Love Home Swap, one of the Home Exchange networks that I’m actively using, recently changed its swap points system to allow variable valuation of homes. I am a big fan of swap points as an alternative to simultaneous home exchange. As someone with only the one home that I live in, points give me the option to travel for just a few days, and sometimes without my spouse. The Love Home Swap system of points which used to value every home the same, 100 points per night, was my favorite because of this standardization. I believe that system is more in line with regular simultaneous (or non-simultaneous) home exchanges where a night in my home is swapped for a night in someone else’s home regardless of differences between the homes. And standard values also discourages gaming the system to try to earn extra points by charging more.
The new Love Home Swap approach allows users to set a variable points value for their home, similar to other sites that offer points-based exchanges. They are actively encouraging people to charge more points in the high season, in addition to increasing the “cost” for larger and well located homes.
I don’t like this change, but in the end what matters most to me is increasing the number of active users of any home exchange system. If other people like this better, and are more likely to list available dates and accept guests using points this way, then I’m fine with the change. Hopefully Love Home Swap is collecting statistics on this to evaluate the effectiveness of the system. I can say that it will discourage me from booking the more “expensive” homes (those setting points values significantly higher than my own), which will actually reduce the number of properties available to me, likely decreasing my use of the Love Home Swap home exchange site overall.
