Ed Kushins is the founder of HomeExchange, one of the best known and oldest companies in the collaborative economy. He shares with us what keeps HomeExchange competitive in the space.
1. HomeExchange.com is one of the oldest companies in the Collaborative Economy – how has the company maintained its strong reputation despite growing competition in this area?
Community. Consistency. Trust. Loyalty.
Our Community is everything to us, their trust, enthusiasm, and support is one of the most important keys to our growth. Home exchange and HomeExchange.com were pioneers, early adopters and promoters of the collaborative consumption movement. When I say early, I mean before the Internet and before “collaborative consumption” and “sharing economy” became household terms. How much more collaborative can you be than when your entire model is based on “You stay in my house while I stay in yours” with no money changing hands? So we have had over 22 years of experience in this space and work hard each and every day to provide the highest quality of experience for our Members.
We don’t look at other clubs as a “competition” but instead feel we are all working to increase the awareness and interest for this way of travel. Thanks to communities like ours, and others in the sharing economy, people are opening their minds and their homes, cars, gardens and more to experience all that the world, as well as those around them, have to offer.
2. How does HomeExchange.com work?
You stay in my home, I stay in yours. Other than the cost of getting there, a vacation anywhere in the world doesn’t have to cost any more than staying at home. It’s easy to join, members create their listing with photos and a description, choose a location they want to visit, find and begin coordinating an exchange with other members across the globe.With 50,000+ Listings around the world Members are almost sure to find a great exchange opportunity.
We consider ourselves true participants in the “sharing economy”, because with home exchange, unlike some other alternative accommodation sites, sharing is sharing, not paying. There is no initiation fee, just a small yearly membership fee of $120 per year. You can take advantage of unlimited exchanges with no additional per day or per exchange fees of any kind to either us or your exchange partner.
HomeExchange.com has the tools and information to quickly and easily connect with like-minded people interested in trading places so everyone can travel anywhere, live like a local, and stay for free.
3. You recently entered into a partnership with Lufthansa – what does this partnership involve and how important are these kinds of initiatives for the growth of the Collaborative Economy?
For HomeExchange.com specifically, we are always looking for exlusive benefits we can offer our Community. It’s one of many ways we like to show our member’s how much we appreciate them. Our Lufthansa partnership is a mutual benefit initiative that helps bring awareness and direct deal opportunities to each member base.
We are thrilled to provide a great benefit to our Community with Lufthansa’s flight voucher program. Lufthansa will offer all European members of HomeExchange.com a promotional voucher worth up to £15 (€20) which can be used when booking their next Lufthansa flight on LH.com. HomeExchange.com is a community of likeminded individuals who swap their homes for a deeper cultural and authentic travel experience. Lufthansa enhances this by enabling passengers to experience alternative cultures with seamless connections to the airline’s network of over 200 destinations.
We have also developed a social media campaign, photo contest, that is bringing people from all around the world together to share their favorite daily escapes for a chance to win a Very Important Key (#VIKey) vacation.
…how important are these kinds of initiatives for the growth of the Collaborative Economy?
The awareness of the concept and even the term “Collaboritive Economy”, has seen phenomenal growth and public acceptance in just the past few years. I think that like the “Green Movement” of the last decade, it’s going to signal a profound shift in political, social, cultural and behavioral activity. That’s going to include a very large number of people and companies actually becoming more “collaborative”, a large number of new companies creating themselves using a collaborative model and a lot of companies saying that they are “collaborative” just to jump on the bandwagon.
I think that ultimately, successful initiatives and partnerships must be fundamentally based on something more than the dictionary definition of “collaborative” (produced or conducted by two or more parties working together), maybe a new definition that takes into account making products and services available by people and ways not previously common, or ways to optimize excess capacity. In the Luftshansa case, transportation and accommodations.
Partnerships likes these are very important it terms of building credibility and, perhaps more importantly, building awareness of the opportunities of a Collaborative Economy. By partnering with companies that are not necessary directly in the space, we can work with them to help create a benefit previously not available, introduce the CE to even larger audiences, and bring new benefit opportunities to our communities.
4. HomeExchange.com’s team also embodies the spirit of the Collaborative Economy – tell us more about how the company works?
We have an incredibly talented and passionate worldwide Team (50 Team Members in 20 Countries). Most of our team has been recruited from our membership so we are all active users of what we are selling. We have a vested interest in offering a high quality, easy to use space for people to meet and find the right exchange opportunities and partners. The site, indeed the entire home exchange concept is built on trust and we feel we’ve done a good job of earning that trust, which has led to incredible loyalty from our members.
The world is our office! HomeExchange.com is a true “virtual company” with no rented office space anywhere in the world), connecting via Skype phone calls and emails on a daily basis and coming together in person once every year, with our families, to share our stories and success and work together to develop the year ahead. We are a collaborative team, each one of us wears many hats and prefer to do so. We consider our Members part of our larger Team, we listen to our Community and work and build our brand together. This approach is a big part of what makes us who we are and I strongly believe that passion emanates within our community.
5. What are your biggest goals for HomeExchange.com over the next year?
Double our Listings to 100,000 by the end of 2015
Iterative (and some game changing) improvements to our website, making it more intuitive, more fun, even easier
Launch Mobile
Re-Launch Luxury Site
More Collaborative Partnerships! More Innovative PR and Marketing
