News

'Who, on earth, would want to swap their house in Ireland for a home in Springfield, Massachusetts for two weeks?

Well, the Moriartys' did, all six of them, and after several "swaps" to the UK, we found the most beautiful vacation of our lives in County Kerry (June 2006). Did we mention the International "Hog" rally in Killarney? Hundreds and hundreds of motorcycles from all over the world, passing you on roads no wider than your car. Oh, your car, driving on the left with the steering wheel on the right and shifting with you left hand!! It put my paramedic ambulance driving skills to the test!

The western sea coast, Inch Strand, White Strand, Gap of Dunloe, Macgillycuddy Reeks, Black Valley, the outer Islands and Oh God, the FOOD! We stayed in a little town called Kenmare, known for it's food and gourmet eating places. We never stopped, something to do every day and the most beautiful postcard scenery at every curve of the road. Wonderful people and Great Music in every place. On our last day as we drove to Shannon airport a Hot Air Balloon Rally took off in Killarney, what a send off!

We swapped houses and cars for 15 full days. I took my daughter (8) and my girlfriend brought hers (6). Air fare for two, food (we cooked at home half the time), three all day tours, beach days, horseback riding on the beach, Blarney Castle, on and on and on, came to less than 1800.00 USD.

We swapped my 70 year old brick colonial for a new 5 bedroom 5 bath house in the Kerry Hills, oh, and we fed a lovely sheep dog named Molly, who kept the girls happy all day!

Each family had a mishap of sorts but, because we had emailed and chatted for six months before the swap, we were all fine with our responsibilities and moved thru it without problem.

I can't wait to go again! I belong to several swapping groups, but Home Base Holidays is the best. They give you ALL the information you will ever need to have a great time in the place you want to go.' - Pam, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, HE13370

Editor's Note: I recently spotted Pam's report above on the AOL Message Boards. Thanks, Pam, for giving permission to publish it in the newsletter.

What a delight to wake up on a dull January morning and find that Home Base Holidays had been chosen to receive the very first 'Treasure of the Month Award' by The Exchange Queen, owner of Know Your Trade, a new home exchange information site and blog.

An excerpt from the post:

'Lois Sealey has a wonderful blog, one of the best in the industry, which often features member listings. In addition, she publishes a bi-monthly newsletter.

Several of the members have rated the club on KYT and all have given it rave reviews, especially for help given to members....

All listings on Home Base Holidays are guaranteed to be up to date as it is one of the few clubs that shows both the membership date and the expiration date.'

I was pleased to see that 'The Exchange Queen' pointed out the importance of including both join/renewal and expiry dates in listings as, without this information, there would be no way for site visitors and members to tell how long listings have already been, and will continue to be, in circulation. Being able to see how up-to-date listings are, along with checking out the balance of listings between countries/areas, can be as important, if not more so, than the total numbers of listings, when weighing up your best chances of finding home swaps that will suit your own particular needs.

Thanks again for the honour of being declared a 'Treasure' and cheers, Exchange Queen! May your committment to raising awareness of home exchange also promote high standards in the whole home exchange community.

Do check out the lovely comments already left by Home Base Holidays members on Know Your Trade.

The article in the title, published in the last issue of Home Swappers, detailed two home exchangers' stories in unintentionally upsetting exchange partners by leaving a home not as tidy as it should have been before an exchange and, in the second case, not cleaning/tidying at the end of an exchange when a cleaner had been organised to do this. A Home Base Holidays member (an experienced exchanger), sent her very thoughtful comments on, in particular, the importance of leaving a home in top condition at the end of an exchange:

'I have exchanged several times now and I want to comment on "How to leave someone's home at the end of the stay".

Because I am so grateful for the use of the home I have been entrusted with, I want to make sure I leave it in such a condition that the owners walk in after a long flight home and find everything in order. Everything clean and beds made.

When planning my trip I try to make sure that I get a late flight, giving me time to spend the day finishing off the cleaning, washing and drying linen, making up beds etc. If I can't get a late flight, I spend the previous day doing it and then I leave their home in the late afternoon and stay in a hotel near the airport.

Many times I have come home to find my bed isn't made as the exchangees have left very early and obviously in a hurry and they have done only a superficial tidy up. So, after spending at least a day at their home making sure my exchangees arrive home with beds made and no cleaning to do, I have to do it all again at my home.

So my advice for exchangees is to include in their planning for the trip, how to leave at the end of it.

I have had many wonderful exchanges and believe it is the best way to travel!'

Did you see 'The Holiday', the movie based on a home swap that was released in December? If not, it should be available to rent soon. In the last issue of the newsletter, I gave information on getting free tickets to a preview of the film and I hope a few members in the London area were able take up this offer. I attended a preview and, I have to be honest, this is the type of undemanding movie I might normally watch while bundled up at home nursing a cold rather than make the effort to go out to see it.

I was, of course, curious to see how the home swapping angle was handled. If the researchers had made an effort to find out how real home exchanges are arranged, it didn't come across all that well in the movie. The main female characters seemed to happen upon a fictional home exchange site while browsing Google and, before you know it, they are in touch, agree to exchange homes within two minutes - and are on their ways in opposite directions across the Atlantic the very next day. So much for careful preparation before an exchange!

But I can't complain about a movie which has made more people aware of home exchange. In fact, we've already had a number of new members (from Texas to Latvia to South Africa and beyond!) who mentioned 'The Holiday' as the way they found out about home exchange and Home Base Holidays.

Many thanks to all who took part in the short Newsletter Survey included in the Dec/Jan issue of the newsletter. Your feedback is really helpful. Of the particular questions:

• 94% said they read all or most of the newsletter
• 94% gave their overall impression of the newsletter as good or excellent
• 56% said that the present frequency of publication (six times a year) was right (no one selected the option of ceasing publication and directing subscribers to the weblog instead!)
• 75% who responded were female
• the age range of respondents was between 37 and 76

In the section where respondents could give their own suggestions for improving the content, there was a range of ideas: e.g. including more information on the actual mechanics of arranging exchanges, featuring unusual additions to a home and car swap (such as swapping cellphones or club memberships) to just editing some of the stories that are too long (point taken!)

Constant Contact, the mailing service used to compile and send out Home Swappers, has recently added new features and I will be experimenting with some of these (including additional photos and perhaps changing the format slightly) over the next few months. If you miss an issue, all newsletters are added to the Home Base Holidays newsletter archives as soon as published.

Every once in awhile a member mentions the eBay rating system for buyers and sellers and suggests that we should introduce a similar system for members to rate their exchanges. I have addressed this in previous issues of the newsletter and, a few weeks ago, in a post on the blog, Different Strokes for Different Folks: Can Rating Home Exchanges Ever be Really Fair? But, as we are always looking for ways to improve the service for members, this is one of the issues that needs to be re-evaluated regularly. Recently a Home Base Holidays member, who had discussed this with some other members who are also interested, sent in the following suggestions for some of the points members might judge their exchanges on, rating each on a scale of one to 10, and then dividing the score by the number of questions to obtain a rating for that member:

1. Was the property fairly represented in the photographs?
2. How was the property on your arrival?
3. When they left your property, did they leave it as tidy as you had left it for them?
4. Were they respectful of your car and did they leave it full of petrol and clean?
5. Did they replace any broken items?
6. Would you recommend them to any future exchange partner?

The rating idea reminds me somewhat of my first few months as a young bride, newly arrived in England from Canada, and trying my best to impress my new English relatives with my cooking. Having had a father who was always full of praise, I was disheartened when meals were taken with not a mention of the food until one day, my husband's aunt declared, 'This is not bad at all'. Not bad at all? What did I have to do to please these people? It took some time for me to realise that 'Not bad at all' was actually equivalent to my father's, 'Really great'!

Some people are naturally more reserved when it comes to handing out superlatives while others are generous with compliments. In a rating system based on the combined ratings of several people, this is not a problem as you would expect high and low ratings to be balanced out to give a generally realistic over all rating. The problem with rating home exchangers could be that, if a first time exchanger was unfortunate to have exchanged with someone with a tendency to give mediocre ratings however well an exchange had gone, a fairly low rating could, unfairly, deter other members from suggesting exchanges. But, if there's a way around this, and other potential problems, a rating system could indeed be a valuable addition to the service (but only if used by the majority of members).

This new survey is meant to both find out what percentage of members are using the current system to indicate that they have references available from previous exchanges (offering/asking for references and then ticking the box on the membership form to indicate that such references can be supplied) and also to find out your views, whether you have done an exchange yet or not, on introducing a rating system and/or enabling references to be added to listings. Responses will be collated and the results reported in the next issue of the newsletter.

Newsletter Contributions: We are always pleased to hear from members and subscribers and to receive contributions for the newsletter and weblog - short reports on your exchange experiences, tips you feel would be useful to those new to the idea of home swapping and any questions you have on home exchange. Please include 'home exchange' in the subject line when contacting us as messages with no subjects (or dubious sounding subject lines!) or unexpected attachments may end up in our spam folder and deleted unread.

Reading this on the Website? Use the newsletter subscribe link to add your email address and receive the newsletter regularly. If already on the list but not receiving your copy by email, there can be a number of causes:

• Incorrect email address - send us your name and correct address
• Add our email address, homeexchange@btinternet.com, to your address book or 'white list' of accepted messages
• Check your spam/bulk folder before deleting - some 'real' messages can be put there by mistake

Be Alert: If you are a current member, and should ever receive an unsolicited (spam) message from an unknown agency which you think could only have got your name and email address from your Home Base Holidays listing, please forward it to us. The private member area on our website is for one-to-one exchange offers between members only, not for any other solicitations. It is important to be alert to potential scams on the internet (reputable businesses prominently display phone numbers and postal addresses on websites and never send spam!)

Copyright: All Home Swappers content is copyright and cannot be used in any form without written permission from Home Base Holidays. However, please feel free to forward the newsletter (in full) to friends and colleagues who may be interested in home exchange (use the Forward Email link below the newsletter).

Further Information: Check the archives to read past issues of Home Swappers Newsletter. Also, don't forget to visit the Travel the Home Exchange Way weblog for regular information and updates plus special exchange requests. To receive notices by email whenever a new post is added (generally no more than three a week), add your email address to the box above 'Get email updates' in the left hand column of Travel the Home Exchange Way.

Home Base Holidays, London, UK 1985-2007: 22nd year providing a home exchange service worldwide

What a really pleasant surprise to find that, out of all the

What a really pleasant surprise to find that, out of all the thousands of travel websites, Home Base Holidays has been chosen by Times Online Travel experts as one of the top 130 travel websites:

'.... the joy of the web is its sheer size and variety; there are hundreds of independent travel specialists offering something quirky, different and fascinating. Our choice of the top 130 travel websites is based on quality of information, design, value for money and ease of use. ... In the freewheeling spirit of the internet, we have aimed to make our selection new and surprising, so we have excluded many bigger sites.'

Home Base Holidays is in very good company amongst the 10 latest additions to the list. There is also a separate section for sites providing useful 'Inside Information'. Read the full article and check out the interesting travel sites on the list (link below).

Thanks Times Online!