10 Reasons Why Home Exchanges Are Better Than Hotels
Swapoffi
19 Jan
We all love to stay in hotels from time to time, but have you considered home swaps?
A home swap, or home exchange, is where you and another member of a home swap community agree to swap homes with each other.
Traditionally focusing on the annual family vacation, home exchanges have been around for decades. Swapoffi is a home exchange with a difference, all our homes come with a workspace as well as sleeping and living accommodation, so our primary audience are digital nomads and remote workers.
The post-covid era means remote work and hybrid work are here to stay. 3 million digital nomads have created a new way of living that embraces both trends. Increasingly, these people need long term accommodation when travelling. That’s where home swapping comes in. If you don’t have to pay for accommodation when you travel, you can travel more!
Let’s look at all the top reasons why home exchanges are popular and why they have lasted so long.
Accommodation Is Always Free With Home Swaps
- Free accommodation
- Ok, this is the number one reason why many people love home exchanges. Accommodation is free. There are no per night charges and no extras, ever. As accommodation is usually the single biggest cost in any trip, this is a huge benefit to considering a home swap.
- No hidden extras
- As accommodation is free between swappers, there are no nasty extras such as cleaning, watching movies or accessing wifi that hotels may choose extra for.
- Stay in a real home
- Digital nomads who want a home from home experience often prefer to stay in a real home rather than a hotel, Airbnb or hostel. There is a different vibe staying in a real home, rather than an anonymous room or property, designed for a continual flow of paying guests.
- Enjoy all the comforts of home
- When you stay in a hotel, the furniture, cutlery, carpet, etc have all been chosen with the hotel owner in mind, not you. Their values are return on investment and durability. When you stay in a real home, the furnishings and décor have been chosen by the home owner, usually for comfort and style.
- Cook and eat where you stay
- Hotels can limit your food options, and not all of them have kitchens. With home swapping, you can plan, cook and enjoy meals, just like you do at home. You get to decide. Plus, since you're staying in a real home, you'll likely have all the kitchen stuff you need right there, whether is an apartment exchange, flat exchange, studio exchange or entire home exchange.
- Stay in a local area not a tourist area
- All Swapoffi homes are owned or rented by our members. They are not properties for profit. So as well as feeling like you are in a home, you will most also live like a local in an area where local people live, providing a much more authentic experience than staying in a hotel.
Hotels are often clustered together, or located in central areas such as city centres. The best home swaps are often in places people never heard of before they joined a home exchange community! - Benefit from your host’s local experience
- Community spirit underpins the ethos of all home exchanges as members are encouraged to interact with each other. Whilst a description and photographs of a home tell you something about that property, engaging with the homeowner – via your home exchange platform for everyone’s security and confidentiality – allows you to ask any questions you like, about the property and the locals.
- Get all the benefits of a verified community with like-minded people.
- A home exchange community like Swapoffi gives you peace of mind as we verify all members. The main purpose of a home exchange is to exchange homes. There are many other platforms to meet people. Swapoffi is all about home – and home office – swaps.
- Extended Stays Made Easy
- With the rise of remote work and digital nomadism, the need for extended stays is here to stay. Travel is a lifestyle nowadays, not just an annual activity. Home swapping provides the perfect solution for long-term accommodation without the hefty price tag of a hotel. Browsing Swapoffi current members and their preferred swap durations, our home swaps range from one week to 9 months. (How much money would you save if you didn’t pay for accommodation for 9 months!)
- Environmentally Friendly Travel
- Hotels, with their constant turnover of guests, often generate substantial waste and use significant resources. Home swapping, on the other hand, encourages a more sustainable approach to travel. By utilising existing homes, you're contributing to a lower environmental impact. It's a small but meaningful step towards responsible and eco-friendly travel.
Hotels have a role to play in society, and serve a purpose for millions of people all over the world, every single day of the year. But they have their downsides. Cost is the main disadvantage of staying in hotels. We hope we have highlighted other areas where hotels cannot beat a home swap.
If the idea of free accommodation and free long stay accommodation appeals to you, join Swapoffi today and become part of our community of remote workers and digital nomads who work as they travel.
Say goodbye to accommodation expenses. Live like a local. Stay somewhere new. Embrace a new way of not just travelling but of experiencing the world!
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