Think back to the trips you actually remember. It's not the room really. It's the person who taught you how to make the dish their grandmother made, the morning you went out with someone who'd done it their whole life, the afternoon you just spent learning a skill you'd never heard of.
Those moments are extremely hard to come by on a standard booking site as a standard booking site sells beds. Folkaway is built to sell the moment.
On Folkaway every stay includes an activity run by the local person who is hosting you. Some are cooking holidays in a family kitchen, some are horse riding holidays, some are hands on crafts and some are yoga retreats. You book the stay and the experience together with one host in one place.
It's like a homestay with an agenda really. You don't just sleep there, you learn from the person who's actually running the home.
Experiential travel has become a bit of a buzzword that gets slapped onto anything that has a guide. On Folkaway it means something very specific indeed: you learn by doing, right next to someone who lives there. That's what makes it cultural immersion travel. You're not just watching the local life from the outside, you're actually part of it for a few days.
That's also why they're proper learning vacations. You come away with a skill you can use at home, not just with photos.
Solo travel is where this is most important. The real difficulty with solo travel isn't the flight or the map. It's the evenings and meals for one. When your host is also your teacher then those gaps are filled automatically. You cook together, you eat together, you ride together.
You travel solo without spending the trip by yourself.
Folkaway are about to open their first stays. If you're after genuinely unique travel experiences that are about far more than where you sleep, keep an eye on Folkaway.
Home is people.