I am based in continental Europe ( = not UK, which has a flood of sits). And I mostly petsit in continental Europe; places where you can get around on public transport. Primarily cats; seldom dogs. Occasionally UK, but it really depends on the location since I don’t have a car.
The number of times I actually pet/catsit has gone down in recent years. To the point where I now seem to be stuck at 2 sits a year. My last sit for example was in April (in the UK).
It doesn’t mean I don’t want to do more sits. It’s just that there’s SO FEW available in continental Europe! (with the exception of the main holiday periods)
I had hoped to find a sit in first half of June or July; didn’t happen.
Had hoped to find a sit in August; didn’t happen.
Hoping to do a sit between late October and mid November; at this point seems unlikely to happen. The list of available sits is incredibly short.
Now for every 100 UK sits, there’s always been only 3-4 ‘rest of Europe’ sits.
Nonetheless, anyone else having the impression that the number of sits in continental Europe has actually gone down even further?
I guess it depends on what it was like for you before. I get at least 20 notifications (usually 30+) a day for European sits with only cats, and thats just my favorites which Ive already screened for suitability. For example, yesterday I had 18 notifications in less than 8 hours (10am in Germany until 17:45). 13 of those for continental Europe. I know that’s accurate because I videod them stacked up on my phone as I swiped them away. There were others before and after that timeframe. Dates ranged from about 10 days away to Feb next year.
Suspect that what you observe is supply vs demand.
Supply - From other Forum posts, we understand that THS may have focussed its marketing efforts over recent years in attracting new pet parents in the US and perhaps UK. 18 months ago, we tried to encourage THS to increase marketing on Schengen area. We - like you it seems - would wholeheartedly applaud if there were a larger number of Pet Parents in Schengen area.
Demand - Given US situation, many international and some portion of US housesitters appear to be prioritizing non-US listings. THS does not publish data but we certainly observe that listings in the Schengen area reach five applicants very quickly.
Over the last few years, we’ve completed quite a few housesits in the Schengen area. We use different tactics for Schengen listings than for listings in Canada or UK. As THS refuses to create ‘Schengen area’ geographic search area then we create multiple equivalent Saved Searches and respond speedily to opportunities that we deem attractive.
Weblink below does contain data - but it’s stale and only shows active listings that have not been confirmed. Given speed of confirmation of Schengen sits then data is, at best, illustrative. THS does not publish relevant data.
Maybe look at the Channel Islands, as a handful of sits pop up on a regular basis. Some are much nicer than others. You can get to Jersey by Ferry from France, and the islands have great bus routes with a useful App (Liberty Buses).
@Bluehorse, in case helpful - a few years ago we joined nomador for one year. Was an attempt to see more Schengen area listings that, even at that time, seemed limited on THS. We did see a few interesting listings. Even applied for one or two. But typical listings seemed very brief on information, and unlimited applications permitted … seeing a listing that has already had 50 applicants seemed a complete waste of time. We did not renew.
If you find a creative way to find more Schengen area housesits then please do share . We’ll hopefully soon be residents there and would love to further explore on a seasonal or opportunistic basis.
As Brightlight mentioned, it depends on the search criteria.
Beside really targeted searches, I have a couple of general searches set up for the region all year long - tryng to catch new hosts to favorite. The searches that get the least notifications is anything longer, especially longer than a month.
I am not considering any sits under a week.
What I feel is that usually before the christmas sits numbers seem to get even lower than the usual. At least that was my impression for my searches over the past couple of years.
And then the sits are so few, a lot of them get covered by people who favorited the profiles, even before you can see the listing. Especially for any searches with cat filter.
Yes, the 5 application rule introduced a few years ago certainly doesn’t help. I can usually only access THS in the evening, which was no issue in the early days of THS. But now that makes me ‘hopelessly too late’ for many continental Europe sits, since there’s so few that they hit 5 pretty quickly.
We are more flexible with our criteria and also have a car so we don’t have an issue finding sits in Europe but I’m guessing the more filtering you do the less ideal sits will present themselves. Sadly THS don’t publish much in the way of data metrics so we will never really know.
Yeah, that doesn’t help.
I usually have notifications set up on mobile and then I just rush to the laptop to send in a propper application. I am luckily flexible enough with life and work.
Even just clicking through straight after the notification gets in I sometimes barely get to opening the application window.
Well, there are some regions where it’s obvious that there is not much growth happening.
I am closely following new listings anywhere East and South of Austria for years now and new hosts are very rare.
Just as an example, I remember that before signing up I was checking listing in Budapest and THS showed me a nicely populated map of hosts giving the impression of plenty of offer, only for it to be 0 active listings, once I have signed up…
A city with 2 million people, tons of tourists and I think there is still only around 30 “active” hosts only, and some rarely post.
We joined Nomador as well several years ago as we spend a lot of time in France (based in the US) and found their platform incredibly lacking in photos, information, and attractiveness. Also I had been told that pet/home owners could remove poor reviews. Whether true or not I never verified but we were not impressed with the platform. Maybe. It is better now but it is frustrating that there are not more Schengen sit offerings on THS. I think Global Pet Sitters is trying to do this but they are still quite small.
Do you have a source for that? My understanding is that reviews are part of Nomador’s trust system and aren’t simply removable at the pet owner’s discretion.
I don’t have a source. A couple of years after we let our membership ant Nomador expire I had read one person complaining on a house sitting forum saying it was possible for HO’s to remove reviews but I have no proof. Just hearsay. We didn’t stick around long enough to get to know the platform. It was not well developed back then (2020).
. We’ll hopefully soon be residents there and would love to further explore on a seasonal or opportunistic basis.