AirhostSwap is a South African platform tackling one of the biggest problems in the short-term rental sector: unbooked nights that drag down annual average occupancy rates, especially during the low season. The platform allows Airbnb property owners to take advantage of unused nights through reciprocal bookings on either a one-to-one or one-to-many basis.
Speaking to TechCentral on Friday, Lamont Hitchings, founder and CEO of AirhostSwap, said Airbnb has an average occupancy rate of 55%, meaning stock goes unused nearly half the time.
“An unbooked night is not like stock that you can put in a storeroom and pull out when you need it – once it is gone, it is gone. Our system gets an Airbnb owner to bank those empty nights by getting points from another owner staying at their property,” said Hitchings.
By using a points-based system, AirhostSwap does not force users to perform a like-for-like swap. This means users with a lower-value property can build up points to earn stays at higher-value properties. Users who want to do a reciprocal swap – a one-to-one transaction where they stay at each other’s properties – can do so without using or earning any points. The guest covers cleaning fees in reciprocal exchanges.
To standardise how points are calculated, they are pegged to the US dollar at a one-to-one ratio, allowing the system to function across currencies without friction. As an example, a host in Cape Town charging R1 650/night effectively lists at 100 host points – the same value as an American host charging US$100, based on an exchange rate of R16.50/$. A luxury villa at $300 a night commands 300 points; a budget studio at $50 costs just 50.
How it works
Membership is restricted to Airbnb hosts with a rating of at least 4.6 out of 5. The restriction is deliberate. Onboarding is handled by importing listing data directly from a host’s Airbnb profile, after which AirhostSwap manually reviews and approves the listing before it goes live.
“To onboard clients quickly and easily, they just click a button on Airbnb, which then converts that into a listing on our platform,” said Hitchings.
Read: Vula Medical named as South Africa’s 2025 app of the year
One of the more technically considered aspects of the platform is its calendar synchronisation with Airbnb. When a swap is confirmed on AirhostSwap, the relevant dates are automatically blocked on the host’s Airbnb calendar, eliminating double-booking risk. A reverse search feature lets hosts in, say, Cape Town see which hosts in another city – London, for instance – have expressed interest in visiting the Mother City. A favourites system notifies hosts when their property has been saved by someone else.
Hitchings said the platform relaunched in its current form in mid-February and already has about 2 500 members and roughly 2 700 properties listed, with daily sign-ups since the relaunch. There are also 16 500 members across two Facebook groups who have yet to be formally notified that the revamped platform is live.
The business model is an annual subscription of $149 (about R2 400), which covers unlimited exchanges for as long as the host has sufficient points. If a host falls short of the points required to complete a booking, they can top up at checkout – but only at that point, not speculatively in advance. The platform is web-based, with mobile apps for iOS and Android in the works.
Hitchings said the platform is also becoming a community for hosts to share ideas. Hosts are not competitors in any meaningful sense – a host in Pretoria and one in Sydney are never fishing in the same pool – but they share a craft.
Read: This SA start-up wants to stop foot-and-mouth with IoT collars
“Meetups and so forth are coming so owners can swap ideas. Owners also get ideas from staying at each other’s places. They are not competitors in any swap since they usually operate in different countries or different provinces, so it’s a great way to get ideas,” said Hitchings. – © 2026 NewsCentral Media
Get breaking news from TechCentral on WhatsApp. Sign up here.
