Home exchange

So NMC came in as your sort of first significant minority investor.

And on the back of their investment, you bought two competitors, the Canadian First Home Exchange and the Dutch business Home Exchange.

Curious to hear what making those acquisitions taught you that you now use as a board member in your pattern recognition?

I like a deal.

And I think there are different ways of driving scale.

And there are moments where if you have capital, which we did, then you have an ability to dominate a market.

And interestingly, in that home exchange market, that is what has happened because the player that was our competition, home exchange... then rolled up all of the rest of the market.

And actually they bought the love home stock business out of Wyndham a couple of years ago.

It's called home swapping.

Travelers log on to a platform, such as Home Exchange, and for a small annual fee, roughly the cost of a single night in a hotel, they can trade places with others around the world, allowing people like Robichaud to take in the sights and sounds of Paris while the owner of her temporary home can stay in her seaside house in the town of Cap-Acougat.

And when you're not paying for accommodations, it allows your budget to do more.

Krista McCollum from St. John and her daughter used the service to fly from their home for a graduation trip in Spain

We were looking at eight or nine days, and then when we s- realized that all of our accommodations were going to be through Home Exchange, we did 16 days.

Carla Bullock is a professor in recreation and leisure studies at the University of Waterloo.

She says the rising cost of accommodations makes home swapping more appealing

Alleviating the pressure to spend all that money on accommodation, um, will likely make, um, travel affordable for, for visitors.

Yes.

I love talking about home exchange and house sitting.

We've done quite a bit of both of those.

I find that in the United States and then Also, this would apply to the United Kingdom and maybe even Australia somewhat.

The priority is the pets and the animals, but it is still an opportunity to experience new things and stay in a real house, which I really like to have the space and the kids like to have the space.

And it's very nice.

And then in Europe, we found that home exchange is quite common.

We've done that even though we rent our apartment in Sevilla, we, of course they are landlords know that we can, they've allowed us to sublet or have, it's basically like having friends or family staying.