Couch Surfing
Host-a-backpacker website creates global network of young adventurers
Laura Smith
Thursday February 10, 2005
The Guardian
It is the cash-strapped student's eternal dilemma. The holidays are approaching and you would like to finally make that trip to Rio you have always dreamed of. You have found a cheap flight but funds won't stretch to accommodation. Should you abandon your dreams or stick the hotel bill on a credit card ... again?
The answer lies in a new website that has captured the imagination of people around the world. Called the Couch Surfing Project, its premise is simple: if you need a place to stay, it will match you with someone happy to lend their couch for free.
Casey Fenton, a web consultant based in Alaska, hit upon the idea after successfully using the internet to find a local person to stay with when he found a cheap flight to Iceland. Dreading another night in a faceless hotel room, the 26-year-old emailed more than 1,000 people from the University of Iceland's student directory and ended up staying with a student and her friends. "They showed me their Iceland. I had a ball. When I was on the plane back, I thought to myself: 'That's how I want to travel every time.'"
The following few years, working first on an internet start-up and then on political campaigns, crystallised the idea. "I'd often find myself a stranger in some strange city, longing for cool people to hang out with. I'd wish that there was a better way of making contact with these folks."
Since its launch in January last year, www.couchsurfing.com has seen steady growth in membership. A total of 7,427 people have registered from 125 countries including the UK, Canada, the US, Kenya, Brazil, Malaysia, Costa Rica, Syria, Pakistan and across mainland Europe.
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Mr Fenton says the site has so far made more than 1,000 matches. Couch surfers are predominantly young, average age 29, though the site is open to anyone over 18.
Those who want to offer or find a place to stay have first to register with the site, which involves providing basic information including name and contact details. The most successful couch surfers are those who include their likes and dislikes, life dreams and, of course, a picture.
Mr Fenton's aim in setting up the non-profit site was to encourage "cultural interaction". He added: "I want to create a network of people curious about the world around them, to help those people explore, maybe become a broker of adventure."
Hosts do not have to offer a couch. "It could be a backyard to pitch your tent in, a room to yourself, a carriage house. Sometimes people say, you can sleep on the floor of my dorm room."
He has heard of only one bad experience: a couch surfer who ran up huge bills by spending hours on his host's internet connection and mobile phone.
For Janet Blake, 47, from Queensland, Australia, who joined the site after hearing about it through peace work and organic farming websites, the experience has proved a life-changing one.
"A guy called Austin from California has been staying at our place overlooking the rainforest for a week," she said. "He just said hi and moved in, and it's been a real adventure. We are now planning to couch surf 2,000 miles to Melbourne, on rollerblades."
Playing it safe
The couchsurfing.com site has various levels of security to discourage mischief making. Each member's "profile" includes space for vouching for good character. Those who vouch must already be vouched for themselves.
There is also the offer of verification. Staff, charging a small amount on a member's credit cards, send a letter to the address verifying details. According to the website, these features help others determine whether a person can be trusted.
Many choose only to be contacted by those who have been both vouched for and verified. And, of course, members can refuse to offer a bed to anyone with whom they are not entirely happy.
Despite these features, Alison Withers, consultant editor of the Gap-Year Guidebook, says such sites should be used with extreme caution. She advises users to arrange meetings in a public place, tell a friend about the arrangement, and carry a mobile phone. Any doubts? "Don't go through with it."
