Home Exchange - Let's go skiing

Following up on the 33rd Daily Mail and Ski Board Show last week, I thought it was appropriate to draw attention to home exchange ski opportunities which occur on the GTI Home Exchange website. Holidays relating to a particular theme are easily found by using the Detailed Search and clicking on the appropriate Theme from the drop down list. In the case of skiing, there are no fewer than 184 listings which mention the possibility of skiing. For example:


HE13107
Apartment of 2 rooms situated at the 1st floor of a pretty chalet with a balcony giving a magnificent view of the Alps.




HE17293
80m2 flat situated on golf course with view of the Alps. 10 minutes walk to village via the golf course. Country skiing directly at the door. Downhill skiing up to 3000m altitude. Also possibility of exchange of our house in San Jose, Costa Rica during school holidays.

Home Exchange Agreements

Believe it or not, very few members take the precaution of completing our simple Holiday Agreement Form, so it is gratifying when one does occasionally drop through the letter box. The Holiday Agreement Form is provided for members to exchange with each other, sending a copy to us to hold on file. It not only helps to clarify the terms of the exchange arranged, but also means that in the unlikely event of the need to make a claim against your travel insurance, evidence of an exchange having been arranged is held by a third party (ie GTI Home Exchange).

Having received the Holiday Agreement Form from Barry and Joyce of Rotherham, we are aware that they are off to Queensland, Australia, in November to enjoy Christmas down under in Gladstone. The Great Barrier reef is accessible by launch from the marina or by road from their exchange home. The beach, where there are bbq's, tables and play areas, is a short drive. As well as the family’s new car they will have the use of a Pajero 4WD with fridge, small boat and all fishing and camping equipment.

Meanwhile their exchange partners will spend what will probably be a somewhat cooler festive season in South Yorkshire, compensated by the fact that they will be able to spend Christmas with the family. Needless to say it was important for Terry and Patricia from Queensland to be in a comparatively precise location within easy access of Sheffield where the family live. So, whilst we recommend that the most successful exchangers are people who are able to be flexible about destination, we have proof here that you can be quite specific about a destination, and with ‘Lady Luck’ on your side, link up with compatible exchange partners using the GTI Home Exchange system.

We hope everyone has a really splendid time and look forward to hearing from you on your return. (Don't forget the Exchange Feedback Form is available for you to give us your feedback about your exchange experience. You may either copy and paste it, and send it to us saved as an MSWord .doc file attached to an email, or post it to us).

GTI Home Exchange 2 Year memberships

GTI Home Exchange member, Catherine, has just renewed her membership for our Membership option Plan 2 which gives her membership for a further two years at a discounted subscription rate.

Catherine says: "We did a home exchange to France this past summer and are hooked! You may view our listing HE15845. Please contact us with questions!"

From the picture that Catherine has posted on her listing, Davis, a sunny university city in California, certainly looks a lively place to visit. She says "It's a great place for touring Northern California; 10 mins to Sacramento (state capitol); 1½ hrs to San Francisco, the wine country, the Pacific Ocean; and 2½ hrs to the Sierra Nevada mountains (hiking, 1849 gold rush sites, Lake Tahoe, and Reno casinos)".

Contacting GTI Members

HE16210
Some time ago I received a message from a GTI Home Exchange member stating that they were having difficulty making initial contact with 2 other members, as their email address as available for their listing via the members' area appeared to be incorrect. As a result both of their messages to these members were returned unopened to them with the standard sort of ISP message ie:
"I'm sorry to have to inform you that the message returned below could not be delivered to one or more destinations".

Neil, who brought this to our attention, said "We have double checked that the address we sent to is as listed on the GTI site and they match so should have got through."

Members and visitors to the weblog yesterday who read the post about the recent GTI website upgrade will note that we have tried to address this problem of members' changing their email addresses and forgetting to update them on the website, by allowing members to include an alternative email address. For your security and to avoid spam, both addresses are available only to other registered members.

At the time that Neil sent us his message he was looking for an exchange in Denmark, and a new listing in Aarhus has just been added to the website:HE17356.

However, Neil's listing currently carries the heading 'Exchange Request Fulfilled".
If you have used the facility whereby you can indicate that your Exchange Request has been fulfilled and you do not wish to receive further offers for the time being, it is very important to remember to uncheck this box when you are ready to receive further offers of exchange.

Green Theme International Home Exchange Website Upgrade

We are pleased to advise members and visitors to the GTI Home Exchange website that our programmer has just completed a further upgrade to the site. We are always looking for ways to enhance the site, make it easier to use and add new features, many of which are incorporated as a result of member’s feedback. Although some of the changes are concerned with administration and will not be immediately noticeable to members and site visitors, you will see some additional options on the membership form, in the search pages and in the member area. If you are a current member you may wish to log on to your member area to check out the changes on the form (View/alter your details) and make additions/amendments as appropriate: (please do not forget to click on ‘Continue’ at the end of the form to save any changes):

Changes on the Membership Form

1 Mailing address is no longer a required field (although it is still useful as another means of contact, but not compulsory if you prefer not to include yours).

2 New box to add a second email address. (Members sometimes change their email address and forget to immediately change it on their GTI membership form, so preventing other members from making contact. It can be useful to have an additional address (perhaps a free web based one like Yahoo or Hotmail). Also occasionally members’ exchange offer messages are blocked and undelivered by a member’s ISP. Again, for this reason it can be useful to have a second email address to use, but it is not compulsory.

3 Type of Residence – Motor Homes/Houseboats have been added to the drop-down list.

4 Type of Exchange – Non-simultaneous Exchange possible (additional tick box option).

5 Ages of Children – As well as the number of children in your exchange party, you can now also include their ages.

6 Dates of Exchanges – You are able to indicate a specific range of dates for two separate periods. If you wish to be more flexible, use the tick-box option Open to offers.

Additional Search Functionality

We have included a new Advanced Search option, Type of Residence, a drop-down list.

Additions to your Member Administration Area

You will notice the following additions to your Member Area:

1 a direct link to View Your Listing (allowing you to easily view how your listing appears to visitors/browsers if you have made any additions/amendments to it).

2 a Member Logout link on all pages once you are logged on (to save having to click back to your member area to log out after browsing listings.

3 all the listings have individual page titles: much better for bookmarking!