Couchsurfing

My travel tip would be to consider using Couchsurfing on your next trip. What is Couchsurfing? Couchsurfing is a free website (www.couchsurfing.org) which was created by travellers, for travellers. The theory behind it is that when people travel abroad, they generally only stay within the touristy areas, and as such never really experience the local culture and customs of the place they are visiting. Couchsurfing seeks to break down these barriers by offering travellers accommodation – on local’s couches (or spare rooms). These locals have generally done quite a bit of travelling themselves and are open to meeting new people, and sharing some of their customs & traditions with their guests, as well as sometimes being a bit of a tour guide.


So how does it work? Couchsurfing is a social networking website, and like similar social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, people join up, write some information about themselves and away they go. There are two types of people in the Couchsurfing community – hosts (people who provide accommodation) and surfers (people looking for accommodation). When joining people list their your current location, and whether they have room for someone to stay at their place, or if they are free to meet up for coffee or to show someone around. When you are travelling all you need to do is look up a location of where you wish to travel, and a list of the hosts in that area is shown. From there you can scroll through all the options, and email people to see if they are free to host you. Hosts will respond back to let you know if they are available, and if yes they will organise with you where to meet, their address etc. Generally hosts work full-time, so be mindful that you may need to wait before they finish work for the day, and that you may need to leave their place early in the morning when they leave for work (while they are very generous about letting strangers stay at their place, it is a bit much to ask of them to let you stay at their place when they are not around). Depending on the host, surfers can usually stay for 2- 3 days.

Couchsurfing is a great way to meet new people, and to experience how people live in their city. However like any social networking site, there are people on the site whose intentions are not as wholesome as the majority so be careful. Surfers can recommend hosts after they have stayed, so make sure you read through all the hosts profile, and try to find people who have a good track record of hosting (this is especially important for female travellers).

Overall Couchsurfing it is a very rewarding experience – I have surfed people’s couch’s twice, and have made good friends from the experience.

Posted on Behalf of Elliott