Debbie: I think one or two subsets of Europe (Continent) are very needed. (1) Europe (EU) Now that ETIAS is likely to be implemented sometime this year, an EU-specific subset makes sense. (2) Europe (Schengen) Especially important since an astonishingly high percentage of non-Europeans don’t really “get” the Schengen Zone rules or know which countries are now included in the rolling 90 of 180 rules.
FYI for those who are not clear on Schengen: here is the Schengen Zone page displaying a map with explanations of how various countries comply with Schengen:
@ASASG Once again, I did not say I was opposed to subsets.
Nor do I have any influence to do anything about them.
And I completely agree that many non-Europeans (and perhaps even some Europeans) don’t understand the Schengen Zone and its implications. That was literally the reason I posted on this thread!
I wonder how other global travel platforms handle this?
Debbie - I didn’t mean to impy nor do I think I said anything that was in disagreement with you? I’m just reiterating what I believe to be logical subgroups.
Answering my own question here! I had a look at AirBnB to see of they have filters / search options for European Union or Schengen.
They don’t have filters for European Union, although you could search for various institutions beginning with those words.
Searching for Schengen brings up the village in Luxembourg where the agreement was signed, and buildings / businesses places shown on their map as “Schengen Visa” in Kosovo and London.
They do allow searches for defined geographic areas including Scandinavia, The Balkans, Iberian Peninsula in Europe, New England in USA, Western Cape in South Africa, Sunshine Coast in Australia.
In principle, Nomador has a similar problem, but then with France. It is even more dominated by sits in one country. (A merger with THS would be nice…)
The issue for me is how lopsided it makes searches.
Including the UK in a search of Europe results in 93% of sits in the UK and 7% in the rest of Europe.
It isn’t working for Home Owners trying to find sitters outside the UK nor for sitters looking for sits outside the UK.
Public transport accessible sits in Europe reach their 5 applications in minutes, I realised this when looking for sits in France last year. It is fairly rare for sits in Europe other than the UK to remain unfilled for very long, as there are probably more sitters looking to sit in Europe outside the UK than available sits. So perhaps the imbalance actually works in these hosts favour.
I would like to see multi-selection of countries to save as a search. Whether I choose three or thirty countries should be up to me. And the country names should be in a static list for selection, not an algorithmic text matching scheme as it is now. I could choose Ireland, Albania, Finland, Thailand, and Madagascar, and save them to one saved search, with start/end dates and other criteria of my choosing. Anyone else want to vote for this?
I’ve raised it a few times with support over the years, to no avail.
For those who are travelling, they have limited time they can spend in the UK, for example, so they look for sits in Europe that will allow them to spend enough time away to them later apply for another visa.
Unfortunately, if you set quote Europe quote as your search filter, you have alerts coming up every 25 seconds, but 98% are for UK.
It’s so impractical. “Mainland Europe” as a search filter would easily resolve this problem.
Albania, Montenegro, Georgia, Turkey… These are all not part of the Schengen zone. (Tbf Turkey also comes up on Asia search). And Croatia will be added by the end of this year, but isn’t now.
These are not in the Schengen zone, but are mainland Europe.
Instead of trying to manage it to changing political regions or visa requirements, simply saying “Mainland Europe” vs “Europe” would suffice, I think.
I think a big difference is that if you’re staying at a hotel or AirBnB, many of the visa rules that apply to sitters to NOT apply to the lodging-only situation. Given that I am NOT legally permitted to sit in the UK, but I am legally permitted to sit in any country in the Schengen agreement, it would save a TON of hassle if I could just search for those sits.
@KittySitter There are visa rules that apply to travellers from many countries outside the Schengen zone that would certainly apply in a lodging only situation. The Schengen visa - much discussed in the this thread - allows citizens of such countries to visit the Schengen zone for 90 days in any 180 day period, and is therefore relevant to lodging only platforms.
Wouldn’t you also want to include non-Schengen EU countries as my understanding is that the right to work is governed by EU, not Schengen free movement?
I thought there was a difference in that if someone does a one week sit in a Schengen zone, they might be breaking the law. But they could stay in a hotel or other lodging as long as that country’s tourist visa might allow (assuming they are eligible for a tourist visa).
Everyone’s situation will be different. But the bottom line is that the UK is neither EU nor Schengen, and it is a pain in the you-know-what to have to filter out all those UK sits from European searches.
And as for the second point about EU vs. Schengen - well I am not an immigration attorney. But your question made me go look up my particular case, and to my surprise I am actually (apparently) allowed to work in - Ireland! Which is not part of Schengen. I had no idea (and had never checked). So thank you @Debbie! I wonder if the Irish kitties meow with adorable accents? (I bet they do) This whole thread kind of shows the complexity of visa rules when it comes to sitting. It would be SO NICE If THS could make searches flexible so the individual user could search for what is relevant to them. Even being able to save a custom search with multiple countries selected (or Europe MINUS England and Scotland) would be a huge time saver.
This whole thread kind of shows the complexity of visa rules when it comes to sitting. It would be SO NICE If THS could make searches flexible so the individual user could search for what is relevant to them. Even being able to save a custom search with multiple countries selected (or Europe MINUS England and Scotland) would be a huge time saver.