When Livekindred launched Kindred in 2022, its goal was simple: to make travel more accessible and authentic through home swapping.

Though it’s nearly two decades old, “The Holiday” starring Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz not only lives on in the hearts of romcom fans — but home swappers too.The movie plays like a 136-minute advertisement for HomeExchange, and it’s hard to tell what holds the bigger appeal: the romantic English cottage where Diaz’s character stays or the doting widowed father next door played by Jude Law. The movie was so good for business, the company continues to use it in a marketing campaigns, such as one last year that sent the woman who played one of Law’s little daughters in the movie on her own swap to a Tudor farmhouse.Yet not even Hollywood could top the moment home swapping is enjoying now. Last year alone, HomeExchange, the biggest of the home-swapping platforms, reported 51% growth in membership, increasing from roughly 100,000 members to more than 150,000.Part of that came from the company’s acquisition in March 2023 of United Kingdom-based competitor Love Home Swap. But those 10,000 new members don’t account for such an outsized growth rate for a company that started in 1992 with paper catalogs shared mostly by schoolteachers who corresponded by (snail) mail.HomeExchange isn’t alone in seeing rapid growth in home swapping.“We have definitely experienced a surge in interest,” said Justine Palefsky, the CEO and co-founder at Kindred, a members-only home exchange network founded in 2022 and a PhocusWire Hot 25 Travel Startup for 2024. “We frankly have been surprised at the rapid traction and growth that we've seen.”Home swapping is built on this mutual trust. Everyone is both host and guest