Why Trade to Travel?


The story of Trade to Travel, as told by Daniel Solon of Luxury Lifestyles Magazine


It was a rainy day in paradise. Vaniene Hardy and her daughter, Leah Powell, along with their long-time friend, Betty Magee, were spending an idyllic holiday in a fabulous beach house on the shores of the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Lounging happily, mimosas in hand, the three women drifted into a conversation regarding the possibility of Vaniene buying a vacation home in the area.


Vaniene & Betty
Already a partner in a beach property there, Vaniene was considering purchasing another beach house. Leah, on the other hand, thought her Mom already had a large enough investment in that particular location. "If you buy another beach house," she said, "You'll always feel like you should go there whenever you have vacation time. It'll limit the number of trips you'll take elsewhere."

It was at that point that Betty said something which was to change the lives of all three women.

"Wouldn't it be great," she said, "if there was a company that allowed owners of vacation properties to use one anothers' homes the way that timeshare organizations allow their owners to visit other properties"?

"It would, indeed, be great," they thought. They looked into it (and this was before the advent of the internet, one couldn’t simply “google” it). No such animal existed.

Still, Vaniene and Leah both considered the whole conversation to be nothing more than a fun way to pass an afternoon indoors. That is, until Wednesday morning when Vaniene called Betty and Betty answered her phone, "Good morning. Trade to Travel, how may I help you"?

With that, Trade to Travel (TTT) was born. Since both Vaniene and Betty were (and still are) exceedingly busy women, the two agreed to get together once each week and do "ONE THING" to forward the creation of their dream company. Before long, "one thing" at a time, the basics had been figured out and put in place. Betty became TTT's first President and Leah managed its first offices.


Leah & son Chris, 1992
Looking back on those early days (the Richmond, VA, company was incorporated in 1991), Leah Powell, now the effervescent President, CEO, and majority stockholder of the concern, laughingly describes the initial operation as, "not a Mom and Pop business, but a Mom and Mom and Mom enterprise." Leah's mother, Vaniene Hardy, is a serial entrepreneur with 22 company startups to her credit. She has launched a computer software business, a fitness center, a restaurant, and several medical companies among other ventures. At the time of TTT's inception, Betty and her husband, Dallas, owned and operated a massive 5,000 acre vegetable farm as well as "Magee Lube" (an automobile Tune-n-Lube operation). Today, Vaniene is a partner in Trade to Travel and Betty has gone off on other adventures.

When founding Trade to Travel, what these enterprising women wanted to offer was global flexibility. The idea was, and still is, that members of Trade to Travel are able to enjoy one another's properties worldwide without the constraints involved in direct home exchange (in which parties must coordinate travel plans with their exchange partners). "We're the vacation property exchange...in which you don't exchange," quips TTT.

What sorts of properties are on Trade to Travel's books? Frequently, they are holiday homes, occupied only occasionally by the owners, and hence available over large periods of the year. One estate in Bermuda is located on its own private island and includes the use of the owner's 50-foot yacht (with Captain). An English gentleman offers his castle and an abbey. A famed villa on Barbados offers a staff of up to 14, 8 luxury bedrooms boasting only the finest linens, an indoor air-conditioned racquetball court, a lit tennis court (complete with elevated referee chair), a basketball court, billiards table, shuffleboard, children's playground, volleyball and badminton courts, a 50' sparkling pool, and use of the owner's facilities on Barbados' lovliest beach. Other homes are pieds a terre in the centers of the world’s greatest cities, which afford members the pleasures of the run of impressive personal homes.

As an added attraction, The Stein Group of elite European hotels has a cooperative arrangement with Trade to Travel. This relationship offers members of TTT a 50% discount on the rack rates of their ultra-luxurious suites in Monaco, Barcelona, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Dublin, on the Russian Riviera, the Amalfi Coast, and Mallorca, in Tuscany and Provence, and waterside on the French Riviera.

Looking back at Trade to Travel's growth over the past 15 years, Leah says, "We could hardly have imagined what we were getting into. The most enjoyable aspect of inventing and growing the company has been the wonderful people we've come to know and consider ‘family’. The benefits of our services are psychological, social, and emotional, as well as financial. Trade to Travel is better than a Country Club - it's a Countries Club!"

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