Love swapping your home

Over-priced hotels booked in advance, less-than-average hostels decided upon mere days before reaching a city, tents erected for the classic rainy family holiday. All have become staples of holiday-making – yet all might be set to become a thing of the past.

An unprecedented rise in the number of holidaymakers using sites where homeowners advertise their properties for rent has been described by Forbes as a symptom of the rapidly growing ‘sharing economy’.

With properties on such sites often cheaper than hotels and nicer than hostels, the traditional B2C model is shifting - this more horizontal marketing strategy is increasingly popular.

Love Home Swap is one such company which has turned this customer-to-customer model into a profitable business. Established in London, Love Home Swap is based on the tagline of ‘You go to theirs. They come to yours’ – essentially, two homes are swapped for a fixed period of time.

With the home swap idea lucrative to so many business, Love Home Swap has undergone a rebrand that aims to cement its place as a market leader, while attracting new customers previously unfamiliar with home-swapping as a holiday idea.

Partnering with design agency Why Projects, a revitalised colour palette has been implemented to reflect the richness gained from participating in a home swap. The refreshed visual identity also aims to reinforce the personal nature of staying in a home, creating a brand experience that is unique to each user.

Debbie Wosskow, CEO of Love Home Swap, says, “We want to bring home swapping to life and create a fun and stylish brand that revives a previously sleepy category. Business is booming for us, as more and more holidaymakers choose to stay in homes when they travel. We want to open the doors to people who haven’t previously considered home swapping - and our revamp achieves just that.”

The company’s new visual identity follows on from significant changes in 2015. An algorithm was produced, enabling users to swap properties of a similar value in desirable locations, as well as the acquisition of competitor HomeForExchange.