A few days ago HomeExchange finalized the purchase of the Love Home Swap (LHS) network.
In their letter to members LHS wrote: “At Love Home Swap, we’re passionate about giving our members the best possible home swapping experience, which is why we’ve made the exciting decision to sell our business and assets to HomeExchange UK Limited (HomeExchange). Our primary focus has always been to safely connect our incredible members with like minded travelers around the world – so we feel this is the right decision for our fantastic community.”
Travel + Leisure Co., a timeshare travel company, owned Love Home Swap. I wonder if they decided there isn’t enough profit in the home exchange sector to merit this investment.
The integration will take a little time. “For the next few months, very little will change for you. Under the Love Home Swap brand, you’ll still be able to use the platform to showcase your home, find places you’d like to stay in, chat with other members and arrange swaps. And of course, all future bookings will continue as planned. The only difference will be that the owner of our business will have changed. In other words, service will continue as normal.”
I think this acquisition is a logical fit. HomeExchange and Love Home Swap have a similar system of swap points, as well as options for traditional exchanges. Over the years I’ve become more and more critical of Love Home Swap. They hid fees and implemented confusing pricing models in their drive to increase profits. I hope that this integration will be an improvement for the member experience. HomeExchange learned a lot from the integration between HomeExchange.com and GuesttoGuest a few years ago, so hopefully this integration will go smoothly for all.
As long as they don’t use their now almost monopolistic situation to remove advantages that older members have of not having to pay for each new exchange or put up prices to the higher level of Lovehome swap.