The Next Generation Airbnb Is Here: Stay Anywhere In The World For $1 Per Night With Holiday Swap

What do millennials want? “They want more for less,” says Holiday Swap founder James Asquith. And that’s exactly what they get with Holiday Swap, the app that lets you travel the world for $1 per night.

How does it work?

Just like Tinder, users of Holiday Swap, can swipe on homes when deciding on a suitable place to stay. If both users like the look of each other’s homes, then they can swap their house, room and more for just $1 per night per bed. Once matched, users are notified and can set up a chat to discuss availability, and a ‘pin’ is added to their map. To start with a user can swap their apartment, house or their bedroom at their family home (with the parent’s permission), in which case it works like a much faster and simpler Airbnb app.

Airbnb 2.0?

The huge popularity of Airbnb and Uber have largely been due to the fact that millennials want experiences, not things and are willing to share their assets to achieve this. The sharing economy is a growing sector as people want to save the environment and spend less.

Author of It’s A Sharable Life, Chelsea Rustrum, said: “Strangers are coming together and through experiencing the life-altering benefits of sharing, they are enriching their lives.”

A number of home swapping sites have been around for a while, Love Home Swap and Home Exchange, but the difference with Holiday Swap is that is built with a mobile first experience without the subscription fee that many others charge.

An influencer himself

James has become a travel influencer himself, with over 666,000 followers on Instagram tuning into his fun-filled, full-time global travels. However, he is quick to point out that he has worked extremely hard to get to this stage:

 “Like anything in life, this wasn’t handed to me. I don’t come from money and my parents worked really hard,” he says, “I started washing cars from twelve years old and from fifteen I was working three jobs, to save up initially because I had dreams of wanting to buy a house. This all got turned upside down when I discovered travel at eighteen. I kept working in an office until I had enough financial safety to take a risk and work remotely, starting up a business that allowed me to do so.”

He also points out that a career in travel is a major grind:

 “Most of the time, being a travel influencer is more about the grind than the glam. People focus on Instagram a little too much I feel, and it only shows a few minutes of my day. There’s a lot of hard work that goes into working remotely and it means I am never on holiday,” he says.

Due to the work load it has reached the point where James will visit places and not be able to actually see what he wants because he is  working, keeping track of things like his instagram profile picture size over the local places of note. It’s one of the unspoken sides of the work. Away from that, the main real-life problems are sometimes being away from family and friends for long periods of time and doing laundry! One huge positive of social media is that he has friends dotted around different corners of the world and can speak with them in real-time.

Lastly, he thinks everyone can walk the same path he has and become a travel influencer:

“Background doesn’t matter, you need a vision,” he says, “The ability to be creative and work hard. Signing up to Holiday Swap will help eliminate your accommodation costs whether you want to be the next travel influencer or somebody looking to get away.”

About Holiday Swap: 

Holiday Swap, is the first truly global social media app for like-minded travellers and explorers that allows you to securely swap your accommodation anywhere around the world.

Holiday Swap aims to make travel more accessible and cheaper for everyone. Available in more than 185 countries, 6 continents, with +10,000 properties and 1000s of swaps.

With Holiday Swap, swap your space with anything from a couch to a villa, with no subscription fees, and just $1 per night, download the app for free from the App Store or PlayStore. Discover more about Holiday Swap at: holidayswap.com