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World record holder’s US$1-a-night home swapping travel app eyes China market for 2020
- James Asquith holds the Guinness World Record as the youngest person to visit every country in the world
- His house swapping app covers 185 countries and has more than 500,000 users
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Holiday Swap, an app that enables users to travel the world through home swapping for just US$1 per night, is experiencing accelerated growth and is eyeing the China market for 2020.
Founded in 2017 by James Asquith, who set the Guinness World Record for being the youngest person to travel to every country in the world, the app is now in 185 countries and has more than 500,000 users around the world. Asquith says it is growing by 3,500 users per day and aims to have 5 million users by the end of June 2020.
“Asia has been slowly brewing for us, but next year there will be a big focus on what we do in Asia. In January, we are pushing out simplified Chinese,” says Asquith, 29, during a visit to Hong Kong earlier this month.
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Hong Kong properties are already listed on the app and he expects to see it gain in popularity in the next year.
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Asquith says home swapping has been around since the 1960s, but never took off because no one wanted to make the significant financial investment in the technology. The app allows someone in Tokyo looking to home-swap with someone in London – and the app automatically translates between Japanese and English. But beyond the capital investment, it needed a critical mass of users to really take off.
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