SINGAPORE, June 16 — James Asquith quit his comfortable job as an investment manager at a bank because he wanted to travel to places he has never been before. Now, he has built a travel application that encourages others to explore the world just as he loves to do.
The 30-year-old founder and chief executive officer of the travel app Holiday Swap — dubbed a travel version of Tinder — has another feather in his cap, of which he is justly proud.
Asquith said that when he was aged 24, he was the Guinness World Record holder for being the world’s youngest person to have travelled to all sovereign nations worldwide — that is 196 countries.
Asquith was in town when he spoke to TODAY on Friday to talk about his travel app, outlining his plans to expand to Asia. He is looking to hire staff members in Singapore.
Holiday Swap, like Tinder, connects two people when both swipe “like”. They then get to discuss suitable dates for swapping holiday accommodation — though the system is very flexible. The app charges US$1 (RM4.20) a night.
Back when Asquith launched Holiday Swap, in December 2017, it had just two users, but that has sky-rocketed to about 240,000 users worldwide, with about 3,000 users signing up every day, he said.
During his investment banking days, he was still travelling to various countries, noting that the job “paid for many of the more expensive countries” he visited then.
“I knew when I finished travelling, I wanted to write a book, put two years into writing a book that kind of documented the travels. But through this, I still did my job to inspire young people and everyone who wants to travel more,” he said.
Some may believe a young man such as Asquith should have tipped all that cash spent travelling into buying a house or a fancy car, but he thinks otherwise — believing that unique travel experiences are valuable and not replaceable by material things.
“At 18, I set up an events business and saved lots of money. My intention was, I would go out to buy a house and I will be happy. Then it got to the point where I spent all my time and money on travelling. I could have bought a couple of nice cars instead and spend on expensive things. I don’t have materialistic things, I never spend money on nice clothes or watches, but I spent it all on travelling,” Asquith said.
Not surprisingly, he is deeply passionate about his travel app, and his efforts to build it to a much wider audience.
“It does not matter how good a platform is, if there are only two people there, no one will go on it. And so, there was a lot of work to get to that point where the app was relevant and was a large enough platform for people to go on it and utilise it,” he said.
Expanding into Asia is key to his plans to offer users more accommodation options, and to balance supply and demand.
Right now, the app’s largest market is the United States, which accounts for about a quarter of users, followed by Mexico, the United Kingdom, Italy and the Philippines.
“We are in a huge growth stage. We have grown to 185 countries but we want to bring accessibility to everyone’s door in every city,” Asquith said.
He is keen to localise the platform in various countries, by recruiting residents in those places — and he hopes to recruit staff members based in Singapore and around Asia, with skills such as marketing.
Asquith said: “I prefer people who are super hardworking and take the initiative to do things, come up with ideas and think for 5 per cent but work for 95 per cent.”
He noted that “everyone kept saying I love to travel but I do not have the money and time” to travel, given that flights and accommodation can account for almost half of travel expenses.
So the simple objective of the travel app? “Make travel cheaper, more accessible for more and more people. That is why, it is at US$1 a night.”
How does the app work?
In essence, with Holiday Swap, users get to select their preferred location from a map of a particular country, review the accommodation on offer and decide if they would “like” to stay at the place.
A mutual “like” — with the host “liking” back the user’s accommodation — would be a match and both users can then proceed to a chat space to figure out more details of the swap. Like the dating app Tinder, if the "like" is not mutual, the users will not be able to proceed to the chat space.
The system is flexible in terms of when and how users will swap — the dates do not have to coincide. The host may or may not be there during your stay. Users can discuss with the host if they would like to be shown around and so forth.
Asquith said that it is like “building up a community with many people that they have matched around the world”.
In trying to illustrate how it works, he said: “I might be there, I might have a spare room, you might be staying in that room or I might be on a business trip, staying at a hotel there. Or I might have matched with someone you know in, for example, Los Angeles, so you can come and stay at mine and I can stay at theirs, it just allows you not to directly swap on the same dates as well. So it is really up to the users.”
Other features of the app include travelling tips whereby users share their travelling experiences around the world, including recreational activities and eateries they would recommend.
The legal grey area
Of course, any app involving the sharing economy raises the persistent legal grey area over local laws and regulations governing such arrangements. Home-sharing platform Airbnb has encountered plenty of legal roadblocks.
In May this year, the Singapore government announced that short-term rentals of homes will remain illegal and has imposed a regulatory framework to safeguard the interests of Singaporeans.
This decision was made based on a survey by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) that the majority of the private homeowners felt that short-term rentals would have a negative impact on the residents, with 68 per cent raising security concerns and 67 per cent fearing a loss of privacy. And 56 per cent of respondents were concerned over the damage to common facilities.
Asked about potential legal problems, Asquith, an economics graduate, said that he had not faced “any issues so far”.
“Unlike other traditional platforms, there is no one actually profiting from it. Now the issue is when you sublet on a platform and say things like, ‘Stay at my place for 100 dollars per night’. That is when you come into a lot of issues with the governments. Because it puts upward pressure on property prices and rent prices, that is why a lot of people and governments are against it,” Asquith said.
Safety and privacy concerns
Well-aware of potential safety and privacy concerns that users may have while swapping accommodation, Asquith has implemented several measures aimed at protecting them.
The non-subscription-based travel app will require users to sign up for an account using a government identification number, so the Holiday Swap team can track down users, should anything go wrong.
Feeling confident of the system, he said: “People lay the foundations before they actually swap or host someone. You already know who you are swapping with, have a conversation before and be there once you match with someone. There is also an inbuilt language translation function.”
Like many apps of this type, there is a mutual rating system for users to rate one another and leave comments on the accommodations or other users. Asquith has also put in place a team of four, who manually go through different profiles, contact unclear profiles and eventually remove people who are not compatible with the app’s guidelines.
“(Safety and privacy) is always going to be something that we are pushing for more and more. Every property that goes on there is moderated manually by our customer service team. We are putting in more measures as well to protect people,” he added.
Users can also request swaps to submit a US$500 deposit in case of any cancellation or damage to house furniture, but most do not do so. In case of emergency, users may contact the customer service crew at Holiday Swap and are entitled up to a maximum of US$500 to choose alternative accommodation elsewhere.
A user’s privacy is protected in that addresses and the biography of users are not shown in full unless a match has been made. Up to that point, the app shows only the general location of accommodation on offer. — TODAY
