Home Swappers Newsletter: Issue 9
March/April 2001
http://www.homebase-hols.com
Newsletter Archive: http://www.homebase-hols.com/news.shtml

Home Swappers Newsletter is published bi-monthly to provide information on home exchange holidays for current and recent members of Home Base Holidays, enquirers, Newsletter subscribers and journalists. If you do not want to receive further Newsletters please send us a message with 'Remove from mailing list' in the subject line plus your name in the message:

mailto:homeexchange@btinternet.com

Topics Covered:
  1. Make Your Home Earn its Keep - Swap Homes
  2. Sharing Photos with Potential Exchange Partners
  3. Dutch Students Learn English from Home Base Holidays
  4. Competition: Win a Guide to London
  5. Keeping Track of Responses to Exchange Offers
  6. Membership Expired? Renew On-line (10% discount)
  7. Recommended Websites and Newsletters - Focus on Special Travel Sites
      (a) GoNOMAD
      (b) The Travelzine.com
      (c) Fly Free, Stay Cheap!
  8. Home Swappers Archives
  9. Newsletter Contributions
10. Subscriptions

1. Make Your Home Earn its Keep - Swap Homes

Most articles on home exchange in newspapers and magazines focus on the aspect of saving money on accommodation costs, on the space and convenience of having a home away from home or on finding out about a new area by living in a real neighbourhood rather than a tourist resort. A recent article by Graham Norwood in the Property Pages of 'The Observer' (28 January 2001), a major national UK Sunday newspaper, approached the subject from the slightly different angle of making best use of what is usually your most valuable asset - your home.

Long time Home Base Holidays member, Marion Blythman, kindly agreed to be interviewed and the following is a quote from the article:

"Swapping homes has worked well for Marion Blythman, a retired teacher trainer in Edinburgh, who has exchange her three bedroom house through Home Base Holidays on more than 20 occasions for holidays across Europe and the Americas.

One swap was with the New York home of actor Farley Grainger, who starred in Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers On A Train. In the coming year she is going to Rome, Colorado and Mexico for exchange holidays.

'I decided I wanted to do all of these things but couldn't afford to in the conventional way, so tried swapping. It's worked extremely well, because it also makes the holiday and what you get out of it much more worthwhile. You get to know the area and now I've made one or two friends from re-exchanging with them.

'My house is working for me when I do this. You spend a lot of money on your property and your car, so using it this way makes it more efficient. But in the end it's down to the type of person. You cannot be proprietorial with this arrangement. There's got to be a relationship of trust with the people with whom you exchange. I never lock anything away, and leave the house pretty much as I live in it, but I have the security of someone living here while I am away'."

Members can view Marion's current home exchange offer by entering HE1750 in the search by User ID box. Non-members can find her listing by searching on Edinburgh. The full article in 'The Observer' can be read at:

http://www.observer.co.uk/cash/story/0,6903,429721,00.html

2. Sharing Photos with Potential Exchange Partners

Many members now have scanners or digital cameras and are able to send jpeg files of their home photos to us to include with listings rather than have to send prints by post. We include information on sending photo files as jpeg attachments in the welcome message sent to new members. We ask that files be saved in a small size (approximately 250 x 150 pixels is ideal) but still often receive enormous files which can take a long time to download (we don't all have high speed connections to the internet yet unfortunately!). Although no member has mentioned this, it may be that some members are also sending huge photo files as attachments when contacting other members to suggest an exchange. This is not a good idea for a number of reasons: people are rightfully wary of the risk of viruses in attachments in messages from unknown sources and may not open them, a handful of images (especially if large ones) can fill up a mailbox and may cause important messages to be rejected and also not everyone will be able to decode the files to see the photos anyway. Once you made initial contact and have established that a member would welcome the chance to receive email attachments of additional photos to the one or two in your listing, that's fine. However, there may be a better way of sharing photos with other members.

Some of you are probably already using photo album websites to share photos with distant family and friends. On-line photo albums are an ideal way to build up a selection of photos of your home, family and local area to share with any members you are considering exchanges with. I have used the MSN photo album facility and it works fine but have not tested and compared with other photo album sites for ease of use, features, etc. It would be very useful to get feedback from anyone who has tried out different sites so that helpful comments can be passed on to members. The first photo album site in the following list, PhotoPoint, appears to have first introduced the idea and, from an initial look, it would seem to suit the needs of most members just wanting space to upload a selection of photos to share:

PhotoPoint www.photopoint.com
PhotoBox www.photobox.co.uk
Picturetrail www.easyfoto.com
MSN http://communities.msn.com/content/features/photoalbum.asp
Yahoo Photos http://photos.yahoo.com/

3. Dutch Students Learn English from Home Base Holidays

We regularly receive enquiry messages covering a wide variety of questions on home swapping but in the last few weeks we have had a number of messages along the lines of  'Please can you help with my homework?' When the first Dutch students contacted us for help with an assignment for their English class based on questions on the Home Base Holidays website we assumed it was a one-off - and suggested that the students persuade their teacher, who had spent so much time on our site to set some quite obscure questions, to join Home Base Holidays! However, when more students began contacting us with the same set questions we found out that the assignment is from a English textbook used widely in The Netherlands. I guess we should be flattered that our English is considered good enough to be used as a teaching aid! It has been fun corresponding with the students although one was particularly cheeky (or smart?) when he asked for all the answers to the questions to be sent to him by the next day latest as his assignment was due in!

4. Competition: Win a Guide to London (deadline - 27 April 2001)

With the experience of helping Dutch students with their English homework, we are giving members and subscribers a chance to win a copy of the 'AA All-in-One Guide to London' by answering three simple questions on content on the Home Base Holidays website. Unlike the poor students who wouldn't have found the answers to some of the set questions however hard they tried, the three questions below include some useful links to help you quickly find the answers:

(a) How many editions of the print directory does Home Base Holidays publish each year?
Clue: www.homebase-hols.com

(b) In the 'Guidelines' to help members arrange exchanges a sample information sheet is included that a member who takes part in several home exchanges every year sends out with his initial enquiries. What is the member's name?
Clue: www.homebase-hols.com/guidelines.shtml

(c) California members Jan Pehrson and Kristyan Panzica exchanged their houseboat in Sausalito summer 2000 for a very different home and location. Where did they go?
Clue: www.homebase-hols.com/exchangestory.shtml

AA All-in-One Guide London: Everything you may need to know about London is featured in this guide. It includes suggestions on where to stay and eat, places to visit, how to entertain children, as well as price guides, details of public transport and tourist information centres.

Send a message with your answers to the three questions above by 27 April 2001 latest. The first entry drawn with the correct answers will be sent the guide and announced in the next newsletter.

5. Keeping Track of Responses to Exchange Offers

In the welcome message sent to new members we include a suggestion that, if you are contacting several members by email, it would be a good idea to either print each member's listing or make a note of the User ID's of all you are sending an exchange proposal to as this should help you match listings to the responses you receive. Talking to member Alan Collinge this week has raised another problem others may have also encountered. Alan, who says he's a  novice at using the internet and email, has found that some members who reply give no indication who they are - and he then has to contact them again to find out! As many members will send a reply to messages received it would help if you included a reference to each member's own User ID number in the subject line before sending a message, e.g. 'Your Exchange Listing HE00000'. As this is likely to be left unchanged in the subject line, the HE reference should help you match the reply to the correct exchange offer.

If any members have developed foolproof and simple ways to keep track of exchange requests and responses please let us know! The most important point of course is to always reply to exchange requests even when you can't consider the offers as it's so disappointing not to receive a reply.

Alan and Penny Collinge are experienced exchangers who live near Bournemouth on the Dorset coast of England. They would like to arrange an exchange to Florida or the southern states this year (any time April - October). Members may find their listing by entering HE10219 in the search by User ID box. Non-members can access the Collinges' offer by searching on the town name, Ferndown.

6. Membership Expired? Renew On-line (10% discount)

If your membership has already expired you can easily reactivate and update your listing by accessing the member area of the site using your User ID and password and following the renewal procedure:

http://www.homebase-hols.com/login.shtml

Forgot your User ID or password? Contact us:
homeexchange@btinternet.com

All listings are released on the website within hours and also published in the next directory (final deadline for June 2001 directory: 15 May).

7. Recommended Websites and Newsletters: Focus on Special Travel Sites

(a) GoNOMAD
Tired of the same-old, same-old when you travel? Looking for an alternative to touristy spots, cookie cutter tours and mundane lodgings? Check out GoNOMAD and discover the alternative way to travel! Read cutting edge articles, research off-the-beaten-path destinations, and search our extensive directory for unique lodgings, tours, transportation options, family travel, and learning and volunteer opportunities around the world! GoNOMAD and travel for real!
http://www.gonomad.com

(b) TheTravelzine.com
Personal travel experiences of Don and Linda, a retired Canadian couple who share their hotel and restaurant finds with dedicated readers around the world.  Expect heavy emphasis on food!  Their moderated travel discussion group, TheTravelzine, provides a perfect forum for the exchange of travel information and ideas, while developing friendships around the globe.
http://www.thetravelzine.com

(c) Fly Free, Stay Cheap!
Sub-titled 'Access to the Best Discount Travel Resources on the Web!' Platypus Publications, publishers of the guide 'Fly Free, Stay Cheap!' sum it up in their philosophy statement: 'We believe in finding the cheapest travel that doesn't sacrifice quality and enjoyment. Called many things, budget or bargain, discount or frugal, the less you spend, the more travel you can afford.... A traveler who is savvy knows that there are many alternatives to first class travel, that usually bring even richer travel experiences.
http://www.fly-free.com/

8.  Home Swappers Archives

If you miss any issues of Home Swappers you can read back editions on the website:

http://www.homebase-hols.com/news.shtml

9. Newsletter Contributions

If you have had a home exchange we would be pleased to receive your contributions for the Newsletter - short articles about your exchange experiences and tips for those new to the idea of swapping homes. Members' articles include HE reference numbers to give added publicity for their exchange offers. We also welcome questions from all considering home exchange for the first time. Information on travel related websites or other travel bargains which could be of interest to readers of Home Swappers are also appreciated.

Happy Home Swapping in 2001!

Lois Sealey

mailto:homeexchange@btinternet.com

10. Subscription Information

We are very happy for you to forward Home Swappers to friends and colleagues who may be interested in home exchange but the newsletter must be sent in full. All Home Swappers content is copyright and cannot be used in any form without written permission from Home Base Holidays.

To subscribe, send us a message with your name and e-mail address and 'Subscribe' in the subject line.

To unsubscribe, send a message with your name and e-mail address and 'Remove from mailing list' in the subject line.

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Copyright © 2001 Home Base Holidays

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HOME BASE HOLIDAYS, 7 Park Ave, London N13 5PG, England
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1985-2001: 16th year providing a home exchange holiday service worldwide