Is it unusual for hosts to be home during a GP exchange?

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Hi all, first time poster here.

I have a question about hosting. We live in a two bedroom and two bathroom apartment. We originally had our home listed once for both GP and reciprocal exchanges, but learned that we should create a separate listing for each.

On both listings, we’ve had people request to stay using GPs but then been shocked that we would also be at home during their stay. Even with our new listing, which specifies it’s a private room with en-suite, is getting requests from people saying they have never shared accommodation with the hosts.

Maybe I’ve misunderstood this whole ‘home exchange’ concept. Are you only supposed to do exchanges when you’re not at home? Or is it so uncommon you have to really spell it out in your listing?

Thanks
Matt

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Welcome to HomeExchange and to our forum! It can be a bit daunting at first, and a lot to get your head around.

So you have two types of listing:

  1. a standard listing where your whole home is available for an exchange - with this you would not be home during an exchange
  2. a hospitality listing where you offer a room in your house - with this you would be at home during an exchange

With you standard entire home listing you can exchange in one of 3 ways:

  1. A reciprocal exchange - when you exchange with someone else at the same time.

  2. A non-simultaneous reciprocal exchange - when you exchange with someone else but not necessarily at exactly the same time.

  3. A GuestPoint exchange - when they come to your home and use their GuestPoints to stay. You don’t go to their home.

So you don’t need a separate listing for GP and reciprocal exchanges - this can be defined using your calendar. But you DO need separate listings for your whole home vs hospitality (one room).

Does this make things a bit clearer? I hope so :slight_smile:

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Thanks, Melissa. That definitely helps us understand how it all works.

We did create a separate listing and changed and changed the title to ‘private room’ and reduced the number of beds to one. Is that what you mean by ‘separate listing’ or is there a different part of the website for ‘hospitality listings’?

I just want to avoid having to explain over and over that the guest will be sharing our home with us during their stay!

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@mjlazer , When you create your private room listing, this question appears.

room
room816×375 16.2 KB

If you select “Private room”, then whenever people search for accommodation, it will already appear over the thumbnail photo of your home that it is a private room.

private room
private room269×241 34.4 KB

So, all you need to do is list it as a private room, add only the room you are offering for exchange — not all the rooms in your home — and enter the square metres corresponding to that room only, not the entire house. In that case, it is already understood that you will be occupying the rest of the home.

I hope this helps.

Wishing you many happy exchanges.

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Thanks so much, illopart.

I did select that when I created the second listing, so that’s good. What confused me was a request I got shortly after which expressed surprise that we would be home during the exchange and that they had never done an exchange where the host was… hosting.

I think I’m sorted now though, thanks.

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Great! Glad you’re all sorted and thanks to @illopart !