Professional operators leave 30 to 40 percent of their nights empty every year. The Stay Exchange turns that idle inventory into credits you can spend across a closed network of vetted operators. No discounting your public rate. No cash changing hands between hosts.
Your quiet nights become credits. You spend them where you like and when you like, with no fire-sale discounting and no swapping your own home on someone else's dates.
Dynamic pricing, channel managers and length-of-stay discounts have not moved the needle in a decade. The gap nights are structural: mid-week winter, shoulder seasons, gaps between weekends. There simply is not enough cash demand at any rate you would accept. Consumer home-swap never solved it, because it was built for amateurs, not operators.
Home swap has existed since the 1950s and never became the inventory layer for professionals, because it was built for amateurs trading their own front door once a year.
No new calendar, no double entry, no manual coordination. You connect once and bookings land back in your system tagged as The Stay Exchange, identical to a Booking.com or Vrbo reservation.
Link your PMS in a couple of clicks. Availability and live nightly rates sync automatically, so there is nothing to set up or duplicate.
OAuth, a few minutesChoose which unsold dates open for credit bookings, per property, and season your credit pricing up or down. You stay in full control of what is exposed.
Per-property, configurableMembers book, credits land in your balance, and the reservation appears in your PMS like any other channel. Your team handles it exactly as they do today.
Tagged, hands-offBuilt to connect with the professional PMS platforms operators run
Launching with the majors first, expanding across the market. Run something else? Tell us and we will prioritise it.
Every credit is worth one US dollar, anchored to the live rate from your PMS. Price honestly and you earn what your inventory is worth. Over-price and nobody books you. The booker carries the fee, because they are the one benefiting from paying mostly in credits.
The single biggest question operators ask is what happens to their property. Three layers sit behind every booking so you are never exposed the way an open marketplace leaves you.
Operators must hold at least 20 verified guest reviews to be eligible. Licences are cross-referenced against council databases, insurance verified, and cleaning standards audited before anyone joins. Every booker is also a host, so the standard is mutual.
Your existing short-term-let policy is the primary cover, with a platform master policy sitting behind it specifically for credit bookings.
Every booking carries a credit-held deposit for the long tail of minor damage, settled quickly and without troubling insurers.
The Stay Exchange is invitation-only and built for multi-unit operators running on a modern PMS with proper licensing and insurance. That is the whole point: every property you can book is held to the same standard as your own.
Eligibility starts at a track record of at least 20 verified guest reviews. Licence numbers are cross-referenced against council databases, insurance is verified, and cleaning standards are audited at onboarding.
Bookings flow into your existing system as a normal reservation. No new calendar to babysit, no double entry.
Because every booker is also a host, standards are mutual. You stay somewhere as good as the property you list.
Operators have gap nights every week, so the network is liquid in a way consumer home-swap never could be.
Over 75 percent of professional operators now run a modern PMS with open APIs. A handful of integrations reaches most of the market.
Multi-unit operators now run the majority of listed inventory in the cities that shaped the industry. They evaluate every channel on yield.
Licensing regimes are capping new supply. Operators cannot scale by adding units, so they must extract more from what they hold.
The Stay Exchange is founded from inside the professional short-term let industry, by a multi-unit operator who chairs a national self-catering association and sits on government STL guidance. It launches through the channels operators already trust, not cold advertising.
Empty nights are not lost revenue, they are working capital sitting idle. Every operator I know has the same problem, and no cash tool has ever fixed it. Founder, The Stay Exchange
No. Home swap trades one amateur home for another on matching dates. The Stay Exchange is a closed network of vetted, licensed, professionally run units, where you earn credits when others book your gap nights and spend them anywhere in the network, on dates you choose. There is no reciprocal swap.
Nothing to earn or redeem credits. The only fee is a 15 percent cash service charge, and it is paid by the booker, who is the one benefiting from paying mostly in credits. That is at parity with the combined fees on Airbnb and the OTAs.
Credits are pegged one to one to the US dollar, anchored to your real market nightly rate pulled live from your PMS. You can season your pricing up or down by up to 50 percent for peak and quiet dates, exactly as you would with cash pricing. You cannot inflate a property above market, because nobody would book it.
No. You list only the unsold dates you choose, per property. Earning and spending are separate, so you can build a credit balance from quiet nights and spend it whenever and wherever suits you.
Three layers protect you: your own short-term-let insurance is primary, a platform master policy sits behind it for credit bookings, and every booking carries a credit-held damage deposit for minor claims. Every operator on the network is vetted before they can book.
We are launching integrations with the major professional PMS platforms, including Hostaway, Guesty, Hostfully, Lodgify, Uplisting and Hospitable. If you run one of these, connecting takes a few minutes.
We are onboarding a first cohort of professional operators. Register your interest and we will be in touch about early access.