Budget Travel Homestay

Homestay accommodation is a great way to keep your travel expenses below budget.

Budget travel homestay is as simple as staying as a guest in people's homes. It's a cheap and informal way of travelling cheaply. You get to make friends and learn about new places - not as a tourist - but more from a local perspective.

Homestay programs are really a swap accommodation deal... an exchange. They're built on the principle of give and take. When you’re travelling, you stay with others; and when you’re back at your home base - your home town or city - then you volunteer to be a host.

The original and biggest budget travel Homestay accommodation organization is Servas, which aims to promote cultural exchange insread of just a mere bed exchange. Servas has 14,000 hosts in 130 countries, and charges a membership fee to join. You must also be interviewed by another member before you are accepted.

Once you are a member of Servas, you can order host lists for the countries and places you plan to visit. These lists are not available on line Servas vows they “never will be.”

But there are other budget travel homestay organizations which let you join for free.

Global Freeloaders is a one-man-show which uses the internet to help people “save money and make new friends whilst seeing the world from a local's perspective.” It has no screening like Servas does, but it does keep track of people's feedback, and bad experiences are rare.

Another web-based homestay organization is the Hospitality Club, which is based in Europe. It has more than 8,000 members and more than 100 hosts in places such as Argentina, Finland, Lithuania and Poland.