Simone, German

As a single mother with two kids, Simone looked to work exchange communities as a way to get help with tasks around the house and minding her children. At first, she looked for help the old-fashioned way, putting an advertisement in a local German Newspaper. That was how she met Jule, a kind lady who stayed with her in an au pair-style role, mostly helping with the kids. After such a successful experience, she put out another ad, this time looking for something a little more specific… professional help for building a strawbale house! And she got it!

Simone immediately realised that not only did this experience bring a helping hand to reduce the busyness and stress of daily life, but she met wonderful people from all different cultures, who became fabulous additions to their family home.

Another reason Simone found these exchange experiences so rewarding and enjoyable was because she loves to travel but naturally, when two young kids come along, travelling can become a little trickier. Hence, she was delighted to find that opening her home to people looking to travel, gave her that similar excitement of meeting new people from all over the world and being exposed to their cultures. She couldn’t go out and see the world, so she brought the world into her home. Not only was this amazing for her, but Simone found her children also loved it, trying new cuisines, and learning new languages.

What makes StayLance different?

Now, having had so many wonderful work exchange experiences, Simone already knew exactly what she wanted to include in StayLance and what new changes needed to be made to make the process as smooth and enjoyable as possible. It is these changes, coming from her own personal experience, that make StayLance so special:

Firstly, there were two aspects that Simone wanted to improve in order to help in making the PERFECT MATCH between HostLancer and StayLancer. She found that in some of her experiences, people weren’t quite what she had expected, with regard to helping out in their skill set. She wanted to create a community where the profiles were detailed and transparent, and there was a clear focus on the StayLancer’s skills and talents, so that the HostLancer knew exactly what to expect and better matches could be made. Next, Simone also found that most platforms do not provide an equal service to both StayLancers and HostLancers. Usually, they focus on mainly on the person travelling and allow them to search through different hosts. However, here at StayLance, we want to create a community where HostLancers can also search for StayLancers and in this way, we believe we are more likely to create harmonious StayDeals.

Another very important point that Simone made clear from the beginning with StayLance was making communication between the StayLancer and HostLancer as easy as possible. Living in a lovely area in the south of Spain, Simone was a very popular host. Hence, she was receiving countless emails daily from travellers looking to stay with her. We have devised our ‘connect’ function so that rather than writing and receiving endless lengthy emails, you can simply request to connect with someone, and they can check out your profile and decide to connect back. Only once the connect request has been accepted, can you begin to chat.

Brendan, Irish

As a businessman, Brendan is always open to new ideas. When Simone proposed the concept of Staylance, speaking from her own personal experiences and success stories, he was immediately sold. From a StayLancer perspective, Brendan has done extensive travelling and knows the wonderful experiences it can bring and on the other side, from a HostLancer perspective, having started his own business and raised a family, he knows how beneficial it can be to have an extra helping hand or skilled professional around. Immediately seeing the beauty and potential of such a work-exchange platform, Brendan brings his professional expertise as well as great enthusiasm to develop StayLance as a secure, modern platform for people from all over the world to enjoy.