Travel the Home Exchange Way blog

The Rough Guide to a Better World: Free Book

Although travel should help create a better and more tolerant world, and tourism is a major source of income in most countries, unfortunately, every time we take a flight we contribute to global warming and our presence, especially in a developing country, can threaten ecosystems and use up precious water resources.

Rough Guides and the UK Department of International Development have jointly published a new guide to help us all make a difference. 'The Rough Guide to a Better World' is available free in local post offices in the UK, or it can be read online or downloaded as an e-book from the Rough Guides website or ordered (for a small post and packing charge). This site also includes a Better World forum where you may discuss issues of ethical consuming and tourism, giving to charities, volunteering, etc.

People who take part in home exchanges do contribute in some ways already to creating a better world through tourism by living in homes in local communities and spending money in local shops rather than staying in major tourist developments that often spoil beautiful areas while not always benefiting the local population much. However, we can all do more towards creating a more sustainable world and this small but pithy book should point us in the right direction towards what we can do to really make a difference and a 'better world' for everyone.

New 'Home from Home' TV Series on Home Exchange: Home Base Holidays Participants

If you live in the UK, or can receive Channel 4, do look out for the new prime time series of 'Home from Home' on home exchange, starting Thursday 2 Dec 2004 at 8.30 pm. And it looks like Home Base Holidays members will be featured on exchange in the first programme of the series!

Joanna Jackson, from Bodmin, Cornwall, (see exchange offer HE13667) had contacted Home Base Holidays in early September:

This is to let you know that we have just finished filming our house swap with a couple in Poissons, France (listing HE13854) along with Maverick TV. We had a great time and, as it was our first swap, a real experience.

Joanna offered to write an article for Home Swappers Newsletter on her family's first swap, especially on what it was like having a film crew recording much of the holiday. Joanna has now sent a detailed account of the filming (and lead up to it) which will be included in the February/March 2005 issue of Home Swappers but here are a few quotes from Joanna's article:

We had been hesitating about taking my older daughter (Annie) after a disastrous holiday in Feb to Australia. She is a moody teenager who delights in winding everyone up and, as this was to be a long holiday again, we felt it might be easier for her to stay with her dad and have a separate holiday with just me at another time. But, with just five days before our holiday to go, I had a call from 'Home from Home' to say they wanted to go ahead with our filming?! They also said they would want us to have all the people they had interviewed involved and that meant Annie as well! We decided that Annie could come just to France (on the exchange part of our holiday) so it would not be all our holiday listening to arguing, and maybe - just maybe - with the film crew there some of the time she may be on her best behaviour...

The crew arrived two days before we left and it was quite hard trying to genuinely clean the house from top to bottom (after all our recent building work) and finish one of the conservatories, and pack while they were around interrupting us and asking us to do some of the things several times over!

On the ferry we felt like celebrities, as the crew were constantly filming one of us at any time and then again on the drive to our new 'home'.

The three days only of filming promised was an understatement. However, they (the film crew) were great fun and we had an excellent time with them. They paid for a few meals, drinks and got us all on a fantastic champagne tour with the Joseph Perrier Champagne producer; we went to a great theme park and had a brilliant day by a lake. On the last evening we all had a great Indian takeaway together and reflected on what was a very pleasurable experience - our first, and probably only, brush with reality tv!

And if you want to know how we got on in Champagne, tune in on Thursday 2nd December to Channel 4 at 8.30pm and see if it really was 'home from home'! We have no idea what it will be like - we were, after all, filmed for about 15 hours for 15 minutes of fame - or notoriety...

Home Exchange Homes in Movie and TV Film Locations

Home Base Holidays members can change their own home exchange listings whenever they want. Often we won't notice changes made (except for the occasional deletion of all the punctuation I had so carefully added when editing the original listing - grrrr!) but yesterday I was a little alarmed to read at the beginning of a description: Forrest Gump shot here.

Just for a second I thought that this wasn't exactly the best way to attract readers to an exchange offer in Savannah, Georgia! I quickly got over this senior moment and, of course, realised that the member was referring to the film location for 'Forrest Gump'. Today, I found she had changed the description again and it is now a much more enticing introduction to a very attractive exchange offer:

Location to "Forrest Gump" and many Hollywood films. Horse drawn carriages, brick roads, live oaks draped in Spanish moss … our home in the historic district two miles from the heart of town, one of the most romantic cities in the world.

Read more about this recent home swap offer in Savannah, HE15996, here.

With so many new films made every year, there are also a growing number of film locations all over the world. As being able to visit a location where a favourite film was made can add an extra interest to a home swap holiday, any such local information can be useful for members to add to the descriptions of their area attractions (or to send directly to potential home swap partners if this is of particular interest to them). Film Locations Travel Guide, which accompanies the book, 'The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations', is a good starting point to find out about movies that may have been filmed in your area.

TravelPost.com - Store and Share Your Travel (Home Exchange?) Experiences

One of the things I like best about the Internet is how you can sometimes come across some really interesting sites or new ideas just by chance when searching for something else. Serendipity!

One such site I found today, TravelPost.com, is very new and so probably doesn't have many users as yet but it looks a wonderful idea for storing your travel experiences and photos, sharing with friends and finding out about other travellers' experiences before visiting a particular country or city.

This is a very cleverly designed service (and it's free!) and the interactive Travel Map looks a particularly neat idea. Once you register and start using the site, each time you add a post, your own unique Travel Map is updated with the location so that you build up a map of all the places you have visited.

If you are a Home Base Holidays member, TravelPost looks like a great way to save your home exchange experiences to share with future potential home swap partners - and with us so that we can include some information from your posts in this weblog to give your next exchange offer some extra publicity.

Do leave a comment if you start using TravelPost.com and if you think there could be other ways of using the service that would be useful when organising a home swap holiday.

Car Insurance Cover for Home Exchange Partners

It's over a week since I added a post to this blog (due to the stress of dealing with computer meltdown, less than perfect back-up systems, etc - I won't bore you with the details!)

We used to receive calls from a few British Home Base Holidays members who had had requests to add their non-UK based home exchange partners to their auto insurance policies turned down (seemed in the past to always be the addition of an American driver that caused a problem). This has never been a frequent problem though and, indeed (touch wood), no members had reported problems recently at all, until member, John Wise (HE15409), called a couple of weeks ago. However, it is always important, if you want to swap cars, to make it clear that your car is included provisionally as part of the home exchange agreement until you have checked it out with your own insurance company.

John's recent call related to getting insurance cover for his Australian home exchange partner to drive his car while on a lengthy exchange in the UK next year. After providing John with some suggestions to follow up, he called back to say he had managed to change his insurance to Norwich Direct at an extra charge of only £14 for the year, and no problem at all adding the Australian driver. We have been hesitant in the past to recommend any particular insurance companies as members have sometimes been given quite different information from the same companies but, hopefully, Norwich Direct (UK free phone: 0800 096 8279) will also be a useful contact for other UK members with similar problems with their own insurance providers in getting cover for a non-British driver.

If you have any other recommendations, suggestions or, indeed, have encountered problems with a particular insurance company, please let us know or leave a comment.

Swapping Homes: What's Age Got to Do With It?

... to adapt the title of a Tina Turner song a little!

Provided you are in good health and able to travel, have adequate travel insurance, have made provisions for the unlikely event that you aren't able to travel on the dates agreed and have ensured that the home you are exchanging to suits any special needs you have, there's no need to stop swapping homes as you get older. This came to mind when a long time Home Base Holidays Canadian member contacted us recently to say:

I thought I should let you know that we don't seem to get any response to our listing this year, probably due to age, although we are loathe to admit it! We have had a wonderful experience exchanging with various couples in the UK - and once in Spain (12 exchanges in all).

The couple, in their 70s, are still open to exchange offers from anywhere in the UK and are now looking ahead to an exchange in September/October 2005. A brief description of their exchange offer (house in picture above):

Attractive split-level house with garage and landscaped front and rear gardens with patio and pool. In a quiet neighbourhood opposite park and within walking distance of shops, Library, bus-stop and train station. Buses and train station within walking distance.

Niagara Falls, Quebec and many other interesting towns and villages are within easy reach. Toronto is 30 minutes away by car, bus or train and has many good theatres, museums, galleries and restaurants. Fall is quiet and a good time to visit. We have friendly, helpful neighbours and our daughter lives nearby to be of assistance, if needed.

Check their listing, for full details and more photos, HE15654