I've saved thousands and traveled to dozens of countries using a home-swapping website

• Julie Williams has done 140 home exchanges in dozens of countries.
• Williams uses the home-swapping website HomeExchange to book accommodations.
• The website allows users to travel the world and form friendships. 

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Julie Williams, 60, a semi-retired woman living in Devon, England, who has used HomeExchange more than 100 times over the last decade to travel the world. The website helps facilitate accommodation exchanges between 150,000 users in 145 countries. Williams estimates she's done about 140 exchanges since joining the site.

I came across HomeExchange about 12 years ago when my husband and I were living in Italy. My daughter was considering going traveling, and I was looking for some low-cost options for her.

We were a bit apprehensive about the website at first. I signed up but didn't pay the subscription. Then HomeExchange sent me an offer, and I said to my husband, "Shall we give it a go?"

The way it works is you subscribe to the website, make a profile, and list your home. You describe yourself and your traveling members and talk about your home and what you have to offer, as well as where you want to travel. Then, you start looking for people in that area who are on HomeExchange, too.

There are different kinds of exchanges. It's quite flexible. There's a simultaneous reciprocal exchange where you swap houses with another person at the same time, so they come to stay in your house, and you stay in theirs. That works well for families and people who have one home.

There is also a reciprocal exchange where you don't have to swap at the same time, so that's good for people who have second homes. The most flexible way is to use guest points. When somebody comes to stay in your house, the website gives you an allotted amount of guest points, which vary according to how large your home is, how many people you can accommodate, and what facilities you have. You can then use those points whenever you want. That's what we use a lot.

We had been living in Italy up until last year, and we had a much larger home with a separate self-contained apartment. We would mostly swap with people from Australia and New Zealand who liked to come to Italy during our summer, and we wanted to go in their summer, which are different times of the year. So, we would be at home when they came, and they would stay in our apartment.

We moved back to the UK last year. We had our first guest in this house a couple of weeks ago. We did a hospitality exchange, which is where you stay at home and host people. I like to cook and entertain for them. We've got some Australians coming in June.

You meet all sorts of people around the world

It's a complete cross-section of people and all ages. We've met doctors, people who work for NASA, academics, people who aren't necessarily professionals, and even people with plenty of money. We even hosted a senator from the US.

Some people just get fed up being in hotels, especially if they travel a lot. They want to live like locals when they go on holiday. They don't want to stay in a hotel and just be a tourist. We always tell people all the local places to go and things to see that they wouldn't have known about if they weren't staying with us. That's a big driver for people who get the bug for HomeExchange.

We've stayed in places in Australia that are totally off the grid in conservation areas that don't have electricity. That's completely different than being in a hotel and getting dressed up to go down for dinner.

We've kept in contact with some people we've met and even become friends. Our first exchange was in the Caribbean on St. John, which is a US Virgin Island. We stayed with some people there who later came to stay with us in Italy.

We were hooked after our first exchange

We were pretty much hooked after our first trip. The following year, I was coming up on 50 and decided I wanted to go to Australia. I put together a massive three-month trip, 12 weeks of back-to-back home exchanges around Australia and Tasmania. We had a stopover in Singapore on the way back. We couldn't have afforded to do a trip like that if we were staying in hotels.

HomeExchange means we can travel for much longer. The winters in Italy were cold and snowy, so we would often go away for three months.

Throughout my time using the website, I've been to Nevis, St. Martin, St. John in the Caribbean, Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, Rarotonga, which is a Cook Island, Bali, Singapore, Hong Kong, England, Ireland, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Denmark, Belgium, Holland.

In Western Australia, we once stayed outside a place called Monkey Mia, which is on the way to the Inglou Reef in somebody's beach house. We went to Monkey Mia, where wild dolphins come in to feed. They're completely wild. It was my dream to be picked to stand in the water and hold the fish to see if the dolphin wanted to come and eat it. And it did.

We've been to a fantastic place in Bali where we stayed in a beautiful villa with staff, a driver, and someone cooking for us.

I think we've saved well over £100,000 using HomeExchange. I haven't actually added it up, but we often go away for three months at a time. And we're not just talking about the cost of a double hotel room — we're staying in whole homes, places with swimming pools, vineyards, and fantastic views.

I'm always telling my friends about how wonderful it is. Even if you make an exchange agreement and, for some reason, the people hosting you cancel, there's a guarantee from HomeExchange that if they can't find you something suitable within a certain radius, they will give you an allowance toward staying in a hotel.

We don't see any downside to signing up and doing it.