Trading Mansions Sounds Like a Dream. It’s Also a More Sustainable Way to Travel.
4 min
For many, the idea of doing a home exchange is enticing: The thrill of a new destination, calling an inspired new space home away from home, living like a local for a little while. But what happens if you have a sprawling estate on the ocean to offer yet can’t find a property swap that comes close to the size and luxury of your own?
Enter: HomeExchange Collection, a division of Paris-based HomeExchange, a 30-year-old home-swapping company with over 100,000 residences across 133 countries and teams in Zagreb, Croatia, and Cambridge, Massachusetts. The new division launched last year and focuses solely on luxury property trades.
“Some of our members were over flooded with requests from people who wanted to exchange homes, yet their houses just weren’t as nice,” the company’s co-founder Emmanuel Arnaud says. “That’s why we decided to launch HomeExchange Collection, to better cater to the needs of clients with super-luxurious homes. It’s a space where they can meet other like-minded travellers who want to exchange their little piece of paradise they’ve built all around the world,” Arnaud says.
THE ITEM
HomeExchange Collection is an uber-exclusive community of home (and yacht and farm and castle) owners. And the criteria for membership is stringent. Homes are required to be valued at US$1.5 million or more, though US$2 million to US$10 million is typical.
“Location is a big part of it as well as amenities,” Arnaud says. “For example, if your house doesn’t have a pool in a prime sunny location, it’s going to be harder to make the cut.”
The houses themselves are anything but ordinary. Many come with five-star amenities such as boats, tennis courts, gyms, notable artworks, pools, daily housekeeping, and private chefs. Some of the most luxurious offerings include a 6,700-square-foot mansion in Chiang Mai, Thailand, with a full-time gardener, chef, maid, and part-time massage therapist; a penthouse in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighbourhood with a 750-square-foot terrace; a coffee farm in Sao Paulo, Brazil; and a hillside villa in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, with a60-foot solar-heated lap pool and hot tub on the terrace.
Courtesy of HomeExchange Collection
Exchanges needn’t be reciprocal or immediate, either. If a member lends their home without reciprocity, they get GuestPoints to bank for a stay somewhere else at another time.
Members of the HomeExchange Collection can lend their homes to each other for a weekend, week, or month—and all include the benefit of their host’s insider intel. Other perks include a 100% flexible cancellation policy for guests, up to US$2 million in property damage protection, and access to the member service team 24/7.
PRICE
If your home is selected, an annual membership to HomeExchange Collection costs US$1,000, which gives members the opportunity for unlimited exchanges during the calendar year.
DESCRIPTION
With over 4,000 luxury homes in over 70 countries across the globe, from France and Italy to Thailand, Australia, and the U.A.E., even the most affluent are reconsidering the way they vacation. “Covid has invited everyone to rethink being in shared, public spaces, and instead having a whole place to themselves,” Arnaud says.
It’s a shift happening, in part, Arnaud says, because of growing environmental awareness.
“People are rethinking their relationship to consumption,” he says. “The idea that you have this very, very nice home sitting idle while you’re paying to be at a hotel sounds a bit absurd. Why not use these homes which would otherwise be empty?”
WHAT’S THE GOOD?
As a certified B Corp, HomeExchange Collection meets high standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability—and it’s the definition of responsible tourism. By nature, the concept of home exchanging is a more sustainable way to travel. By using pre-existing accommodations and encouraging people to live like locals, the local ecosystem remains undisturbed.
“We think our approach makes better use of the existing infrastructure, the existing homes, rather than building new homes and hotels,” Arnaud says.
The company takes its commitment to the environment one step further by calculating its carbon footprint every year, trying to reduce it, and contributing to global carbon neutrality by investing in social and environmental projects.
Meanwhile, members, through HomeExchange’s Solidarity group, can open their homes to relief workers or affected members in instances such as pandemics, fires, earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, or war.
“It started with Covid when we realized we had a lot of homes available and a lot of people who wanted to help. We launched the Solidarity program to help frontline workers in hospitals to be able to have a place where they could stay without having to commute back and forth,” Arnaud says. The program was then expanded to house Ukrainian refugees.
WHAT’S NEXT
Aside from continuing to grow membership and properties worldwide, Arnaud’s mission is for everyone to have the opportunity to go on vacation. The company has already partnered with an organisation in France, Le Secours Catholique, which helps low-income families travel.
“We want to be able to help people go on a vacation, no matter who they are, and we are looking for the right kind of partners and the right kind of ways to put that into place on a wider scale,” Arnaud says.
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Odd Culture Group brings a new kind of after-dark energy to the CBD, where daiquiris, disco and design collide beneath the city streets.
Odd Culture Group brings a new kind of after-dark energy to the CBD, where daiquiris, disco and design collide beneath the city streets.
2 minSydney’s nightlife has long flirted with reinvention, but its latest arrival suggests something more deliberate is taking shape beneath the surface.
Razz Room, the new underground bar and disco from Odd Culture Group, has opened in the CBD, marking the group’s first step into the city centre.
Tucked below street level on York Street, the venue blends cocktail culture with a shifting, late-night rhythm that moves from after-work drinks to full dancefloor immersion.
The space itself is designed to evolve over the course of an evening. An upper bar offers a more intimate setting, suited to early drinks and conversation, while a sunken dancefloor anchors the venue’s later hours, with a rotating program of DJs and live performances.
“Razz Room will really change shape throughout a single evening,” says Odd Culture Group CEO Rebecca Lines.
“Earlier, it’s geared towards post-work drinks with a happy hour, substantial food offering, and music at a level where you can still talk.”
As the night progresses, that tone shifts.
“As the evening progresses at Razz Room, you can expect the music to get a little louder and the focus will shift to live performance with recurring residencies and DJs that flow from disco to house, funk, and jazz,” Rebecca says.
The concept draws heavily on New York’s underground club scene before disco became mainstream, referencing venues such as The Mudd Club and Paradise Garage. But the intention is not nostalgia.
“The space told us what it wanted to be,” Lines explains. “Disco started as a counter culture… Razz Room is no nostalgia project, it’s a reimagining of the next era of the discotheque.”
Design, too, plays its part in shaping the experience. The upper level is warm and textural, with timber finishes and burnt-orange tones, while the sunken floor shifts into a more theatrical mood, combining Art Deco references with a raw, industrial edge.
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