Interview with HomeExchange.com Founder

I recently had the opportunity to talk with Ed Kushins, founder of HomeExchange.com, about the evolution of his house swap service, his response to critics, and HomeExchange.com’s plans to expand ten fold in the next five years. HomeExchange.com (HE) is one of the largest house swap websites currently operating, and among the large sites it is one of the few that is profitable and without venture funding. A labor of love from Kushins from the start, the HE team aspires to lead not just the home exchange business, but the Sharing Economy overall.

While I have found very little information (outside of my website) reviewing or commenting on the services of the many home exchange sites currently accepting members, in my research and discussions with the home swapping community I’ve heard a few people complain about some aspects of HE’s services. My attempts to verify those criticisms have only turned up second hand information so in this interview I asked Kushins to address the critics directly. If nothing else, this gives HE members a clear reference point for the service HE intends to offer.

From Snail Mail to the Internet

ShareTraveler:  You’ve been in the home swapping business since 1992, what inspired you to start HomeExchange.com?

Ed Kushins: The idea came in 1992 after my family made our first home exchange from Hermosa Beach California to Washington D.C.  On that trip, I learned first-hand how staying in a home fosters not only a more comfortable experience than a hotel stay, but a unique ‘live like a local’ connection to the city.  Plus we saved thousands of dollars in hotel bills and meal expenses! I was inspired by the idea of home exchange as an alternative to the hotel vacations we had taken in the past. I launched a club that same year using a mail-ordered, printed directory.  This was before the Internet, before Google, before email. Quite honestly, my expectations were only to provide a way for people to experience their own home exchanges, I didn’t expect it would become an actual business.

ST: How did you find your swap in 1992?

Ed: I had heard about home exchange but I couldn’t find who provided the service. I wrote to the LA Times and they had an ombudsman who found someone who had a directory service, so I arranged an exchange through them. I had a great exchange to Washington DC with my kids and decided I just had to share this with people. So I built my own little directory, struggled financially but had a fun time doing it. When the internet came along it gave me a chance to make a business out of it.

ST: Tell me about the transition from a printed and mailed book to a website.

Ed: In 1996 the Internet was just starting to take hold for commerce. The cost of soliciting new members (this was pre-Google), sending them information and applications, transcribing those applications, then printing and mailing the directories was much more than the membership fees. Besides that, the directories were out of date as soon as they were mailed and communication between members took weeks by snail mail.In one fell swoop, moving to a web based platform made everything more efficient, at the same time reducing marketing, directory production and distribution costs. Plus listings could now include unlimited color photos and text descriptions, and communication by email reduced the time required to arrange an exchange from weeks to hours. We were one of the first consumer websites on the internet.

Variations on Home Exchanges

ST: You currently offer traditional home exchange (both simultaneous and non-simultaneous) as well as hospitality exchange. Can you tell me more about this hospitality option and why you decided to offer it?

Ed: Hospitality fits perfectly with our philosophy and the interests of some of our members who find it a great way to live like a local.  Most people who do a hospitality exchange don’t search for hospitality exchange, but the exchange morphs into it. I did one to Tuscany with my wife which started out to be an actual exchange but their plans changed and they asked us if we would mind if they stayed at the house while we were there. In that case they spent quite a bit of time with us, showing us around, and we became good friends with them because of that.

Until last year we weren’t tracking numbers of completed exchanges so I can’t give numbers on hospitality, but it’s probably only 5-10% of exchanges. We’ve never had a complaint about a hospitality exchange. Some people have said it happened at the last minute and was an unusually happy experience.

ST: Can you share some statistics with me about what percentage of your members are actually doing exchanges each year and how many of them travel outside of their home country?

Ed: About 80% of our Members do at least one exchange each year, more than 50% do more than one exchange per year, some as many as 10, often sequential.Weekend getaways are the fastest growing segment, most of course within country, but especially in Europe, many are international.We estimate about 50% of exchanges are outside of the home country.

Responding to HomeExchange.com Critics

ST: Some people say that HomeExchange.com keeps inactive listings on the site to beef up your numbers. How do you respond to this complaint?

Ed: This is absolutely false! On HomeExchange.com, expired listings are removed from the site.We have an automatic system and we notify people when their listing is going to expire. When it expires and they don’t pay it comes off the site.

ST: I have also heard complaints that HomeExchange.com members are less responsive than members on other house swap sites.

Ed: We, especially experienced exchangers, understand that it is a common courtesy to respond to inquiries, and we are making many efforts to encourage, cajole and make it easy to respond to inquiries.We implemented a new messaging system that is being even further refined. A main feature is a “One-Click” regrets response, which makes it easy for lazy people to just read the inquiry and click without having to write a personal note. We are also going to enhance our messaging system so that we track and follow up on inquiries that have not been responded to.

ST: Have you considered displaying response rates for each member?

Ed: The survey you did has really resonated with us and we are taking what you said to heart. It’s a very interesting topic. We are going to increase our efforts to increase the responsiveness. But individual responsiveness is a little different for home exchange compared to a restaurant or AirBnB. We are going to look into this feature but we don’t have it on the books now. We want to do this without discriminating against people who have insufficient data.

ST: A few people have claimed that HomeExchange.com made it difficult to cancel their membership and get a refund, have you heard this complaint?

Ed: If some people have complained about being charged, it’s probably because our system is auto renewable billing. When you join you have the option of opting out of that and ask for manual billing. Others are automatically billed when their listing is due to renew, although they do receive a notice that they are going to get billed when their membership automatically renews. If they didn’t see the notice and see the charge when they get their credit card statement and they decide they didn’t want to renew, all they have to do is call, email or live chat our Global Support, tell us what happened and we refund their money.

The people who have opted out get an expiration notice and if they don’t manually renew, their listing is expired and removed from the site.

Future Directions for HomeExchange.com

ST: You recently brought on a new COO who has a strong background in scaling online services. Is this an indication that you are going to push to acquire some of the smaller house swap businesses and integrate them into HomeExchange?

Ed: Yes, we’ve just done so with more conversations taking place. We just closed on Only in America this week. But we are not aggressively trying to expand our market that way.We are making an effort to expand to geographic areas that might not be considered high demand. For instance we have translated the web site into Croatian and have a country rep there.

ST: Where do you see HomeExchange.com in 5 years?

Ed: 500,000 listings while maintaining the feel of easy access and personalized service.Leading home exchange into acceptance as a mainstream accommodation alternative. And in a leadership role in the Sharing Economy space.

ST: So you see home exchange really expanding in the next five years. Is 500,000 consistent with your current growth trajectory?

Ed: From 2014 to 2015 we anticipate doubling our membership by the end of next year, bringing us to 100,000 members. So I think that’s going to get us to 500,000 in five years. We’ve looked at demographics many different ways, type of people and geographic demographics and what we’re doing with paid search, natural search, affinities and acquisitions. We have eight public relations firms around the world. And we are increasing social marketing, local reps, and website features.

ST: Have you considered offering swap points as an exchange option?

Ed: One of the things we have planned is Open Exchange. What we envision is a indirect exchange option, meaning you may go to Paris but rather than host the member from Paris, he may go to Denmark and you would host a member from Sydney (somebody that you have vetted yourself). It’s harder than you might think to make it simple and we are trying to avoid complicated point systems or making it feel like a commercial transaction. The value is in the utility of the exchange, not in the number of nights or the size or value of the home.

ST: Any additional thoughts?

Ed: I think people who come to your site are probably astute, interested and probably already have some knowledge about home exchange but they are looking for ways to enhance their travel experience. Home exchange is easy, maybe easier than you think, probably safer than you think. It’s quite easy to see where the opportunities are just by looking at our site or any other site. I think we hold up well against other sties and like to think of us as friendly competitors all working to increase the awareness of home exchange.

---

See my page on peer to peer lodging for reviews of this and many other house swap sites, along with other articles, interviews and comparative data about house swapping options.