I would say that that is because a majority of people want to go TO Europe and are vacationing FROM the UK. I mean Europe is a huge destination for the entire world so it makes sense. A lot of the homes are rented out in Europe and folks take their pets with them in Europe. I’m just glad there are any homes in Europe to pet sit for! Also the European sits go super fast! So maybe you’re not seeing them…?
This is a pretty old thread, but briefly reviving it. As long as I’ve known THS, there’s been a major imbalance between UK and rest-of-Europe sits. Usually along the lines of 3-5 sits in Europe-not-UK for every 100 UK sits.
Now I was wondering whether the rapid growth of THS in recent times has by chance created a greater influx of non-UK sits, but the numbers clearly don’t support that…
E.g. I was just looking at sits this spring across a 2 month period. Any pets, only criteria for the sit to be at least 3 days long. The problem is: I could hardly find any that were not in the UK.
So I looked at the numbers (map search) and noticed there’s currently 800 (!) sits open in the UK in that period vs only 32 sits total in continental Europe. Wow, what an imbalance… no wonder I have difficulty spotting the non-UK sits… (and for those doing the maths: it means the percentage basically hasn’t changed)
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Part of this difference is caused by the difference in the time that a THS listing is active. In the UK that is much longer than in France.
Yes, that difference is also caused by the difference in where members are. More Brits that apply for sits in France than the other way around.
Fast solution: Mayfair Equities should try to buy Nomador too 
A better way to see what the imbalance is:
- There are “10000” house and pet sitters from England, United Kingdom
- There are 9962 house and pet sitters from England, United Kingdom with at least one review
- There are 3828 house and pet sitters from Germany
- There are 1983 house and pet sitters from Germany with reviews
- There are 2377 house and pet sitters from Spain
- There are 1851 house and pet sitters from France
- There are 1609 house and pet sitters from the Netherlands
- There are 1222 house and pet sitters from Scotland, United Kingdom
- There are 1100 house and pet sitters from Ireland
- There are 884 house and pet sitters from Italy
- There are 746 house and pet sitters from Switzerland
- There are 477 house and pet sitters from Belgium
- There are 473 house and pet sitters from Wales, United Kingdom
- There are 364 house and pet sitters from Austria
- There are 266 house and pet sitters from Denmark
- There are 259 house and pet sitters from Sweden
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Does anyone on the forum know if THS advertises in any other languages ( aside from English )?
This could be very relevant to who it attracts as members .
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Basically the more East you go in Europe, the less popular exchange programs like house-sitting, workaway & au pairing becomes. It’s definitely an economic, cultural & societal thing, as mentioned a few times already in this thread. I don’t think that is likely to change unless an entire culture & society shifts.
My finance is Romanian, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a sit listed here in Romania, or any of its neighbouring countries on any pet sitting site. It’s just not a thing… It took my fiancé’s family a while to understand that we actually stay in somebody’s home to feed & look after pets. They’d never heard of this - not as many people here have pets, and many of the ‘pets’ are street cats & dogs that are fed by the community. Also it’s very common for people here to live with or very close to their parents, grandparents & relatives - family & community is a huge part of their culture, and there’s always a relative or neighbour around if somebody needs a favour or anything. My fiancé’s grandpa walks around the town like he’s the mayer - he knows literally everyone and greets every single person on the street 
In Europe, house sitting is definitely the most popular in the UK & west Europe. Going east across Europe, the zone of available pet sits usually ends from Switzerland & Germany onwards.
Nice numbers!
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Similarly, it would be considered odd in many Asian homes to invite a stranger to sit.
To me, it wouldn’t make business sense for THS to bother advertising in countries / languages where sitting is unknown or odd. As a business, it makes more sense to advertise where they have lower hanging fruit and can grow more quickly, even if that doesn’t satisfy members’ preferences for more countries.
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Members want to travel. So THS would be more attractive with more homes in destinations outside the anglophone world.
But before advertising in other languages, they would need to make the site multilingual and include translation buttons for listings, etc etc, a lot of work. Like Nomador did.
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Sure, members like to travel. But businesses have limited resources to spend and it would be illogical to spend them in low-return ways. Like if you have $100k for advertising and you could get significantly better returns in one country vs. another, you’d be better off picking the former till you’ve tapped out that market in many circumstances. Later, you could expand, but it wouldn’t make business sense to dump money in low-return places, because you’d quickly run out of money and couldn’t expand anywhere easily.
And BTW, if you expand into other countries/languages, you also have to expect more costs in customer service, IT, etc.
Businesses often run into problems when they try to expand too quickly and in thoughtless ways. Customers might not get it, but businesses need to think carefully about what they can sustain.
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@Nagy26 I’m in the States and when my friend joined about 10 years ago, I was like…“Your doing what? Strangers? Giving the keys? Your dogs with who?” OMG.
We joined in 2023 because as much as I was like WTheck is this THS… the concept fits in with my “village” approach to life…it was just a bit of a streeeeeetch at first…but took that leap called faith…
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Totally get it … also here, my fiancé’s family, bless them, don’t ever really understand why we do what we do any why we would ever want to leave home and travel… going to the airport every time, grandpa’s like “why you want to leave me???” like Gus from my big fat greek wedding 
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My husband’s Turkish 
family sound much like your Romanian one @Nagy26 Look after people’s animals? For free? Sleep in someone else’s bed? Eeekkkk. Why?? Makes zero sense to them. BTW I know only a tiny portion of Istanbul is technically in Europe, but Turkey has a decent amount of sits pretty consistently year round #lovethislife
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Hehe Oh wow, that’s great! Never been to Turkey but would love to some day, great to know there’s some house sit options there! 
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It’s true that in Eastern Europe, this doesn’t seem a very popular concept, although petsitting is very common in Western/Northern Europe.
I so often hear from people in my own country that they ask neighbours, friends, family to look after their dog/cat when away; and when that doesn’t work out (and it certainly isn’t a given that it will; in fact it’s becoming more and more difficult as we live more individual lives), they have to figure out ‘now what?’. Usually they’ve never heard of THS yet when I tell them, although LOVE the idea. It’s just that they don’t know the website exists.
So in W/N Europe, it’s not so much a matter of the concept being unknown… I was asked multiple times by acquaintances before I’d ever heard of THS ( < 2015) if I wanted to stay in their house and look after their cat, plants. And still, sometimes when people find out I do petsitting, they’re like ‘oh, …can you come and look after my pet this summer?’
It’s more that THS is often just utterly unknown in these countries (based on what I’ve heard around me), and thus people don’t sign up as an HO either.
By the way, Romania: yes, there are HO in Romania on this website! I’ve seen at least 3 different ones advertising regularly in the past couple of years (2x Bucharest, 1 outside)
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…at the same time, THS has been a ‘dominant’ player in the UK for at least a decade (e.g. I joined in early 2015 & the imbalance was already there at that time). About time to throw some $$ & effort into expanding the non-UK-but-(W/S/N) Europe reach??
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Market size wise, the U.S. is huge compared with most countries. And THS’s new owners have already said that they want to expand there. That’s often the case, agnostic of THS. Of course, it’s their choice where to expand and when.
Wow that’s great! I just did a search out of curiosity, and see 1 current sit and 12 past sits listed for Romania in THS history, mainly in Bucharest (which makes sense). I wish I could find sits in Italy & Greece, but there’s rarely ever sits there on any site that I can find, unless anyone knows about any Italian and Greek sitting sites? I’ve come to the conclusion that If I want to see Rome and Athens, I’ll have to book an Airbnb.
Athens sits come up quite regularly but they go quickly too !
There is also a Greek Facebook group that is worth keeping an eye on
Edited link to meet posting guidelines
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Oh thanks very much, that’s very helpful!
Create a Saved search, and you will get notifications.
Those may be gone by the time you see them, but you could favourite the listings that you like and get push notifications for those.
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