The Coronavirus pandemic is causing serious disruption to travel plans. Even for those in countries that aren’t (yet) significantly impacted. And this means home exchanges are being cancelled around the world as people are forced to stay home.
Regardless of your personal health status or location, the socially responsible thing to do is cancel all unnecessary travel plans that involve flights or other large gatherings of people. Here’s a good overview of why we must all act now to slow this pandemic down.
I’m a bit more agnostic on home exchanges that are done by car. Those seem pretty safe to me, depending on what you plan to do at your destination.
Many airlines, hotels and cruises are offering refunds for cancellations. And home exchange networks are also responding. HomeExchange is offering full refunds of points to anyone who needs to cancel a points booking. And they will help travelers find alternate bookings if their hosts need to cancel. PeopleLikeUs is delaying rollout of subscription fees. I’m confident many other networks will also help people faced with cancellations.
But in general there’s not much the home swap networks can do. If you have an exchange planned, talk to your swap partner directly about the advisability of the trip. And if you need to cancel, I hope your swap partner will be compassionate and understanding.
My advice right now is two fold:
- Reach out to your 2020 swap partners now to start talking about the situation. You don’t have to make a decision right now. But this is going to be with us for months. It’s hard to say what will happen in the summer but I’m not optimistic.
- Cancel your travels for the Spring if you can. I understand some people are forced to travel for work or other reasons. But if your trip is for fun, you can cancel. And by doing this you can help flatten the curve and save lives.
The home exchange community is made up of kind, generous, and worldly people. Let’s be leaders in social responsibility during this pandemic.
RESPONSE
Petra (HomeExchange)
Apr 7, 19:46 CEST
Hello Peter,
Thank you for your email.
We understand you are asking for an extension of your membership in light of the recent events surrounding the Coronavirus pandemic.
Although we can certainly understand the motivation behind your request, we are unable to confirm whether membership extensions will be granted at this point.
There is a lot of uncertainty as to the duration of this quarantine.
In addition, we must concentrate all our efforts on people in need of immediate assistance (stranded in a foreign country for example).
Therefore, we do not wish to take any hasty decisions for the moment, with the chance of announcing something that we would be unable to comply with and which could simply put our entire company and its employees at great risk. We hope that you will understand our great caution for the moment. Of course, we would love to offer you compensation, and we can assure you that it will be seriously considered as we gather more elements in the coming weeks.
Kind regards,
Petra
Member Support
I just sent an Email suggestion to Lovehomeswap and Homeexchange they give us all three months extra as we have been unable to swap during the Covid 19 lockdown.
Dawn, great commentary on the situation, as always. It’s a very confusing time. A lot of our members have had to cancel and a lot more will need to.
We’ve had a some personal accounts of life inside Italy and it sounds awful. We need to slow it down. We need to cancel unnecessary travel for the immediate future. We can all wait and see for how long it lasts but, for now, that’s the most responsible thing to do.
Stay safe,
Drew