A bit more research into Asquith's other business “Holiday Swap Group Limited” to amplify what I said on the Times article BTL.
Compared to its direct competitors it claims to have grown much faster without leaving any visible traces in consumer records. E.g. the claim on his website is that since starting in 2017 it has 250k "active users" at the beginning of 2020, 500k 2021, 1m+ 2022 and 10m+ projected Q4 2023. This is astonishingly faster than direct competitors like Homeexchange, started 1992 now claims 100k users . HHS claims 10 tiomes as many after only 5 years. Lovehomeswap (LHS), started in 2009, claims only 10k users. HHS doesn't have any "real world" contact information on its website but is registered as a UK company. "Customer reviews" give some clues as to what is is happening - Homeexchange (claimed 100k users) has about 5100 reviews on Trustpilot, of which 88% are 4 or 5 star. The smaller LHS has 1800 of which 83% are 4 or 5 star. With its "I million plus" in 2022. HHS itself has a grand total of 57 (fifty seven) from its million plus users, of which 54 are 5 star, the other three are 1 or 2 - no 3 or 4 - and NONE earlier than 14 September 2022, when there's a pattern of several of the same generic "praise" on the same day, all from Turkish name users and looking like bot-generated text.
The holidayhomeswap Android app shows "500k+ downloads" which is probably where the only justification for the claimed active users numbers) and has the same pattern. Few prior to autumn 2022 - mostly a mix of fake-looking 5 and genuine 1 stars. Then from September 2022 a flurry of 5 stars, for example 38 5 stars from Turkish names on a single day!
There's then very little recent comment: last 6 months it was mostly 1 star, one in August had the comment "
A clunky Airbnb type app for renting, not house swapping. Appears to be nearly abandoned as well. App was last updated almost 1 yr ago."
The Apple app reviews is similar, again not updated for a year.
On the website I didn't find one property that did not show 100% availability in the future. Descriptions are generic and certainly don't look as if they'd been posted by genuine owners. Strangely, a huge number seem to have been put up by "Kevin", who joined in February 2023! For example, London flats with an address of "Romford, Birlesik Krallik" - which is Turkish for United Kingdom! So it looks to me like HHS was a very unsuccessful startup by Asquith in Turkey in 2017, which was been revived with a load of fake data scraped from other websites last winter, to provide cover as the Global Airlines backer.
The board of HHS was changed a few months ago and now consists of Asquith, Tom Stokely -see
Essex family behind OnlyFans profit from pornography boom | Pornography | The Guardian and Matt Davey - see
Runaway CEO behind failed ticketing company who owes $3.8m loses appeal | Stuff.co.nz
Sirens, red lights......