A look back on our achievements in 2021

What a year it’s been! Before we say good­bye to anoth­er tough year, we want to take a moment to look back on what we’ve achieved over the last 12 months and cel­e­brate how far we’ve come despite the many tur­bu­lent times 2021 has thrown at us. We hate to be boast­ful – but we’re pret­ty proud of what our team have pro­duced for our amaz­ing com­mu­ni­ty of home swap­pers. And we’re even more proud of our mem­bers. Despite the chal­lenges we’ve faced, our love­ly mem­bers have found ways to trav­el, share their homes and build excit­ing plans for the future. You’re all amazing.

In fact, we’ll leave it to our MD Célia Pron­to to sum up just how much we val­ue each and every one of you.

We’re award winners!

We won two glo­ri­ous awards acknowl­edg­ing that we’re the best home swap­ping plat­form! We scooped ​‘The Best Home Exchange Plat­form’ in ShortTermRentalz’s The Short­yz Awards, and the ​‘World’s Best Home Exchange Plat­form’ in the World Trav­el Tech Awards. Thanks to every­one who vot­ed for us.

We cel­e­brat­ed our 10^th birthday

And what bet­ter way to do this than with a record-break­ing cake made by Great British Bake Off win­ner and bak­ing leg­end Rahul Man­dal? The five-tier cake was made up of over 100 ingre­di­ents to rep­re­sent the 100 coun­tries our mem­bers have homes in.

We helped our mem­bers get organised

We know how impor­tant it is to reply and keep track of your mes­sages (because quick respons­es mean even more home swaps!) So we cre­at­ed ​‘Dis­cus­sion Fold­ers’ to help you stay on top of your swap requests and cat­e­gorise your mes­sages by trip, coun­try, event, swap type – or what­ev­er you fancy!

We’ve improved our Response Rates 

Reply­ing to swap requests as quick­ly as pos­si­ble is impor­tant for our mem­bers (even if it’s a ​‘sor­ry, but I can’t host you in my home this time’.) So we updat­ed our Response Rates to encour­age mem­bers to respond to all of their mes­sages quick­ly — the ini­tial results have been great, as we’ve seen more mem­bers respond­ing swift­ly to their swap requests. 

We cre­at­ed a fan­tas­tic new Ambas­sador scheme

When it comes to build­ing trust when home swap­ping, the warmth and knowl­edge of our com­mu­ni­ty is every­thing. So we intro­duced a brand-new Ambas­sador scheme to encour­age our most expe­ri­enced and active home swap­pers to share their exper­tise with the rest of the community.

We’ve cre­at­ed more ways to get in touch with us

With trav­el being so tur­bu­lent this last year, com­mu­ni­ca­tion is essen­tial. So we made it eas­i­er than ever to get in touch with us. You can now arrange a con­ve­nient time to chat using our book­ing sys­tem, or you can book a video call with us via Zoom. Or you can even request a bespoke trav­el plan from our friend­ly Cus­tomer Care team!

We’ve improved our web­site experience 

We want you to enjoy using our site, so we’ve imple­ment­ed lots of clever mea­sures that will make your expe­ri­ence bet­ter. This includes revamp­ing our search expe­ri­ence to include a new search fil­ter sys­tem, improved prop­er­ty dis­play, and an all-round bet­ter mobile experience.

We’ve grown our community 

We’ve con­tin­ued wel­com­ing new mem­bers to our com­mu­ni­ty, mean­ing more trav­el oppor­tu­ni­ties for everyone.