How a Bunch of Broke Teachers Created a Hot New Way to Vacation

Generation Z and millennials are choosing home swapping over hotels as chic clubs launch to embrace the trend

Claire Turrell | Travel Correspondent

October 19, 2026 12:12 p.m.

Some young travelers are no longer choosing hotels when they go on vacation—they’re swapping homes with someone else. Spurred on by everything from romantic movies like The Holiday to the cost-of-living crisis, Generation Z and millennials are immersing themselves in a new culture by stepping into someone else’s home.

The purse-friendly getaway traces its origins to the 1950s, when the United States was hit with a recession and the United Kingdom was still on rations. Now, it’s giving a new generation of vacationers an inexpensive way to travel.

New house-swapping clubs are springing up the U.S. and Europe in response to the revival. In 2020, Family Home Swaps launched in the U.K. for adventurous families who want a home away from home. In 2021, Kindred was created in the United States, giving its 400,000 members the ability to trade homes, not cash. And three years later, Hemma began a similar project in Sweden. The more established house-swapping clubs have also seen a boost in numbers. Love Home Swap, which started in 2011, saw its membership rise 82 percent in 2022.

TikTok users are sharing tips on how to prepare your home for a house swap, people are advertising their homes for swapping, and the British TV actor Jules Knight hit the headlines when he asked his fans if they would like to do a house swap over Christmas.

Unlike hotels, house swapping enables people to make connections with their fellow hosts and immerse themselves more quickly into the community as they live like locals in their chosen home.

“That’s one of the things I love most about home swapping,” says Hemma co-founder Alexandra Gustafsson. “You’re not just exchanging homes; in a small way, you’re exchanging lives.”

The origins of home swapping

House swapping has come a long way from a group of broke U.S. teachers on the East and West Coasts of the United States in the 1950s who swapped homes so they could go on vacation.

In 1953, young New York teacher David Ostroff typed up a list of colleagues who would be happy to exchange their homes during the holidays. In the same year, a group of European teachers created the house-swapping group Intervac International in the hope of traveling abroad during their vacations.

They both started small. In order for Ostroff to find fellow swappers and subscribers for his house-swapping mailing list, he printed 15,000 posters, which he sent to schools across the country to pin on their bulletin boards. However, as his first subscription drive only attracted 100 subscribers, he started advertising in teacher journals. By the 1960s, the “list,” which he mailed to subscribers, had turned into the Vacation Exchange Club (now HomeLink) offering house swaps in the U.S. and Europe.

Other companies such as Home Base Holidays, which was established in 1985 in London, followed suit, sending catalogs of listings to house swappers, who would studiously pore over them before sending a letter or calling the homeowners to book their week in the sun.

The travel trend reached a new level of awareness in 2006 with the Hollywood movie The Holiday. The film, which features characters played by Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet swapping homes and finding new love, left everyone wanting to spend their Christmas vacation with Jude Law in a cottage in the English countryside.

But when Airbnb launched a year later, it stole the limelight with its attractive images and hip hideaways. Traditionally, house swappers would have needed to be able to swap homes at the same time, while Airbnb gave guests the chance to go anytime. The Silicon Valley startup, however, has faced criticism in more recent years, including over widely variable cleaning fees that can hike costs and consumer magazine research revealing that in 38 out of 50 cities surveyed, hotels were a cheaper option.

Cities are also starting to ban short-term rentals. Concerned about the lack of affordable housing for locals, Berlin was the first to create a citywide ban on them in 2014, while other places such as New York City, Spain’s Palma de Mallorca and Singapore followed, creating bans or restrictions. Barcelona is the latest to join the fray, indicating plans for an outright ban on short-term rentals beginning November 2028.

Now, as people are seeking out cultural immersion and more financially viable ways to travel, house swapping has come to the fore.

Today’s take on trading spaces

Justine Palefsky from San Francisco launched the members-only house-swapping club Kindred in April 2021 with her co-founder Tas Amina, whom she met while working in tech. Each member lists their own home on the app for other members to stay in. Every night that someone stays in their home they earn a credit, which they can use to book swaps in homes around the globe owned by the club’s members.

Instead of cold-messaging members, which was the modus operandi with the traditional form of house swapping, Kindred members now create a wish list in the app and get notified when homes become available. They don’t pay a membership fee or rent, just a cleaning and a service fee to Kindred. The team says the average home swap costs a tenth of a typical hotel stay.

The rush to prepare the home for a potential guest has also been removed. A professional cleaner will handle it, and Kindred provides new sheets, towels and skincare products for the visitor. The cleaner returns once more after their stay.

“We wanted Kindred to bring an aspirational travel lifestyle within reach, so people could squeeze far more adventures into their lives than they’d thought possible,” says Palefsky.

It’s not just homeowners who can take part in this trend. Renters can be members of brands such as HomeExchange, Hemma and Kindred—they just need to have permission from their landlord. Companies such as Kindred offer insurance, so if anything is broken, the insurance should cover it. Since the visitors are fellow owners, people take great care to look after their temporary homes.

For a generation that thinks hard about its impact on the places it visits, home swapping is a much more responsible way to travel, Palefsky says. “You’re simply staying in someone’s home while they’re away, not renting from a business that may be taking homes off the market for locals as investment properties.”

YouTuber Lydia Patel from Minnesota joined Kindred as a host and used her credits for a stay in Toronto, with family members from three generations. She paid $480 for a six-night stay in a comfortable three-bedroom home. “Every object in the house feels like there is a background story to it,” she said in her review. “It had so much character.”

While she did find navigating trash day a little challenging, she said she could immediately see a huge pro for house swapping: having access to renting a home with multiple rooms in cities where short-term rentals like Airbnbs are either banned or very limited.

An approach to funding travel

Swedish home-swapping club Hemma launched after its co-founders Hanna Friberg and Alexandra Gustafsson saw a pain point for digital nomads.

“We had friends paying high rents and mortgages who wanted to travel more, work remotely or spend time somewhere else, but their housing costs were effectively anchoring them to one place,” says Gustafsson. Hemma now helps people turn their homes into travel currency.

“Housing and travel are two of the biggest expenses for our generation, yet when we travel, we often pay for both at the same time. Your apartment sits empty in Copenhagen, London or Berlin while you’re paying again for somewhere to sleep in Lisbon or Paris,” Gustafsson adds. “Home swapping asks a different question: What if the home you’re already paying for could become part of how you afford to travel?”

Home swappers stay in someone’s home, often in a less tourist-heavy neighborhood, rather than consuming a standardized product. “You have someone’s favorite coffee shop around the corner, their recommendations and a glimpse into how people actually live there,” Gustafsson says.

Gen Z has already embraced the sharing economy. “Younger people are increasingly comfortable with sharing, flexible living and community-based platforms—that feels quite natural,” she adds.

Francesca Henry, founder of the Money Fox, a finance platform for women, notes that house swapping is experiencing a resurgence because people want to vacation but are struggling with the cost of doing so, especially when it comes to big trips with big families. “[It’s] financially sound if you use a reputable service with insurance,” she says.

Amanda Stecker, who runs her own short-term rental business Unique Cotswold Cottages from Warwickshire in the U.K., used HomeExchange to book a three-week stay at a home in Sydney, Australia. “Renting a property for three weeks would have been cost-prohibitive at Christmas for a family of five, and this meant we could experience three weeks in Sydney in a beautiful home and location,” says Stecker.

She joined the locals to watch the New Year’s Eve fireworks in the Botanic Gardens of Sydney before holding a barbecue for her Australian friends in her home swap, all while people stayed in her own home.

Lodging that offers community

Besides being cost-effective, another advantage to house swapping is the built-in community that a traveler can experience by living like a local.

Patrick Janelle, founder of the social media studio Untitled Social in New York City, swapped his home for stays in Helsinki, Finland; Barcelona, Spain; and Puglia, Italy, using the Spanish invite-only club Behomm, founded in 2013 and aimed at creatives. It’s been called the “Raya of home swapping” by Vogue, and members pay an annual fee of €560 (around $630) for unlimited house swaps with like-minded souls—and some of the featured homes would sit comfortably in the pages of Elle Décor.

“I’m currently in Puglia on a six-week house swap. It definitely feels like a home away from home,” says Janelle. “Being able to exchange places for this long, I feel like I’ve been able to get to know the area almost as a local.”

Janelle has a few logistics to work through with each stay, and he also needs to take care of his own apartment from afar. “I did find myself doing some light rearranging because I was staying here for so long—to make it a little bit more tailored to my habits,” he says. “[But] it’s not any more of a challenge than staying at an Airbnb or a place that was rented.”

On each trip, Janelle has had someone stay in his own home while he’s living elsewhere. “The experience has always been great. I find that, with home swapping—and maybe this is because it’s Behomm specifically—there’s a sense of community. I ended up becoming friends with a family from Helsinki, spending time with them at their place,” he says.

Young families are also choosing house swaps over hotels. Susannah Cery, who created Our Tribe Travels, an online resource connecting adventure-loving families, launched Family Home Swaps, a community-centric platform, in 2020, inspired by her own house swaps as a child.

They now offer more than 1,000 homes in 63 countries, with families able to choose everything from a log cabin in the woods in Alberta to an architect’s home on the Isle of Skye in the U.K. As they are owned by families, the visiting family is sure to feel right at home. “Holidaymakers will not only find games and toys, but often paddleboards, canoes, ski equipment and clothing, which simplifies the packing process,” says Cery.

As each member is a parent, Cery says, they have something in common from the start: “Every member can upload an introduction video so you can get to know the family, home and neighborhood before a single message is sent.”

But Family Home Swaps also encourages hosts to make guests feel part of the community. “[Hosts] can display a ‘local connector’ badge [in their homes], which means they are open to introducing you to their neighbors, friends or family for a truly local, welcome and authentic experience,” says Cery about the service, which is free to use while it is in the soft launch period.

Palefsky, of Kindred, says the need for connection reflects a bigger shift. “Social media is moving toward serving content rather than connecting people, and A.I. is removing human interaction from everyday life,” she says. “Genuine community is becoming rare.”

Kindred even arranges IRL meet-ups for its members to connect. On its event page, it advertises the latest gatherings, giving people the chance to meet other hosts in their cities. In Los Angeles, Kindred members have taken part in a yoga class together. In Mexico, they have taken a cooking class, and in London, Kindred fans have gathered for a literary stroll through the capital.

“Younger travelers have grown up with travel that feels increasingly transactional. Their values tend to be rooted in purpose and authenticity, and they can sense when something is built to extract from them,” says Palefsky. “They want travel to mean something—to connect with people and feel part of a place, not just pass through it.”