Currently, when a member contacts another member for the first time, the Home Exchange platforms (both PC and mobile) assume that the member initiating the conversation is a GUEST requesting an exchange (Guest-Points or Reciprocal or either) with a potential HOST. Therefore, the platform structures the message (and the email) to the recipient in terms of a request to stay at the recipients home. This is fine for the cases where the member initiating the contact is looking for a place to visit.
However, since Home Exchange provides the extremely useful reverse-search function, sometimes a member is a HOST who wants to search for potential GUESTS who have indicated a preference for the host’s geographic location (country or city/town).
So for, for example, if I use reverse-search to see a list of members who are potential guests for my home, I may want to send invitations to some of these potential guests, inviting them to my home for either a Guest-Points or Reciprocal exchange.
The problem is that the platform automatically structures my message to the potential guests as a request for me to come to their home. This is fine for a Reciprocal exchange, but not for the case where I am seeking guests to come to my home in exchange for Guest Points. The message received by the potential guest members is confusing .
The solution to this problem would be for the Home Exchange development team to modify the “CONTACT” function of the platform. There should be a new button that offers a choice to the member who wants to initiate a request. It should be something like this:
“I am a HOST wishing to contact a potential GUEST”
or
“I am a GUEST wishing to contact a potential HOST”
The platform would then structure the message (and the email) to the recipient properly.
Hello CapBimet,
I am not certain that I follow, you don’t have to use the automatically generated messages to contact other members, you can draft your own, from scratch, to better suit your intentions.
Naturally, there are as many viewpoints and preferences on HE as there are members
That being said, for what it is worth, allow me to share my perspective :
I am much more receptive to messages that are not system-generated, so the extra effort can pay off, you might come across as more authentic or genuine;
I would be cautious of writing to people to “offer” your house because you will be away. Unless the other member has identified specific dates to travel to your region that fit your offer. I get such “advertisements” from time to time and, quite frankly, they annoy me. For starters, to write you have to “pretend” that you want to stay in our home on dates that are available, then we read the message and there is no such intention, it is as though there are false pretenses.
Rest assured, members will do searches when they are ready and of a mind to visit your region. Your message might arrive at a time that is not optimal, and that can backfire. In my humble opinion, your best advertisement is a profile and description that are well done and a calendar that is up to date!
If I understand correctly, I think what you’re saying here about the received message is exactly what topic starter doesn’t want. At this moment, you can ONLY select when you want to come to the house of the member you are approaching, and can select if you want to come for points or if you want to do a reciciprocal swap. There is no way to indicate that you are looking for guests, which is the point, for indeed, they have to “pretend” they want to come to your home, only to explain in the message they are looking for guests. This is what topic starter wants to change. It could be handy.
However I do agree with the rest you are saying. Hand written messages work better. Also, in my opinion, people who are looking for guests, should not only look for guests that have their city/region in their favorites, but should also check wether the calendar works for the dates they want to propose. This way, potential guests can see that you put in the effort and you are not annoying them, asking them to come in a period that is not available for them to travel.
I hardly ever like getting messages asking me to come for points, especially if the dates don’t match AND the location is not in my favorites. However, I think there will certainly be people who would like to be approached if everything fits.
You misunderstand my statement. I DO write an individual specific message in which I offer the member a visit to my home in exchange for guest points. The part you do not understand is that the Home Exchange platform then packages my message in a “wrapper” and when the other member receives the message in their unread messages screen, the do see my customized message in the middle of the screen but to the right they see an automatically generated (by home exchange) box of information. The information implies that I am seeking a visit to the other member’s home. This is not what I am requesting… I am inviting the member to come to my home. For relatively new members receiving this contradictory message, this is confusing. it can be fixed by the Home Exchange development team making a relatively small change to the messaging system software.
This is your opinion, not mine. Home Exchange offers a “reverse-search” and “guest-point” functionality. Clearly, the combination of these two functions is intended to allow a member to host another member in their home in exchange for guest points. I am sorry that you find this annoying, but in principle it is no different than a member contacting another member out of the blue requesting a reciprocal or guest-point visit to their home. I am not “pretending” to want to stay in their home. I am offering them a Guest Points visit to my home. There is no deception involved on my part, only a fault in the Home Exchange messaging system. Also, I do not send these messages to random people. I send them only to members who have expressed a desire (in their Preferred Destinations profile) to visit my region.
I always do a hand-written message. It is more respectful and informative for the receiver of the message. I do not rely only on the automated messaging part of the system, especially because it is flawed!
I also only contact members who have my location in their preferences.
I disagree with your comment about always checking their calendar. A member’s calendar IS NOT a schedule of when a member is willing to travel. It is a schedule of when a member’s HOME is available. Many times the two schedules are identical, especially for members who have only one home or are working-age people with children who are restrained by jobs and school schedules. But often the schedule of a member’s travel available dates is different than their home’s available dates. This is actually another improvement that Home Exchange should implement on the platform… each member should have an availability schedule attached to their profile, which indicates when they personally are available to consider travel.
Also, right in the results list when a person does a search for homes in a region, the platform gives a list of those homes that have availabilities on the specified dates, but it also lists the homes that do not have availabilities, and says:
#### You can also contact these homes
The following homes do not have availability that matches your search. However, it might just be because their calendar isn’t up to date. Why not contact them and find out?
Are you suggesting that Home Exchange should not provide this list of homes that do not have calendar availabilities and should not suggest members to contact them?
It has been discussed many times on Facebook groups over the year, and as a moderator I Can clearly report than the contact option to Ask a member to Come to your place is not a good Idea to everyone (50-50).
Some may like it to save Time on their researches, but some are not happy at all cause they consider that if you contact them, it should be for a reciprocal exchange ( the reverse search feature is based on this, it’s not made to find guests). They could explain to you that even if they are interested by your area, your home may not be a good match for them for X reason (size of the beds, the way you are describing it, cause you have a cleaning fee or you don’t have one, cause you have a cat or not , cause you have a brand New home and they prefer old homes etc). See what I mean ? They want to search from their wishes which might exclude your home for any reason.
Some members Can be really bothered of this type of contact, they could feel their home is not good enough for you, cause you choose to go to an another place but they should give you their gp for your home.
Your opinion only. And your 50-50 “good idea” statement only shows that large segment of the community (50%) think it is a good idea. The danger of “offending” people also exists for reciprocal exchanges… if someone contacts me and offers a reciprocal exchange, it is possible that I will say no for various acceptable reasons. It is part of the nature of a negotiation, which is what Home Exchange is. Not all reciprocal or guest point visit requests are accepted. It is the reality of Home Exchange… allowing hosts to seek guests is not uniquely affected by the examples you cite. I see no real difference between hosts seeking guests and guests seeking hosts. In both cases there is a risk of rejection. That is life.
You say “it should be for a reciprocal exchange ( the reverse search feature is based on this, it’s not made to find guests)” I don’t believe this. It is your opinion only.
“Some members Can be really bothered of this type of contact, they could feel their home is not good enough for you, cause you choose to go to an another place but they should give you their gp for your home.”
This is not a valid reason to ban a host from contacting a potential guest. The whole reason that guest points was created was to allow a 3-way exchange. It is explained in the basic FAQ about guest points. If what you say is true, then Guest Points should not exist for fear of offending people because there are hosts that advertise their homes as being available only for guest points. Aren’t you worried by the thousands of members who will be offended by hosts who accept guest points requests but don’t want to go to the requester’s home?
As I said, no not my opinion only. This subject has been brought a few Times over the years on the Facebook groups with dozens of thousands members. Discussion has always been mixed with pros and cons. As I said, fifty fifty or so, with hundreds of members saying they don’t like it for some of the reasons I told you. Over the years I also had discussions about it on the livetchat too where I am one of the oldest ambassador answering to members in 2 languages , and some had the same words.
And for the reverse search, not my opinion only no, I collaborate for 10 years with the staff, product managers and employees ( I will have again a zoom with them next week for example), and it has always been clear that this feature was not created for that. Reverse search was already available on the old site version while guestpoints didn’t even existed on that time…So yes you Can use it in this way if you want, not a problem and not a big deal, but I was just trying to warn you that some members could be upset about this type of requests.
After if you don’t want to believe me, do as you prefer…
I personally hate it when people contact us asking for us to go to their homes because they want to get GPoints! When I receive those emails, I feel like when someone is trying to selling me a product on the phone that I don’t want/need to. And, on top of this, I also need to spend my time giving an answer to them, to avoid a low response rate!
I am heartened illopart to read your message I try to keep an open mind, but at a visceral level, I react as you do. Don’t send me adverts, I can navigate the platform, thank you. Call me a Type A personality, I like to be in the driver’s seat, as the saying goes, “Don’t call me, I’ll call you.” Perhaps this is unfair at some level, but I feel other homes are advertised, their calendars are available online, I can find them if I want to. I prefer to take the initiative when it comes to where I might go, and especially when!! I feel it natural that the process is oriented toward the person who is travelling being the one to initiate, and that is what suits me, personally.
I think I din’t express myself properly. I do not say I do not want to have requests from people willing to stay at my home for GP or offering us a reciprocal swap. What I hate is receiving what they call “invitations” to go to their homes from people that do not want to go to my place, they just want me to go to their place for them to earn Guest Points. It happens a lot with people that have second homes and they want to obtain a maximum benefit from them, so when they are not staying there or it’s a low rental period of the year they try to fill the empty dates by sending those “invitations”.
Thanks both of you describe what I was saying Yesterday evening
This is exactly the type of comments I have read hundred of Times in the Facebook groups the last 10 years…
“As I said, no not my opinion only. This subject has been brought a few Times over the years on the Facebook groups with dozens of thousands members. Discussion has always been mixed with pros and cons. As I said, fifty fifty or so, with hundreds of members saying they don’t like it for some of the reasons I told you. Over the years I also had discussions about it on the livetchat too where I am one of the oldest ambassador answering to members in 2 languages , and some had the same words.”
And as I said, 50-50 means that there are 50% of members who WANT this improvement in the functionality of the messaging feature and 50% who don’t want it. A good compromise would be to apply the improvement but allow members to check a box that would prevent them from receiving such messages. There is already a check-box to allow people to block exchange requests for unavailable dates in their calendar. All it would require is a check-box to block messages from hosts requesting guest-point guests.
“And for the reverse search, not my opinion only no, I collaborate for 10 years with the staff, product managers and employees ( I will have again a zoom with them next week for example), and it has always been clear that this feature was not created for that. Reverse search was already available on the old site version while guestpoints didn’t even existed on that time”
Just because the guest-point system did not exist when the reverse-search function existed in the old system, is not a valid reason for crippling/restricting the functionality of the platform. If 50% of users want reverse-search and guest-points to work completely well together, then why not implement it? I have explained how it would be very easy for the 50% of members who don’t want this functionality to avoid unwanted messages by simply clicking one box one time and then forever they will not receive such messages.
You seem to think that hosts requesting guest-point visitors is the only type of “annoying” messages that members receive. It is not! Almost everybody receives “annoying” messages from members who want to visit homes when the host member has not made the dates available on their calendar or has not indicated a preference for a specific type of exchange. If we want the platform to be inclusive and functional, you can’t try to cushion and protect every member from every imaginable way that they may receive a personally annoying message.
The very fact that the guest-points system exists AND is used abundantly by probably 50% or more of the membership means that it is a very popular functionality, and that there are large numbers of members who are not “offended” when a host advertises their home as being available for guest points and does not intend to stay at the guest-member’s home.
I would love to see the statistics of home exchanges between reciprocal exchanges versus guest-point exchanges…
how many of the millions of visits of one member to another member’s home have been part of a reciprocal exchange, and how many have been part of a guest-point exchange?
It would be VERY easy for the technical support team to query the data and give us this number.
I submit to you that the percentage of visits that have been a part of a guest-point exchange probably closely represents the percentage of members who would support the functionality improvement that I suggested.
70% of exchanges are made with gp, 30% reciprocal. For the rest, good ideas, why not, but imho there are features which would be more needed than this.
