New travel website offer global home exchange
Family holiday accommodation available worldwide and year-round for just £25 is the benefit of a newly-launched travel website.
Homes-Club International is a new global homes exchange site (homes-club.com), which has an introductory annual membership fee offer of £25 until the end of February, from when the normal rate of £100 applies.
Membership of the club is aimed at anyone with a connection with independent schools anywhere in the world, so is available to past and present parents and former pupils, no matter how long ago they attended the school, as well as staff and governors.
Run by Dianne Stewart, herself a governor of three independent schools over the last five years, Homes-Club International is targeting this education community to bring together like-minded families from around the world, who already have one element of their lives in common. The site will be developed in future to enable schools and individuals to arrange other types of co-operation, such as sports tours and language exchange visits.
English-speaking countries are the initial target for a potentially huge membership – the UK has around 2,600 independent schools, while the USA has over 35,000.
After joining, members are free to browse the site to identify properties in their chosen travel destination and then contact the owner to discuss a property swap. Members can list their main home or a holiday home and conditions of the exchange are agreed between the two parties. Members are free to use each others’ properties at different times if they wish and exchanges can be for any length of time – from weekends to long-stay sabbaticals.
“Our target market is literally hundreds of thousands of people around the world,” explained Dianne. “We plan to rapidly build up our membership and have several thousand properties on the site. People are still looking for great value for money when they travel and this is a way of cutting out almost the entire cost of holiday accommodation anywhere in the world.
“Exchanging your main or holiday home, rather than staying in hotels, villas or apartments makes great economic sense. Why pay when you can stay free?”
Dianne continued: “Privacy is important so access to the club is via our password-protected site for members. This adds to confidence and by targeting only those connected in some way to independent schools our members have something in common.”
Home exchange is a concept that has been around for many years, although it only started to gain widespread use in the 1970s. But Homes-Club International is the first to target this specific existing community.
The scheme also benefits the schools themselves - once five people from a school’s community have joined and paid their annual membership fee, Homes-Club International sends a donation to the school for every subsequent member.