agree to meet them somewhere that’s both easy to find and in a public place.

VACATION-HOME SWAPPING
Only really of interest to those with second homes and holiday properties, or those who are away on business a lot, this concept – still in its relative infancy – lets you earn credits for having other members stay in your property while it’s empty.

Unlike home exchanging, which ties two sets of members to each other’s homes for a specific period, with a company such as IVHE, International Vacation Home Exchange (www.ivhe.com), you get to go where you like, when you like. So if you earn 20 credits for letting a member from Russia use your empty Tuscan villa in February, you can “spend” those credits for a week at a Georgian mansion in June.

“For me, it’s perfect,” says Larry Klimczyk, a 42-year-old company executive who lives in Richmond, Surrey. “I travel a lot, and when I’m not here it enables me to leverage this asset – my flat – to take foreign holidays without having to outlay for accommodation. It’s cool.”

Indeed it is, and in return for the keys to his south-west London pad, Larry has enjoyed the use of luxurious digs in Paris, Morocco and Canada. He says: “At first, I was very apprehensive about people coming to stay at my place, but it’s not an issue at all. The biggest problem for me now is deciding where to go next!”
FOR MORE DETAILS, VISIT WWW.HOMELINK.ORG.UK, WWW.HOMEEXCHANGENOW.CO.UK, WWW.INTERVAC.COM, WWW.IVHE.COM AND WWW.HOMEBASE–HOLS.COM