A travel-loving couple estimated they have been able to save over £20,000 after they started using a clever trick to avoid paying for accommodation.
Jane McDonald, 65, and husband John, 68, have taken 33 holidays since they learned of the hack and have not paid a single penny on hotels or other such lodgings.
Instead, they have simply become frequent house swappers – meaning they host tourists in their homes in exchange for free accommodation at their guests’s own homes.
The couple signed up to home-swapping site HomeExchange in 2017 and have since stayed at 33 homes all over the world and the UK without having to pay.
Jane, a former self-employed tourism worker, and John first learned of the platform as they looked for ways to cut down on holiday spending.
According to research by data firm NimbleFins, accommodation for a nine-day holiday abroad costs approximately £317 per person.
A tourist-loving couple like Jane and John would pay an average of £634 on every break but instead, they have been only forking out £175 to cover the subscription fee to the house-swapping platform – saving them an estimated £20,922 across 33 holidays.
Jane told The Sun: “We are semi-retired and usually enjoy a couple of holidays per year, but now we are actually free to travel more often and home exchange allows us to take more trips without having to worry about accommodation costs.
“The opportunity to interact with folk from all over the world is very precious to us which is why we love welcoming members on hospitality exchanges.”
The couple avoids travelling over the busier summer months to avoid paying extra for flights and then opens up its booking calendar to anyone looking to swap houses from the destination they picked.
Jane continued: “Our default position is to choose where we want to go in April, May, June, and September, look for a guest points exchange and then make our calendar blue to receive guests with guest points.
“Being in the Highlands means we get plenty of interest, mainly from the US and Canada, so it is relatively easy to find guests to stay here while we’re away.”
The couple have so far visited Amsterdam, Avignon, The Algarve, Barcelona, Chicago, Nantes and Seattle.
They’ve also been to New York, San Francisco, Rome and Valencia as well as Cornwall and Wales.
