It really makes me laugh every time a new organization pops up, claiming that they recently had this great new idea for vacationing—Home Exchange! One web site, reporting on the trend, states that “The concept of house swapping came into existence from the movie The Holiday. Really? The move was released in 2006, that’s more than twenty five years after my husband and I joined the club we’ve patronized for many years, fifty plus years after the grounbreaking clubs listed below were formed.
The truth is, home exchange vacationing began way back in the early 1950′s in the Scandinavian countries. School teachers, faced with long summer vacations but very limited resources, hit upon the idea as a means of vacationing without the need to spend much money.
Teachers and their families in Norway, Sweden and Denmark represented the beginning of the concept, and for a number of years they enjoyed the savings alone. But gradually, word spread and other savvy Europeans began to join in. By the mid 1980′s a handful of clubs had been born with the intention of facilitating home exchange arrangements between their members. They were:
- Intervac
- HomeLink
- Hanney’s Bolig Byte (a Danish club, no longer operating)
- Home Base Holidays
- ExchangeHomes.com
Back then, with the internet still in its infancy, these five clubs circulated their listings among members in printed directories; usually three or four each year.
With the arrival of the 90′s, vacation home exchanging was beginning to establish itself in North America and new clubs began to spring up. Some new arrivals were:
- The Invented City
- Green Theme International
- Trading Homes International (later changed its name to HomeExchange.com)
- International Home Exchange Network (IHEN)
Home swap vacations had arrived!
Unfortunately, too many people saw it as a way to make money and by the end of the 1990′s and into the new millenium, dozens of new clubs appeared briefly on the scene, only to vanish due to lack of experience, commitment and ability to provide knowledgable customer service. They left in their wake, a trail of abandoned, unhappy members.
But all the originals—the “oldies and goodies” survived, flourished, and basked in the glowing recommendations they received from the worldwide media.
By 2001, many of the clubs listed had abandoned directories in favor of databases housed on the internet. This in itself was an evolving process, with security still in it’s infancy, many of the fledgling clubs had little or no resources to implement tight security and continued to fall by the wayside.
Today there are several hundred home exchange and hospitality exchange clubs and organizations located all around the world. People continue to see home exchange as a great means to launch their own company, and these days, more are sticking around than used to be the case.
Several alliances between clubs have been forged, allowing them to share members, plus several clubs have limited their memberships to specific categories and sectors of the public: senior home exchange, apartment exchange, luxury home exchange, long term home exchange, teachers exchage, Christian home exchange, singles home exchange, gay home exchange, academic home exchange, golfers home exchange, etc.
My personal opinion is that this explosion of organizations has swamped the market and if people aren’t careful, many of the newbies could again fold, much as they did in the early part of this new century.
Happy home exchanging!
As this website has grown in popularity, some clubs have approached me to display their advertisments, but each time I’ve turned them down. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against making money, but an advertisement for Club X would immediately indicate to my visitors that I favor them or prefer them over others. 