Introducing PLU Picks

Home exchanging, at its best, isn't really about browsing.

It's about that moment when you come across a home and think, "Oh, that's the one." The place, the people, the details all line up — and suddenly a trip starts to feel possible.

PLU Picks is our way of bringing more of those moments to you.

What PLU Picks is

PLU Picks are personalised home recommendations, chosen just for you.

They're drawn from what you've told us — your desired destinations, your saved searches, your home, your preferences — and matched against the homes (and members) in our Community who look like a genuinely good fit for how you like to travel.

We won't go into the inner workings here (there's a fair bit going on behind the scenes), but the short version is: the more we know about what you're looking for, the better your Picks get.

How you'll hear about your Picks

When we find a new Pick for you, we'll let you know straight away by email — that's the default, because a great match is the kind of thing you'd probably like to hear about sooner rather than later.

You can change that frequency any time in your email settings. PLU Picks notifications can be set to immediate, a daily digest, a weekly digest, or turned off entirely — whichever suits you best.

You can also find your Picks any time from the Homes menu — just look for PLU Picks. You can even search for homes belonging to members who have your home as a Pick. And when you're running your own searches in the usual way, we'll badge any homes that are Picks for you, so they stand out in the results.

Gold Picks: when it's mutual

Every now and then something lovely happens: a home is a Pick for you, and your home is a Pick for them. When that happens, we call it a Gold PLU Pick — and it's worth paying attention to. It means the match works both ways, which is often the strongest signal you'll get that a conversation is worth starting.

When a Pick is great for you, but not quite reciprocal

Sometimes a home is a wonderful match for what you're looking for, but — for whatever reason — your home or your details might not be quite right for them. Maybe the travelling party sizes don't line up, or the house rules don't quite meet in the middle.

In those cases, we'll still surface the Pick, but we'll flag it as one that might suit a non-reciprocal exchange — a hosted stay, a Pluto exchange, or a future exchange where the timing works differently. A good match is still a good match; it just might take a slightly different shape.

Why this Pick? (And tell us how we're doing)

On every Pick, we'll tell you why we think it's a good match. It might be the location, a shared approach to hosting, the style of home, the dates lining up — whatever it is, we'll be upfront about our reasoning.

And then we'd love your feedback.

👍 Thumbs Up if we got it right. It's the quickest way to tell us "more like this, please."
👎 Thumbs Down if we missed the mark — and if you've got a moment, tell us why. It helps enormously.

And if we've really got it wrong — if a Pick is based on something that just isn't relevant to you anymore — a Thumbs Down will also give you the option to clear out any other Picks that came from the same signal. No sense wading through a stack of similar ones if the original wasn't right.

Every piece of feedback goes back into making your future Picks better. This is a feature that genuinely improves the more you use it.

And it'll keep getting better

We've been testing PLU Picks quietly with a group of members for the past four months, and it's worked well enough that we're ready to share it with the whole Community.

That said — some Picks will be brilliant, and some will be closer to "interesting, but not quite." That's part of the process, and every thumbs up or thumbs down you give us makes the next one better.

We think you'll enjoy it. We think it'll open up exchanges you might never have found through searching alone.

And we'd love to hear what you think as you start getting your own Picks coming through.

Have a look around — your first Picks may already be waiting for you. 🏡