How It Works

Bolya is a home swap and stay platform for the Irish community, to help them travel more for less and stay connected with their people around the world.

Three ways to use Bolya as a member, pick whichever suits your trip. Swap: trade homes with another member, free, could be at the exact same time, or different times, depending on the situation and preference. Stay: pay the host directly, at roughly half the going rate, designed to cover their costs, not generate profit, to stay in their home. Host: list your home for members to stay in while it's empty or while you're away, at that same community rate. No need to stick to just one, mix and match as it suits you. Swapping is live now and you can add your home today. Paid stays aren't open yet, we're making sure payments and protections are properly set up first.

Bolya was built specifically for the Irish community to help make travel cheaper and more accessible. But it's not exclusively for the Irish community, anyone connected to Ireland, wherever that connection comes from, is welcome. Born there, married in, moved there for work, raised by Irish parents, or just love everything about it, you're in.

Right now, the corridor is Ireland and Australia, that's where we're focused on building real supply first. It's not only for crossing hemispheres either, it works much closer to home too, Dublin to Galway, Sydney to Byron, wherever suits.

Membership itself is free right now, while we build up enough homes to make this a genuinely good experience. The first 100 members in your country lock in the Founding Member badge for good, plus priority access as things grow. Swapping is open now and always stays free between members. Paid stays aren't open yet, and when they are, the rate will be set by the host at roughly half the going rate, not by us.

No. Even on a swap it's up to you and the other member, and plenty of swaps happen at different times of the year rather than the same fortnight. When paid stays open, dates stop mattering altogether, since nobody needs to want your home on your exact dates.

Right now, while we're building this, everything runs on trust, real conversations between two households, and someone on our team who personally looks at every match before it happens. We ask every member to have their own home and contents insurance in place, the same as you'd want for anyone staying in or looking after your home, worth a quick check with your provider that you're covered for both damage and if someone's hurt while they're there. As Bolya grows, we're working towards adding an extra layer of cover on top of that.

Since everything's matched personally rather than run through an automated system, cancelling is genuinely just a conversation, with the other member, and with us if you need a hand. No fine print, no cancellation fee buried in a policy nobody reads.

Every match gets a personal look from someone on our team before you're ever put in touch, and before we introduce you, we ask each household to show photo ID on a short video call. We don't ask for a copy and we don't keep one. It's a fraud prevention step rather than a background check, and it means a real person is genuinely checking, every time. Automated identity verification comes as the community grows.

For a swap, no. Nobody pays anybody for accommodation on a swap, and short-stay rules are triggered by a commercial arrangement, so a straight swap sits outside all of it. For paid stays it depends where your home is: some places ask you to register before advertising, some charge a levy, and plenty have nothing at all. We've written it up plainly, by country and by state, on our local rules page, including the one that catches Irish hosts out most often. Worth a read before you ever let your home for a fee.

Yes. Owning your home isn't a requirement, renting is completely fine. Worth a quick check with your landlord first though, some leases have views on subletting or guests staying for extended periods, better to ask upfront than explain it after the fact.