An unknown couch can be your friend on cheap trip ( Photo: Christopher King )
One of the most common drawbacks of being a university student is the financial burden. Laden with debt. Bogged down in bills. Moths flying out of empty wallets. The list goes on.
So how can students even think about travelling when flights, gas, food, and everything else is so expensive? The answer – CouchSurfing.com.
CouchSurfing.com is an internet-based hospitality service. Members of CouchSurfing.com offer their couches to host other members, or surfers, who are seeking a place to stay.
So, if a student has a conference in Montreal, is on a road trip to Boston, or wants to see the sights and lights of New York City, all they have to do is find a member who is offering a couch in that specific city, and send them a message to find out details.
To sign up, members must provide some necessary information. This includes a personal photo, current city, what languages you can speak and some details about the couch that you are offering.
From there, members are free to browse other members’ profiles to seek a couch when travelling.
Consider it a kind of Facebook for travel.
Founder Casey Fenton conceived the idea of CouchSurfing in 2000. After finding an inexpensive flight from Boston to Iceland, Fenton wondered if he could avoid staying at a hotel.
“I e-mailed a couple Icelanders who had personal websites, asking if I could crash at their place. No dice,” he writes on the website. “Then, eureka! I stumbled across the University of Iceland’s student directory. After a bit of Sherlocking, I harvested 1,500 names and e-mail addresses from the directory. In 24 hours I had between 50 and 100 people saying, ‘Yeah, come stay with me!’ At that point I had the opposite problem. Who should I stay with?”
After developing his idea for a couple of years, CouchSurfing.com was officially launched in 2004.
“The CouchSurfing Project had been my dream for some time,” writes Fenton.
“I’ve always wanted a way to get right to the heart of our culture, to seek out knowledge and to locate the most interesting people and situations this world has to offer. As a means of doing this, I started this project over four years ago.”
Couch surfing is becoming popular in Ottawa, with new members hosting travellers and seeking couches every day.
“I was searching for a cheap place to stay in Boston, and stumbled upon CouchSurfing,” says Caitlin Williscroft, a student at the University of Ottawa.
But Williscroft says she had a number of concerns to address before deciding to use CouchSurfing as her method of accomodation.
“At first I was skeptical about safety, but it’s evident that the creators of CouchSurfing have thought about this and have created mechanisms to filter couch surfing profiles.”
Williscroft says she felt comfortable knowing that once a member surfs, he or she can leave comments and references for the host members.
She says her couch surfing experience was memorable. Aside from her pullout bed being comfortable, her “hosts showed us a couple next places to eat in the neighborhood,” a personal touch often lost when staying at a hotel or hostel in a big city.
She has since offered her couch to other CouchSurfers.
“I think reciprocity is central to CouchSurfing – give back to CouchSurfing by offering your couch and next time you’re on the road someone will do the same.”
Jen Lazebnik, an experienced CouchSurfer from Ottawa, says she is always eager to share her experiences while surfing.
“I’ve met so many laid back, down to earth, awesome people through surfing, and I definitely recommend it, and love to pass on the word.”
Lazebnik has CouchSurfed through Basel, Switzerland, Valencia, Spain, Toulouse, France, and Vicenza, Italy.
She says she likes the fact that members do not need to offer a couch in order to be a CouchSurfer. Lazebnik doesn’t have a couch to offer right now, but says she plans to offer a couch as soon as she can.
Her only qualm with the website, she says, is the time it takes to find the perfect host.
“It is more work than just booking a hostel.”
However, this is an effort Lazebnik says she is willing to put in.
According to Lazebnik, compared to hostels, CouchSurfing “is definitely more fun.”
Another surfer, Diego Garcia, raves about how CouchSurfing offers “a more local
perspective as opposed to the tourist view.”
“It really helped me out in places which otherwise would have been very hard to meet the locals, such as in Ukraine.”
Garcia, who lives in Antwerp, Belgium, is a frequent host to CouchSurfers around the world. He says he feels strongly that offering a couch is much more than offering a free room.
“I think it is much more about the community. I don’t see CouchSurfing as ‘those in need’. I have no problem in hosting anyone that shares the view that CS is much more than the free couch.”
In its five years of existence, Couchsurfing.com has grown to be the largest hospitality exchange network is the world. There are over 1,000,000 members representing 232 countries. Canada has over 55,000 surfers, of which 2,000 are from Ottawa. Over 35 per cent of members are listed as having a couch available for immediate use.
Aside from saving money and immersing yourself in a new culture, Lazebnik sums up another vital reason why CouchSurfing is becoming a favourite way for youth to seek accomodation.
“The world is full of friends we haven’t met yet.”