You come to my place, I'll go to yours: rise of home swaps and free travel

Marta Lamas Quintela's eldest son will embark on the training ship Juan Sebastián Elcano on 10 January, repeating the voyage that Princess Leonor completed a year earlier. The family will accompany him on some of the stopovers along his voyage, spending the night in homes in Cadiz and Puerto Rico in exchange for lending other unknown travellers their residence in Ferrol (A Coruña).

A veteran of the platform for 15 years, with more than 200 exchanges under her belt, Lamas has raised her children through travelling to diverse destinations: the US, Greece, Colombia, Malaysia, Singapore and Mexico. "For us, home swap is not a way of saving money, it is a way of travelling," she says.

But the truth is that travelling as a family has become more expensive than ever. The average price of a hotel room in Spain reached 156 euros in August, 43% more than before the pandemic, according to data from the national institute of statistics (Ine). For families with several children, the cost multiplies and long journeys are complicated. Proof of this is that 40% of people who opt for the home exchange option are families with young children (12%) or teenagers (28%), while couples and solo travellers only account for 13% and retired people for 8%.

Home swapping has become a way of discovering destinations and experiencing them as a local. The HomeExchange platform has established itself as a growing alternative: the company, founded in 1992 in the US and present in Spain since 1996, allows its members to exchange homes without financial transactions between individuals, paying only an annual fee of 175 euros to the website. This includes a kind of deposit to cover possible damages and help in the event of last-minute cancellations, such as relocating the traveller or providing financial compensation.

"Considering that this is what it would cost for one or two nights in an average hotel, it is very affordable. It is also a more humane and sustainable way of travelling," spokesperson for the company in Spain Pilar Manrique told SUR. According to her, the high prices of tourist accommodation have made this form of travel more popular in Spain in the last few years.

The data reveals that Spain has become the second country in the world with the most members and homes on the platform, behind only France and ahead of the US. "The tourist attraction of Spain is enormous," Manrique says. In total, the platform has 250,000 members, of which 40,000 are in Spain, where the company has an annual turnover of around seven million euros.

Christmas is a popular time for home swaps, which were popularised by the film The Holiday that gave HomeExchange a big marketing boost. Over the 6-8 December long weekend, the platform registered more than 21,894 confirmed overnight stays, 15.4% more than in 2024. Catalonia, Andalucía and Madrid were the most requested destinations, with Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia leading urban bookings.

These regions also lead the ranking of bookings for 2025 to date. Catalonia exceeds half a million overnight stays, of which Barcelona accounts for 42%, followed by Andalucía, with more than 30,000 bookings, of which Seville only accounts for 12%. One out of every three members who have chosen the region of Valencia (187,800 overnight stays this year) have preferred to stay in the city of Valencia, while the city of Madrid accounts for 80% of the 110,000 bookings. In the case of the Basque Country, which is the fifth most popular region in Spain, the city of choice is San Sebastian, with almost 30% of reservations out of a total of 159,000.

Home swaps have evolved in recent years. In the early days, HomeExchange would send out paper catalogues and users wrote physical letters requesting exchanges "until the other person wrote back", as Lamas remembers. Later, the traditional reciprocal exchange was complemented by a points-based system, initially called 'balloons', in which a stay was worth the same whether it lasted three days or a month. These points are earned by offering your home and can later be redeemed for stays in other homes, without the need for the exchanges to take place at the same time.

For Lamas and her family, the key is the exchange between people with the same interests. "We have a cat and the people who come often have cats too, so the stay includes pet care," she says. They also offer car exchange with the other person or family.

Home-swap practices do not legally function as tourist flats because there is no economic transaction between its members. As it does not generate direct income, it complicates its possible inclusion in personal income tax and other taxes. In countries such as France, the UK or the US, the exchange is considered private and non-profit.

Spain also remains in this limbo where trust between private individuals prevails. However, cities such as Amsterdam (Netherlands) introduced a regulation in March that establishes that exchanges made through points can be considered equivalent to a holiday rental. This regulation involves registering the home with the municipality, obtaining a rental permit, limiting accommodation to 30 days per year, a maximum of four people per home and only allowing the host's usual residence.