There’s no better way to get to know a place than to stay with the local people. You get to experience life as they live it and benefit from their intimate knowledge of the area, while contributing to the local economy in the most direct way possible. And it’s almost always cheaper than a hotel, and in some cases free.
Hospitality Exchanges
Members of hospitality exchanges let visitors stay for free in their homes, and when they are travelling, look to stay in other people’s. So if you’re going to Brussels, you can log onto a site that provides exchange services, discover how many people live in the city, read their profiles, get in touch with some of them and, if they are willing, stay with them while you’re therre.
What sort of relationship you have with your hosts depends on the people involved. Some will simply let you in and out and leave you to yourself, while others will be keen to show you round their city and take you to their favourite bar or restaurant.
Different organizations cater for specific groups, including cyclists and even Esperanto speakers. And once you start hosting in your own home, you’ll begin to have the random encounters with foreigners you normally only get when on holiday, without having to leave your house.
Houseswapping
Think how many people go on holiday each year leaving their house empty. Houseswapping teams these people up, through organizations that charge an annual fee so that they can arrange to stay in each other’s properties while on holiday.
So, suppose you live in London and would like to go to Barcelona for a week next summer. You post your details on the site and if another member in Barcelona is keen to come to London, then you can arrange through the site to swap keys. In some cases people will even lend each other their cars or bicycles.
Less common is indirect swapping: for example you might stay in a house in Barcelona, while its owners stay in a villa in France, whose owners stay in an apartment in Prague, while the people in Prague come to stay in your home.
While you don’t get the direct contact with the homeowner of a direct houseswap, you may well get to meet their neighbours. And as houseswappers are generally eager for you to enjoy their home and area, they’ll often leave you handy information and tips – a sort of personalized travel guide for your new locale.
Homestays
A homestay is exactly what is sounds like: living in someone’s home and paying to do so. It might be an apartment similar to where you live at home, a bamboo hut in Vietnam, a thatched cabin in Fiji or a luxurious restored villa in the backwaters of Kerala.
Sometimes these are intended to be long-term stays for language students or migrant workers, but short-term homestays for tourists are increasingly common, particularly in parts of the world where tourism is less developed.
For many of the hosts, it is a way of profiting from tourism without the investment and commitment needed to build and run a hotel or lodge. For the visitor, experiences vary from just staying in a spare room, sometimes even with a separate entrace, to really feeling like part of the family, eating dinner with them, playing with the kids, even helping out around the house and garden.
In some places, villages have banded together to form a homestay co-operative, thus offering travellers more options and allowing villages to benefit from shared marketing.
Agriturismi or farmstays
Farmers are increasingly suplementing their income by inviting guests to come and stay on their properties. In some cases it’s possible to help out on the farm for a reduction in or instead of costs. Organizations such as WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities On Organic Farms) run volunteer programmes that allow you to do just that.
As you’d expect, the food on offer is usually fresh and organic. Some farmstays in the US and Australia are on ranches – a great chance to release you inner cowboy.
