Almost a year since it joined forces with the Australian Homestay Network (AHN-AUS), the American Homestay Network is growing rapidly across the United States. Its President, Glenda Sinclair, spoke to The PIE News about why the network stands out among its competitors.
The PIE: Why is homestay positive for students?
GS: It’s a proven fact that a quality homestay will improve overall outcomes for international students. When the student can interact at all levels with the homestay host, whether that’s a single person, a couple, or a family, there is greater opportunity to practise English and absorb the culture.
The PIE: So how do you help to facilitate that?
GS: Our host training is world class, and we’re going to continue to improve on that.
We’re working on training for our hosts that will allow them to be better prepared to bridge any cultural gaps. We’re working on a programme to assist hosts in hosting Middle Eastern students, for example. We educate them on how the student views the world; we don’t assume that a host should just know these things. Both the host and the student come at it with some preconceived ideas, mostly generated by our media. We’re investing in and focusing on educating both through a variety of partnerships.
The PIE: Is that what makes AHN-USA different from other homestay providers?
GS: I think there are a lot of things that differentiate us. For example, the way we’re organised: we’ve removed much of the administration from the regional offices so they can focus on host recruitment, certification, and support – the people part of the business.
I think it’s also our focus on homestay management: we don’t just focus on the placement phase. We’re constantly in touch with our guests to make sure their experience is a good one.
“We know that a lot of providers don’t even do background checks, and we think it’s absolutely essential”
We’ve also taken a number of lessons from AHN-AUS on industry standards that ensure the safety and quality of the host. We have an absolute, non-negotiable student safety focus. Every host is trained, tested, interviewed in person, and we do a national, criminal and federal check, a sex predator check, as well as going into county courthouses. We know that a lot of providers don’t even do background checks, and we think it’s absolutely essential.
The PIE: Tell me about your growth targets.
GS: In our first year we placed over 300 students. In 2014, we aim to place 2,000 students in the United States and we’re well on our way to meet that goal. We’ll do that through our regional expansion plans, to bring up at least 20 new offices in the United States this year.
The PIE: Where are you looking to expand?
GS: We have a focus on some of the primary cities: New York, Boston, Chicago, LA, and then we’ve got some additional offices in Florida, California, Texas, etc. Any major city is going to be our target, as long as they have a growing population of international students and a good base of ESL programmes.
The PIE: Are there any areas where there’s been less of a take up?
GS: In this rapid expansion, we’re going into some areas where homestay is not yet part of the accommodation culture. I don’t think I’ve found an institution that disagrees that homestay is a wonderful accommodation choice for international students, but they’ve had either bad or no experience with homestay, so we have to educate them in terms of what our services look like.
And then we have to educate the communities. Many families in the United States are used to our high school exchange programme services, but aren’t aware of compensated international student homestay. We’ve done a lot of work with video and websites. We’ve packaged community presentations so you can go into a rotary club or any other community group and talk about the benefits of hosting international students.
The PIE: So it’s a cultural shift.
“It takes time, but it’s amazing how quickly a community can come up to speed”
GS: Absolutely. It takes time, but it’s amazing how quickly a community can come up to speed. When they start talking to other hosts, communities see it as a good thing.
The PIE: Are there particular areas where you’ve seen significant growth?
GS: Certainly it’s growing nationally; we know that there are some popular destinations – New York, Southern California, Chicago, Florida – but a number of other educational institutions are interested in increasing their recruitment efforts. We can actually help with that because of our education agent network. We’re being seen as demand aggregators – when we place a student in Seattle, that agent is asking us where else we’re located. Ultimately that will help our educational institutions recruit students to their destination.
We’re being seen as demand aggregators – when we place a student in Seattle, that agent is asking us where else we’re located
We’ve also been approached by a number of institutions to basically highlight their programmes and services to our existing network. We think that’s pretty exciting.
The PIE: How is the partnership with AHN-AUS coming along?
GS: We work with them every day. Obviously we’ve benefited greatly from the decades of experience they have. We were able to adopt their systems, their policies and procedures. We had to adapt them to the United States, but it’s been the reason why we could come up to speed so quickly.
On an executive level, we meet twice a year, and we work on developing and improving our business processes together.
It’s a great, close partnership.
The PIE: Are the majority of your guests ESL students?
Our footprint and reach allows the agents a one-stop shop
GS: Yes. Most of our guests are learning English and they’re looking for that homestay environment to support them both in their English skills and their adoption of the American culture. So we will offer homestay to those that have better English skills, but we’re primarily focussing on ESL programmes.
The PIE: Do you take a fee from students?
GS: We take a placement fee that allows us to process this application, which is pretty standard. Of the homestay fees, which are based on regional competition and housing costs, we pay out 85% to the hosts, and then retain 15%. Some of that goes to the regional agent, and then the rest we keep.
The PIE: Do your agents work on a commission basis?
GS: We pay our educational agents 10% of the placement fee.
The larger agents are placing students in multiple areas around the United States. Our footprint and reach allows the agents a one-stop shop. We also get requests for study tours, and are happy to provide them with that service as well.
