Why More Travelers Are Skipping the Hotel and House-Sitting Instead
A growing number of travelers aren’t looking for a getaway; they’re looking for a real life to try on for a while.
A new report from TrustedHousesitters found that 84% of Gen Z travelers would try house-sitting just to see what it’s like living in a new city before making it official. The same report found Gen Z is twice as likely as older millennials to swap a big international trip for something closer to home, and the people behind the study made a point of saying that’s not a downgrade, but an intentional choice.
People are still traveling; they’re just doing it in a slower, more useful way than chasing something for the highlight reel.
Photo credit: Vlada Karpovich
A Local Experience No Hotel Can Fake
A hotel, even a really good one, is still designed for someone passing through. There’s a front desk between you and the neighborhood and a concierge handing you a brochure of things everyone else is doing too. House-sitting skips all of that. You get someone’s keys, their coffee maker, and insight into the local gems they frequent. You get to water the plants, learn which floorboard creaks, and figure out the fastest way to the good coffee shop because you walk past it every morning, not because it was starred on a tourist app.
That’s the part a hotel can’t replicate, no matter how many “local experience” packages get added to the amenities list. A neighborhood doesn’t open up to you because you’re staying somewhere nice. You have to live in it, even if only for two weeks.
And It Costs Nothing to Stay
Not only is house-sitting a great way to experience a new city or neighborhood, but it’s also often completely free. There’s no nightly rate, no resort fee, and no mini-bar bill. The money that would have gone to a hotel goes toward experiencing that destination instead, so you can spend it on better meals, the museum you almost skipped and one more weekend somewhere else entirely. For a generation watching the cost of living skyrocket, that trade-off is doing a lot of the convincing on its own.
Photo credit: Uriel Mont
Defining What Makes a Good Trip
None of this is really about saving money, even though the money aspect is real. Travelers are defining what a good trip even is. Fewer people want a week of being catered to in a room that looks like every other room in the building. More people want to know what it’s like to live in a specific destination—the good coffee, the walk to the corner store, the cultural energy of a city, without the hotel bill attached to it.
