What you need to know about home swapping
<p style="text-align: center;"><em>Sixt Fer à Cheval. Justine, Mark and Melissa outside La Tibolire just before the big snow arrived.</em></p>
<p><em><strong>Justine Tyerman, 61, is a New Zealand journalist, travel writer and sub-editor. Married for 36 years, she lives in rural surroundings near Gisborne on the East Coast of New Zealand with her husband Chris. </strong></em><em><strong> </strong></em></p>
<p>Sleeping around and bed swapping were practices severely frowned upon when I was a young women growing up in the 60s.</p>
<p>But lately I've developed a habit for it, especially when travelling overseas.</p>
<p>What's more I've even been recommending it to others including my husband and daughters.</p>
<p>Shameless behaviour… but it's exciting… and free… and I can't stop it.</p>
<p>It all began a couple of years ago when I strayed into a risqué site late one night while doing some secret solo surfing. It was a dangerous place, fiercely addictive, I should have shut it down immediately… but I didn't. Personal details were exchanged over the internet, a membership fee was paid and not long after I was hooked. I became a swapper, one who sleeps around in strange beds for free.</p>
<p>I'm now part of a sophisticated worldwide syndicate or club dealing in an exclusive currency or points system all of its own.</p>
<p>My habit has taken me to exotic places all around the world, Santorini, Crete, Palm Beach, Paris, and more recently ski resorts in the French and Swiss Alps, the fulfilment of a lifelong dream to spend a winter in the Northern Hemisphere. The latter was destined to remain just a fantasy until I discovered such a trip did not have to cost an arm, two legs and a few vital organs.</p>
<p>Thanks to membership of the “club,” most of it was free so we could afford to take the kids too.</p>
<p>The club is <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a rel="noopener" href="http://www.lovehomeswap.com/" target="_blank">Love Home Swap</a></strong></span>, an international home swap agency founded in 2011 by British brother and sister Ben and Debbie Wosskow. The organisation now has 100,000 properties in 190 countries worldwide and a team of dedicated concierges to assist people to find the perfect place for the holiday of their dreams.</p>
<p>Members can choose to swap houses either simultaneously or non-simultaneously, rent their houses to other members or use a points system whereby they earn credits when another member stays in their home, which they can ‘spend’ on a holiday in any members’ homes anytime or anywhere in the world.</p>
<p>With help from LHS concierge Charles, we organised a combination of rental and points swaps and on one occasion, we were even hosted – in other words, the owners were in residence which turned out to be a huge plus.</p>
<p>We met our daughters in Paris a few days before Christmas and stayed at Vincent's superb penthouse apartment overlooking the Seine with views of Notre Dame, Sacré Cœur and the Louvre. Being peak season, it was not possible to secure a swap or a points deal so Charles found us a luxurious centrally-located rental property within easy walking distance of all the major tourist attractions. The cosy, beautifully- decorated apartment slept four, had a full kitchen and bathroom but cost far less than a hotel suite with the equivalent space, views and location. We met Vincent briefly at the end of our stay – a quintessential Parisian, charming and debonair.</p>
<p><img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/28625/paris-france-vincents-apartment-8-_498x280.jpg" alt="Paris , France , Vincent 's Apartment . (8)" width="498" height="280" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><em>Paris, France, Vincent's</em> apartment. </p>
<p>Next we stayed in the exquisite historic Swiss alpine village of Grimentz at Anne's spacious new five-bedroom, three-bathroom chalet, two minutes’ walk from the main lift station and one minute from the best après-ski bar in the Val d'Anniviers. We used points for our seven-day stay which was free apart from the compulsory Swiss tourist tax.</p>
<p>We arrived by car from Geneva just before a major blizzard set in, delivering fresh snow to the slopes, setting us up for a week of glorious skiing at Grimentz and neighbouring Zinal and St Luc.</p>
<p>Seldom do you strike perfect ski conditions, but we had the best blue-sky powder days of our lives at Grimentz with the lightest, driest fluff you could ever dream of.</p>
<p>The mountain panorama was awe-inspiring, with the Matterhorn standing majestically in the distance along with dozens of other 4000m-plus peaks.</p>
<p>In addition to the shiny new cable car linking the ski fields of Grimentz and Zinal in just eight and a half minutes, there was an efficient network of chairlifts, pomas and T-bar lifts that never broke down. After all, nothing ever malfunctions in Switzerland.</p>
<p><img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/28626/grimentz-ski-areapicture-by-nicole-salamin_500x333.jpg" alt="Grimentz Ski Area .Picture By Nicole Salamin" width="500" height="333" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><em>Grimentz ski area. Picture by Nicole Salamin.</em></p>
<p>I loved the old part of Grimentz with its lovingly-preserved sun-blackened wooden granaries dating back to the 1500s. The sturdy wooden structures, built on stone stilts to keep rodents at bay, line narrow, cobbled pedestrian-only streets on the steep hillside above the valley. The place was straight out of a book of Grimm’s Fairytales.</p>
<p>We did not meet Anne but spent several months corresponding by email, even exchanging photos of our pets. Anne and family are planning a holiday in Canada with the points they earned from our stay. I hope they will also visit us in New Zealand one day.</p>
<p>After our daughters left to go back to work in Sydney and London, husband Chris and I were hosted by Melissa and Mark at La Tibolire, the lovely chalet they built in Sixt Fer à Cheval in the French Alps. We stayed a week in their fully self-contained apartment on the ground floor of the chalet using the LHS points system.</p>
<p>An English couple who had been happily swapping for several years, Melissa and Mark were the finest of hosts. We wined, dined and laughed together most nights beside the fire at La Tibolire, and they also provided us with excellent local information on the best ski rental shop, boulangerie, pâtisserie, hiking tracks and restaurants to go to. They even acted as our ski guides in the Grand Massif ski domain which is made up of five fabulous resorts – Sixt Fer à Cheval, Samoëns, Morillon, Les Carroz and Flaine.</p>
<p>On the days we did not ski, we explored the gorgeous little village of Sixt Fer à Cheval. The River Giffre flows through the centre of the village which proudly boasts a sign with the words “L’un des Plus Beaux Villages de France” – one of the most beautiful villages in France. And indeed it is.</p>
<p>We spent a day hiking in the nearby Cirque du Fer à Cheval, a spectacular horseshoe-shaped natural amphitheatre 4 to 5km in length with walls 500 to 700m high, crowned by majestic peaks, Tenneverge (2987m), the Cheval Blanc (2831m) and Grenier de Commune (2775m).</p>
<p>Despite being the coldest time of winter, there were countless exhilarating outdoor activities to choose from. At Espace Nordique du Haut-Giffre at the Col de Joux Plane above Samoëns, we went husky-sledding, snow-shoeing and cross-country skiing on a day so clear and bright, it made my eyes water even with goggles on.</p>
<p><img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/28627/sixt-fer-à-cheval-justine-tucked-up-cosily-in-the-husky-sled_500x375.jpg" alt="Sixt Fer À Cheval . Justine Tucked Up Cosily In The Husky Sled." width="500" height="375" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><em>Sixt Fer à Cheval. Justine tucked up cosily in the husky sled.</em></p>
<p>I would love to go back in the summer and hike the high mountain pathways and stay a few nights in the mountain refuges we often saw sign-posted.</p>
<p>Melissa and Mark are off to Florida to spend the points they earned when we stayed with them, and they are planning to visit us in New Zealand in November.</p>
<p>The beauty of this form of travel is that your accommodation costs, usually the most expensive part of a long holiday, are zero. You use your empty house as holiday collateral, making it available as a simultaneous or non-simultaneous swap with other members, or as a means to generate points that you can use anywhere in the world, anytime that suits you, offering huge flexibility.</p>
<p>If you avoid the peak season, the choices are mind-boggling, and you have the services of a LHS concierge to assist with finding just the right place.</p>
<p>Thanks to LHS, we stayed in magnificent places, saved many thousands of dollars, kept our arms, legs and vital organs intact and made new friends along the way. A hopelessly addicted bed-hopping, home-swapping, collector of LHS credits, I am now planning the next family rendezvous, this time somewhere warm and exotic. Morocco has merit…</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a rel="noopener" href="http://www.lovehomeswap.com/" target="_blank">Love Home Swap</a></strong></span> assisted with accommodation.</em></p>
<p><strong>Related links: </strong></p>
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