Travel more responsibly with motorhome exchange

SwapTheRoad allows the exchange of recreational vehicles between individuals. In addition to the desire to give you an authentic experience at a lower cost, SwapTheRoad offers a more responsible way of traveling. We tell you more about it in this article !

Tourism-related pollution

According to an Australian study in 2021, tourism was responsible for 8% of total greenhouse gas emissions. Ecotourism and sustainable tourism in general, are now increasingly popular with travelers, following the rise in collective consciousness regarding the health of the planet. Given the critical situation relating to global warming, the trend is particularly towards collaborative consumption. What is collaborative consumption exactly ? It is a system that allows individuals to share access to goods or services, rather than encouraging individual ownership. This is why today, more and more travel enthusiasts are opting for the exchange of vehicles or even the exchange of houses for their holidays.

Reduce your carbon footprint

Whether you own a motorhome, a van or even a converted van, the SwapTheRoad collaborative platform offers you the possibility of swapping your recreational vehicle with another owner.

It can be a reciprocal exchange : you and another RV owner exchange your respective vehicles over the same period or over different periods.

or a non-reciprocal exchange: an owner borrows your vehicle or you borrow theirs in return for RoadPoints, a digital currency system set up by the platform.

The community is made up of vanlifers from all over the world. If you absolutely want to travel abroad by RV, the advantage of the exchange is that it allows you to avoid having to import your vehicle by cargo ship, for example. In order to promote more responsible and more sustainable tourism, one of the objectives of the SwapTheRoad platform is to base exchanges on the sharing of everyone’s goods and personal experiences for authentic, responsible and accessible travel for all.

By choosing the RV exchange, you are therefore favoring a mode of travel that is more respectful of the environment. The shipping (round trip of your RV) does indeed involve significant pollution. Maritime transport being a major emitter of greenhouse gases, it has a very harmful impact on the environment. It contributes to the pollution of the air but also to that of the seas, the oceans, and affects the living beings that compose them. Considering the risks of oil spills, noise, water and air pollution, as well as the disturbance of marine fauna, it is high time that everyone acted on their own scale to try to choose sea transport only when it is essential.

Exchange to consume less

The motorhome exchange, like the home exchange between individuals, makes it possible to take advantage of everyone’s resources. By avoiding the rental of a vehicle once you arrive in the host country or the purchase of a motorhome for your stay, you contribute to slower tourism and more aware of today’s ecological issues. Thanks to travel in a leisure vehicle, you choose to sleep in your vehicle instead of opting for tourist rentals (hotels, lodges, etc.). It’s another way of traveling and the experience is even more unique for all RV roadtrip enthusiasts.

Concretely, the SwapTheRoad community is made up of travel enthusiasts, all RV owners and located in the four corners of the globe : Colombia, France, South Africa, New Zealand, Canada, United States, Spain, Australia… Thanks to the RV exchange and the use of existing resources (here recreational vehicles), there is no money transaction between owners. Without financial transaction, the exchange is based on the simple pleasure of sharing, a desire for mutual aid and this triggers a completely different feeling during your trip. Thanks to the respect of values such as respect, benevolence, open-mindedness and indulgence, the members of the SwapTheRoad community exchange their vehicles but, above all, share their experiences, transmit customs, tips, habits locals… Real encounters are favored and your experience is enriched by all the good advice that the RV lender gives you. The fact of exchanging your experiences with another individual allows you to create a bond, to develop an attachment to the other, to the RV that they lend you and vice versa.

Promote local trade

One of the positive impacts of tourism (despite the pollution and other environmental impacts) is that it creates a lot of jobs and sustains a lot of producers and traders. In the event of an exchange of a leisure vehicle, this is the time for you to advise the borrower on the small traders you know, the good addresses where to eat, the craftsmen in the surroundings, etc. For more sustainable tourism, it is important to take into account the economic development of the sites crossed. In the event of a reciprocal exchange, this is also the time for you to stock up on advice from the owner. Where you might have fallen into a few tourist traps, you benefit from the best recommendations and good addresses from the other RV owner. We try to promote local trade and we try to practice “solidarity tourism”. In connection with “sustainable” tourism, “solidarity” tourism implies favoring encounters with the inhabitants of the countries visited, respecting local cultures and promoting the economic development of local people.

How to join the SwaptTheRoad community ?

To be able to start the SwapTheRoad adventure and choose a more authentic and responsible vacation, all you need to do is register yourself for free using an email address. Then, you add your recrational vehicle and complete your user profile. Thus, you benefit from all of your travel capital in RoadPoints.

Now, you have access to all the RVs available on the platform. Determine your criteria and use the search filters to find your ideal vehicle to borrow, according to the desired model, the destination, the number of people, the number of beds… For each vehicle, its value in RoadPoints per day is indicated, in the event of a non-reciprocal exchange. For a reciprocal exchange : the deal is one RV for one RV. For a non-reciprocal exchange : an RV for RoadPoints. Thanks to internal messaging, you can contact the owner of the desired leisure vehicle and thus communicate on the entire organization of the trip. If you want more guarantees to go on a trip with peace of mind, the platform offers you the PREMIUM subscription formula.

As soon as your exchange request is validated, you can start packing your bags !