HomeForExchange didn't lose members as I reported yesterday, it just sorted them in a confusing way and I made a mistake. H4E features a running total of its members. That's what I was looking for. But what I found was the number of people who want to visit my country. H4E, in fact, reports 12,000 members, which makes it one of the largest swap clubs. And, like I said in the original column, it's a good value in a home exchange club. Another thing I like about H4E is that all of their listings are for swap homes. They do not mix rentals with exchanges.
The practice of listing how many people want to visit a member's country reveals the flaw in H4E: they are based in Europe, with most of their listings in Europe. Only a club run from a small country like the Netherlands would find it useful to indicate how many other club members want to visit a swapper's country. It is a good thing to know if you live in Belgium or the Netherlands, which are compact countries with excellent public transportation. If you want to visit Amsterdam it is easy to get there from a large number of other Dutch towns.
By contrast, knowing how many people want to visit a vast country like the United States is useless. My country is thousands of miles wide. Someone who wants to visit San Francisco will not be interested in a swap to Philadelphia just because it is in the same country.
My apologies to H4E for misinterpreting their statistics.
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