Month: June 2005

Now here’s an interesting vacation concept, I thought when I saw “The Home Exchanger” listed as one of the sites submitted for review. Why pay for a hotel when you can swap stays in each other’s homes? Sounds good to me!

“The Home Exchanger” is, of course, a travel site promoting the practice of home exchanges. Imagine you live in Atlantic City, New Jersey. You want to travel to Reykjavik, Iceland. At the “Home Exchanger,” you may find someone from Iceland who wants to visit New Jersey, and this person may want to swap an apartment, house, or condo with you.

The design of “The Home Exchanger” is a well-executed variation of a standard blog template. The links’ topics are well-organized, the graphics are crisp and clean, and it’s easy to find information about this travel service. On the sidebars, you’ll see several pictures of houses around the world from owners participating in the exchange. Destinations include Amersterdam, Dublin, Florence, Hawaii, London, Madrid, New York City, Paris, and San Francisco.

I’m from West Virginia, of course, and I didn’t see any listings for anyone looking to visit Appalachia when I visited. Hopefully, however, additional readers will find this site, and “The Home Exchange” will list additional locations around the world for people to visit.

I have no plans to exchange homes with anyone, and I should also mention that travel does not interest me now. (It may in the future.) But, for me, this site is unique, well-written, and offers helpful content for anyone interested in this service. That’s why I’m giving it a rating of five.
The Home Exchanger

The moment I spotted the title “The Home Exchanger” I had an idea that the site I was to come across was not going to be personal, and I was right. In fact, The Home Exchanger offers precisely as its name suggests, services for people wishing to exchange homes for vacations. An interesting concept, and one certainly worth exploring further. I have never come across a weblog covering this topic and, at least for me, this made it unique.

First impressions are a fairly straightforward 3 column layout powered by typepad. The site is, perhaps, a little generic, but is businesslike, and there are plenty of images of potential home exchanges to add a little colour to the template. The category links in the left hand column are particularly useful for getting a little background and advice on home exchanging. I did not find any section detailing precisely what the site was about, or its origins for that matter, but when I finally found the beginning of the archives I found a small piece entitled The Trip begins .

I had never considered a home exchange as a possible alternative to renting property, something I happen to do often, but this site was informative and interesting enough to make the idea appealing. I’m not sure it would ever be something I would seriously consider, but at least I understand a little more about it now, and can appreciate that this site would be particularly useful for people who are considering or already participate in home exchanges.

In brief, all links worked, and the archives were relatively easy to navigate, and I believe that the choice of category archives suited the subject matter. I do believe some sort of link to the first post would be of some use to potential readers.

This is a specialised weblog dealing with one subject matter; exchanging homes. Yes, in one way it is likely to have a limited appeal – to those interested in home exchanges, or already participate and want some advice. Yet, I believe that such a site could open up the idea to other people as a form of experiencing another culture from a unique perspective – by exchanging a home. Its only been in existence a couple of months, and I can see some room for improvement – with a unique design, tailored to the subject matter I can see this being a top scoring weblog purely because it is unique, and is, potentially, a useful source of information. The Home Exchanger