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In This Issue: Swap Talk
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Washington Post And now a Mea Culpa: In last month’s Newsletter I wrote about the advantages of taking weekend
Hein, you are 100% correct and I deserve every word of your gentle criticism. Please accept my explanation (but not excuse), that it was an innocent oversight as opposed to an intentional over-focus on our USA rather than non-USA Members. I was just thinking about the last few weekend exchanges I had been talking about with Members, and they were the first that came to mind. About 60% of our Members are now non-US Listings, and are we certainly value you and them. I hope you, and the rest of our Members know our hearts are worldwide, NOT just in the US. I apologized personally to Hein, and asked him if he would write about his
own HomeExchange experiences in our “Meet a Member” section of this
month’s Newsletter. It appears below. Happy Holidays, Happy New Year and bon voyage, Ed Kushins
SHARE HOME EXCHANGE WITH SOMEONE SPECIAL!
And save 15 dollars too!  What do you get for the special someone on your gift list who has everything? We have a unique gift, one they
cannot take back because it is the wrong size or color, or they already have
one. A Home Exchange Listing is the key to a whole new world of vacations.
And more Listings means more exchange opportunities for all our Members.
With our new GIVE THE GIFT OF HOME EXCHANGE, you can go online and in just a few minutes, purchase a home exchange membership and send an email to anyone on your shopping list to let them know that they have a membership gift from you waiting for them! You just enter the name and email address of the recipient, and a personal note, and we will send them a Gift Certificate for their HomeExchange.com Silver Membership, letting them know it is from you! If you are not already logged in to our website, after clicking the link below to purchase your gift certificate, you will need to login to your existing HomeExchange.com account. Once logged in, you will be presented with a payment page for your gift certificate purchase. The $15 dollar discount will appear on the payment page, no need to enter any coupon code. CLICK HERE TO BUY THE GIFT OF HOME EXCHANGE FOR SOMEONE SPECIAL
HOMEEXCHANGE.COM FEATURED IN THE MOVIES!
I'm sure most of you are aware that HomeExchange.com is featured in the recent SONY pictures movie THE HOLIDAY starring Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet, Jack Black and Jude Law. The HomeExchange.com team went to a preview at the Sony backlot a couple weeks before the December 8th premiere here in the US and we all gave it a thumbs up! The movies centers on Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet who use HomeExchange.com to arrange a home exchange between Cameron's home in Los Angeles and Kate's cottage in the English Countryside.
The initial spark for her new romantic comedy, The Holiday, was ignited a few years ago when screenwriter/director Nancy Meyers was planning a vacation and serendipitously happened upon an internet site that arranges house swapping - across cities, across countries, across continents. "I had no idea this kind of thing ever existed," she confesses. "On the website, I read about all these fantastic houses. Eventually, I realized I would have to trade mine to get one."
If you haven't seen the movie yet, it really shows all the fun and excitement you can have on a home exchange, don't miss it!
WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU
December Survey CLICK HERE TO PARTICIPATE IN OUR NEW SURVEY CLICK HERE to read some responses from last month's survey.
I have traveled a lot in my life, first as European Marketing Manager for a small US chemical firm with an office in Amsterdam, Netherlands. I had an agent in every country in Western Europe - except Great Britain - and visited them once every year and in the bigger countries more often. It was, of course, not leisure travel but even so trips to Paris, Frankfurt, Vienna, Copenhagen, Stockholm and other capitals were not really a chore! Then, when , through a merger , I lost my job I made my hobby into a job and traveled the world as a nautical photographer/writer specializing in windsurfing. Now, as you can imagine that brought me to lovely spots on the globe: Maui, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Sri Lanka, Thailand to name just a few, and very often subsidized by the sponsors of the events which very often were major airlines. But that also ended when the windsurfing hype blew over in the second half of the eighties, and one after the other manufacturers and magazines folded. So that was when nobody picked the tab of my travels anymore. And I still wanted to continue to travel. It was in the middle of the nineties and the World Wide Web was in its infancy, the Google boys were still in diapers, but there was a beginning. I don't remember how I found HomeExchange.com, I believe it was through Ask Jeeves one of the most popular search engines at the time, but I found them. I subscribed and was one of the first in my city - Amsterdam - to be a home exchanger. My first exchange was with Oakland, CA and it was great, a house in the hills in the midst Eucalyptus trees and it included the use of the owners car. I went to San Francisco, the Napa Valley, Yosemite Park and I loved it, it was so much better than the hotels I had stayed in during my previous travels. The luxury of having a kitchen, not to have to leave the house to get a breakfast, my own terrace overlooking the Golden Gate in the distance. Not just being limited to a bedroom, but having a living room, a den, a dining room, all that space, like my own home! And then I realized the great advantage of home exchanging: having your own home in a far away country and I was completely sold. From that point on I exchanged my home 2, 3, 4 times a year, one or two longer stays and numerous weekend exchanges with places closer to home. I spent summer holidays in places like San Diego, San Francisco, North- and South Carolina, Washington DC., Key West, the Virgin Island, Mexico and weekends in Paris, London, Budapest, Berlin and Copenhagen and all that just for the price of an airline ticket! Very often we did not meet our exchange partners in person, I left the keys to my apartment at the information desk at Schiphol airport, and found theirs at neighbors, estate agents or under the mat, or even in the flower pot! But the nicest exchanges were when I did meet the people I exchanged with and sometimes even did more than one exchange. The most memorable meeting was with my exchange partners from Virginia. They stayed one night longer in Amsterdam than I in their home which gave me the chance to take them out to dinner at a restaurant which tourist hardly ever find. During our conversation, home exchange obviously was one of the topics, and comparing exchange homes we found that we had both stayed at the same house in Montepulciano, a quaint little town on a hilltop overlooking the magnificent area of Tuscany in Italy. What a coincidence! What have I learned from 10 years exchanging homes? Things that could benefit the uninitiated? Try to talk to your exchange partners on the phone before the exchange, a voice can tell you things that an email cannot. But even mailing a number of times before the exchange gives you a good impression of the people you are dealing with. Are they the kind of people you would like to take care of your house? Are they laid back or up tight? Are they friendly and willing to help you make the exchange a success? And watch out for second homes. I arrived once in the middle of the night after a long flight at a beautiful home not far from the beach; it was spotless, but too spotless! The fridge smelled of Mr. Clean and only Mr. Clean, there was absolutely nothing in it, neither was there anything in the kitchen cabinets. No salt, no pepper, no oil, no vinegar, no sugar, nothing. I had to buy all these thing the next day, knowing that I would only use tiny quantities of these daily necessities and that all I left would be thrown out by the cleaning service that would clean the apartment for the temporary tenants that would move in after me and they again would have to buy all these things. Because the home was up for rent when the owners were not there, which was most of the time. I know, it's not a big thing, but if you exchange homes, you expect to come to a real home, like your own, where you can make a cup of tea or coffee when you arrive, exhausted from a long flight. And in the big cities look at photographs of the place, ask dimensions. I mentioned the sixth floor walk-up, and that is not what you want. City apartments are small in general but there are limits, especially if you hit on a student, make sure the place is not a student dump. After all you are not a student anymore and chances are you do not want to put up with student quarters at your age anymore. But if you watch out a little, ask the right questions and look at the photographs, you are sure to find a place that will make your holiday a feast. Because home exchange is by far the most marvelous way to travel, and as an extra bonus it's the cheapest way also. So get onto the net and arrange for your next holiday as if you were staying at your own home! Oh, and be nice for the people who come to your home. Prepare a little folder with instructions, tell them where the nice restaurant are in the area and the shops. Get at it! Hein Van Maasdijk
If you have any photos from your home exchange vacations that you want to share with us, we are always looking for fun photos to share on our site and to use for other promotional activities. Send photos to: switch1@homeexchange.com
I have a question for all you HomeExchange members out there. Which of these listing headers looks more interesting to you?
or
I'm guessing you are going to say the second Australia listing will get your click, and why is that? Because the first listing just says NEW HOME LISTING!
-George P.S. I'm still looking for that 60's Fender Bass if you find one in the closet or your basement!
We hope you have enjoyed reading this issue of "Switch". Please feel free to send your friends a copy! Just send them this URL: http://www.homeexchange.com/affinity/_en/newsletter/200611.html Bon Voyage! The Staff of HomeExchange.com
The Best Travel Value on the Web! |
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All of here hope that all of you have had a wonderful holiday season. It's certainly been busy and exciting for us, with the release of THE HOLIDAY bringing us record numbers of visitors and new Listings. People are saying the movie is going to do for HomeExchange what "You've Got Mail" did for internet dating, and it's true. Besides being featured in the movie, in just the last month we have had articles about HomeExchange.com in USA Today, the New York Times, the Washington Post, many other international publications, TV and radio are telling the HomeExchange story, including The TODAY Show!
I need to ask ALL of you a favor right now. Go login to your Home Exchange account and click on EDIT YOUR LISITNG. Now check the title of your listing. Does it say NEW HOME LISTING? if it does, you need to change it!! The title of your listing is a selling point for your exchange, you need to describe your home and your area in 165 words or less. The default title "New Home Listing" appears in there when your listing is created because the title of the listing has to be in place when the listing is first created. 
Beg, borrow, or get your neighbor to take some nice pictures of the inside and outside of your home. While you are at it, take some of the local park, downtown, the beach, anywhere your exchange partners might go! Taking a couple hours to photograph your home and upload those photos will go a LONG way towards finding a terrific home exchange.
