Home Base Holidays
April 27th, 2009 | Posted by Pauline
Recently, on Twitter, I ran into Lois Sealey who lives in London and runs Home Base Holidays, a home exchange website. I know Lois from my SlowTrav days.
Lately I have been interested in the idea of home exchanges, which in many ways are similar to staying in vacation rentals when you travel. You are staying in a home, not a hotel, and are based in a neighborhood where you experience a place as a local does. With vacation rentals you pay by the week, with a home exchange you trade homes – vacation rental barter!
To coincide with this weeks “Slow Down London” festival, Lois invited me to write two posts for her Home Exchange Travel blog. Here they are:
- April 23, 2009. ‘Slow Down London’: Take Time to Smell the Roses
- April 26, 2009. When You Can’t Do a Home Exchange, Consider a Vacation Rental
Follow Lois on Twitter: HomeExchangeUK
Laura Byrne Paquet, who writes the wonderful blog Facing the Street, is working on an article about home exchanges for Slow Europe. She is reviewing the popular home exchange websites and talking to people who have done home exchanges. I will announce it on the blog when we have it published.
July 30th, 2009 at 3:06 am
Thanks for listing these links and additional resources. As you know we’re trying to arrange a couple of exchanges, and in the end I think luck has more to do with it than anything else! After committing $100 to one home exchange site with no luck so far, I’m very reluctant to make the financial commitment to others. I do still check ‘our’ home exchange site regularly and am actively searching for an exchange, but it’s really, REALLY frustrating!