Negotiating Back-to-Back Exchanges

When you hear "back-to-back-to-back," you probably think of your favourite sports team winning a championship three years running, and it gives you joy. In PLU home exchanges, though, the term might give you a bit of anxiety instead.

Most people do one or two exchanges at a time when they go on holiday. But what happens when you start long-travelling for months, or buy a holiday home and have exchanges lined up for longer stretches because the home is sitting empty?

We're Sara and Brian. Our primary residence is in Phuket, Thailand, and we recently added a home in Sapporo, Japan. Over the last couple of years we've been travelling more and more, and we've had plenty of back-to-back exchanges to show for it. In 2025 we had two runs of six back-to-backs each, and this winter into 2027 we've got a string of eight lined up. So, how do we set our homes up for that? Here's what we've learned.

Communication

With a large group, it's easiest to talk to everyone at once, so we set up a WhatsApp group with everyone on the back-to-back exchange. That way we can share our home manual, our things-to-do list, our map of local restaurants and spots worth visiting, and let our exchangers talk to each other directly.

If an early group finds something great in the area, they can drop it in the group chat for the later ones. It's also the easiest way to flag anything left in the fridge, laundry hiccups, or anything else about the house that needs passing along. Any date changes or one-on-one issues still go through PLU messaging.

A note from PLU: group chats are coming to the PLU platform, so soon you'll be able to keep this kind of coordination in one place without needing a separate WhatsApp group. Watch this space!

The Welcome (and Check-Out) Letter

For each guest we leave a small gift bag, local, non-perishable treats, along with a welcome letter. The letter includes specific check-out instructions: how many beds to make up, where to leave keys, anything that needs a bit of extra cleaning if the housekeeper can't get in between stays. We tailor it each time based on what the incoming guests need, like how many beds have to be ready.

We're also considering adding an actual check-out task list, the small, easy-to-forget things like clearing drains, emptying the fridge of perishables, and restocking toilet paper, especially since we might not be back for a while ourselves.

Laundry

With just one exchange, you can leave the laundry and deal with it when you're home. With a run of back-to-backs, it gets trickier.

At both homes we keep at least two sets of sheets and towels for the maximum number of guests we can host. In Phuket, we're lucky enough to have a laundry lady right outside our condo gates with a five to seven day turnaround. Guests make up the beds with fresh linen on the day they leave and drop the dirty ones with her on the way out; the next guests then collect the clean load sometime during their stay, ready to use when it's their turn to leave. We leave money for guests to pay her directly.

In Sapporo, there's a coin laundromat with large washers and dryers just across the street. If guests are able to, we ask them to wash their sheets and towels on the day they leave, and if an early flight makes that impossible, the incoming guests take care of it instead. It really does come back to communication: we let every back-to-back guest know, right from the acceptance stage, that we'll need their help getting the home ready for whoever's next. We leave coins for the machines as a small convenience.

Cleaning

In Phuket, our housekeeper comes once a week, and we try to time her visit for turnaround day, though that's not always possible. We're upfront before anyone accepts a back-to-back stay that they may need to do some cleaning to have the home ready for the next guest.

In Sapporo, we don't have a cleaner at all, so it's on the outgoing guest to leave the home ready. We make sure there are plenty of supplies on hand, and we label everything clearly so it's easy to find.

It Comes Down to Trust

What really makes PLU back-to-back exchanges work is the trust and communication between everyone involved. No matter where we are in the world, we keep an eye on the WhatsApp group and any email alerts for PLU messages, so we can stay on top of anything that comes up. We've occasionally had to arrange for someone to pop in and fix a small issue from afar, and just as often, we've had exchangers who were handy enough to sort it themselves.

So don't be put off. Back-to-back exchanges can be a wonderful way to have someone looking after your home while you take a longer trip. Yes, we come home to the odd misplaced item, and yes, the occasional dish gets broken, but as long as it's communicated, it's honestly not a problem. It's a small trade-off for the benefits of home exchange, and we'd always rather have PLU members caring for our house than hand it over to strangers. We trust the Community to look after our homes the way we look after the ones we exchange into.

So get out there, and start stringing those exchanges together. 🏡

— Brian and Sara