Here’s the way it was: You pored over a catalog that had been printed months earlier, and you saw a villa that caught your fancy. You carefully wrote an elaborate, three-page letter describing your own home or apartment, and to it you attached a half-dozen photographs. You then air-mailed the heavy packet to the foreign villa owners, offering to exchange your place for theirs during your respective vacations. And then you waited two, three or four weeks for the reply. Too often, the news was that the house had long since been committed to an Australian family.
That was how a vacation exchange was handled in the days before the widespread use of the Internet and e-mail–as recently as 1998. As awkward and burdensome as the process was, thousands of vacationing Americans engaged in “apartment swapping” and “home swapping,” and supported as many as six nationwide organizations that printed and distributed the catalogs or directories that listed home or apartment owners who were willing to swap. Provided you were willing to send out a blizzard of letters to the houses you found in those catalogs, hoping that one of them was still available to be exchanged with yours, you could enjoy the most sensible, cost-conscious vacation in all of travel: an absolutely free homestay in a foreign city, enjoying life there like a resident, not a tourist.
Today–five years later–the Internet has reduced the work of exchanging homes to such an extent that more than 20 exchange organizations are active in handling the vastly larger numbers of smart travelers attracted to this mode of travel savings. “You no longer waste your time writing to a homeowner who has already arranged an exchange,” says Karl Costabel, president of Homelink, a house-swapping club. “The moment a home exchange has been arranged, the two homes are instantly withdrawn from inventory. And to send out offers to multiple homeowners, you simply click a key.”
Six U.S. clubs have made heavy use of Internet technology to dominate the world of vacation exchanges. Note how the substitution of electronic communication for printed directories has permitted some of them to charge lower fees than they did several years ago.
– International Home Exchange Network (118 Flamingo Ave., Daytona Beach, FL 32118; 386-238-3633; fax 386-254-3425; www.ihen.com) was an early adopter of the Internet, and it no longer distributes printed directories; you go exclusively to its Web site. Its listing system, available to members and non-members alike, enables exchange-seekers to receive a multitude of responses to their listings, which results in more potential matches. The membership fee is $29.95.
– Intervac U.S. (30 Corte San Fernando, Tiburon, CA 94920; 800-756-HOME; www.intervacUS.com), established in 1952, averages approximately 10,000 listings per year in 27 countries. A Web-only membership is $65 (in 1998, it was $78 per year for the basic membership, with two primary directories). Memberships with various add-ons are also available (for example, a directory plus a Web listing with photo is $125 per year).
– The Invented City (41 Sutter St., San Francisco, CA 94404; 415-252-1141; www.invented-city.com), established in 1991, is the U.S. branch of the First Home Exchange Alliance, an association of home-exchange agencies in England and France. Only members have access to IC listings–the company feels this creates a more committed customer base. A one-year membership is $50 (in 1998, it was $75, when it published six directories), with no charge to include a photo.
– Vacation Homes Unlimited (also known as ExchangeHomes.com, 16654 Soledad Canyon Road, Suite 214, Santa Clarita, CA 91387; 800-VHU-SWAP or 661-298-0376; fax 661-298-0576; www.exchangehomes.com) has been around since 1986 and on the Internet since 1998. Directories are exclusively online. Basic membership is $30 for online listing for a year (no charge to post a photograph), unlimited site access, and unlimited toll-free and e-mail customer support. (Five years ago, it was $60 for an Internet-only membership, $75 for directory-only membership, $125 for both.) The company has about 3,500 listings.
– HomeExchange.com (P.O. Box 30085, Santa Barbara, CA 93130; 800-877-8723, 310-798-3864; fax 310-798-3865; www.homeexchange.com) has about 5,700 listings online in more than 100 countries. (It no longer publishes paper directories.) It’s also possible for non-members to contact listing parties for free, but they are not entitled to other useful benefits of membership. Membership is $49.95 per year.
– Homelink (P.O. Box 47747, Tampa, FL 33647; 800-638-3841; 813-975-9825; fax 813-910-8144; www.homelink.org) has about 15,000 members in more than 50 countries. Homelink (celebrating its 50th anniversary this year) is the largest of all the exchange clubs. Its basic membership is $70 per year–$13 less than in 1998. This level of membership includes having your listing published in the directory and on the company’s Web sites, and access to the site’s member area. There’s no charge to add a photo on the Web. It costs an additional $40 above the basic membership to receive a year’s worth of directories (three).