It’s been almost three years since we merged the GuestToGuest and former HomeExchange communities to form the new HomeExchange community, so we wanted to take some time to reflect on the past 36 months and share our vision for the coming years. We hope you’ll join us on this journey.
In the coming years…
We Want to Continue Helping You Enjoy Worry-Free Vacations
As many of you know, by activating and paying for your annual membership, you allow us to offer our guarantees and our member support team to accompany you when you organize an exchange to make the experience worry-free, whether you’re a host or a guest. We know that unforeseen situations can arise, so we want to continue offering these guarantees to help those who need it.
In 2021, in 97.19% of host cancellations, our team managed to find a replacement exchange for the HomeExchanger. And in the remaining 2.81% of the cases when we were not able to find a replacement exchange, we offered a reimbursement of the cost of accommodations booked.
You can discover all our guarantees here.
We Want to Grow the Community
Since 2020, we have had more than 135,590 homes created that are now 80% or more completed (homes listed online).
For the past couple of years, we’ve been focusing on growing the community through the media and through marketing efforts mainly on social media, but we’ve noticed that awareness campaigns using other channels (television ads, for example) are really helpful in making the concept and values of home exchange more widely known.
We’re convinced that now is the moment to focus our efforts on making this vision known , especially as more and more people are looking for more responsible ways to live and travel Home exchanging is a responsible way of vacationing! By growing the community, more options and opportunities for exchanges will be available to the whole community. The number of exchanges finalized in 2019 was up more than 50% compared to 2018. For this reason, we’ll invest in more campaigns to share about this great concept of exchanging with a broader audience.
In conjunction with this effort,, our product team is focusing on simplifying and reworking our signup and onboarding process for new members, so they can seamlessly integrate into the community and begin to enjoy this way of traveling with other HomeExchangers.
We Want to Continue Growing Our Team To Improve Our Website, Apps and Services
At HomeExchange, we have 66 people working in 8 teams. Overalll, our team is made up of 12 different nationalities spread across three main offices in France, Croatia and the USA (with some team members working remotely in other parts of the world). Women make up 70% of the team.. Now that you have a general idea of the composition of the team, we wanted to take this opportunity to share with you what each team does.
Product Team
The main objective is to help you to find exchanges. The key performance index is our success rate, which we have increased by 5 times in the last three years. Our product team, currently made up of 5 people, designs how the site works and adds new features. They’re in charge of making the site (and the apps) experience as seamless and efficient as possible for users.
Development Team
Our development team, made up of 13 people, works on getting the designs of the Product team up on the site and apps. They’re in charge of all the coding required to ensure that the data is properly treated and that things are appearing as they should. A part of our development team also works with data to make sure the search engine works well and shows results that are as relevant for you as possible.
Together, the development and product team are responsible for creating, maintaining and improving the HomeExchange site and apps that you are using.
We found a very old video of the site from a few years ago that made us laugh, so we wanted to share it with you too. It really helps put in perspective everything that’s been accomplished so far. (The HomeExchange site now is a result of improvements made to the old GuestToGuest site based on the former HomeExchange website 😊)
Member Support
Our member support team is made up of a total of 20 people spread across France, the US and Croatia, speaking a total of 8 languages - English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, German and Croatian. They’re the ones that you usually turn to when you encounter any problems or questions. Whether it’s to navigate the site, give advice on organizing your first exchange, help you in case something goes wrong with your planned exchange, or anything else, they’re here to help you as best as they can.
Marketing
Our marketing team of 13 people helps the community and the activity to grow. They work on acquisition campaigns to make home exchanging better known by working on partnerships, ads, and more. They also work on communications within the community to ensure that the right message and information is shared with you, our members, at the right time. They provide actions to make it easier for you to find exchanges with reminders to update your calendars or update your preferred destinations, sometimes using relevant promotions.
Branding and communications
Our branding and communications team has 10 people whose objective is to make the concept of home exchanging and our brand more well known. We do this through the press by working and sharing interesting information, stories and data with journalists, which gives us visibility on various media outlets. We also work on fostering a sense of community and sharing relevant news with you in a timely way, whether it’s through social media or our monthly newsletters. A part of the team also works on improving the educational aspect in HomeExchange so that the community can continue to organize exchanges with ease..
And now for some teams that you hear less about, but that are just as crucial for HomeExchange to function.
HR
Our HR team is made up of two people (hello Elisa and Alexandra!), and they’re the ones who take care of the administrative part of HomeExchange. On top of their daily tasks of preparing payroll, being heavily involved in recruitment processes, and employee development, they also do a great job taking care of the team and keeping us all very motivated.
Analysis
Anaïs is currently the only one in the analysis team, and takes care of monitoring all the data and numbers about HomeExchange. She would be the one who keeps track and analyzes how many exchanges were done last month, how many new homes have been created, why there might be a huge difference compared to the previous year, and what we can forecast for the future. It’s a very important position to help us understand how the business is doing and whether specific actions need to be taken in reaction to each situation.
Finance
Our finance team is made up of two people, Guillaume and Tony, and they’re in charge of… you guessed it, the finances of the company. They’re the ones managing the preparation of balance sheets, financial statements, cash-flow reports, day-to-day record keeping and reporting.
We know that nothing is perfect, but our small yet mighty team is doing our best to progress more. We look forward to growing the team so we’ll be able to accomplish even more for the community and platform in the future.
YOU are the biggest, most active home exchange community, and it's thanks to your generosity in opening up your homes and welcoming guests that the entire community is able to continue discovering different corners of the world. Whether by choosing to renew your membership, organizing exchanges, participating in discussions in our Facebook groups, or talking with your friends about HomeExchange and your travel experiences, we appreciate having you in our community and can’t wait to continue growing it together with you.
