The Couch Surfing Project - How to meet cool people

If you’ve ever travelled, I’m sure you’ve met cool people on the road.  Well, if you’d want to meet them again, but at home too - both yours and theirs - then Couch Surfing may well be the place for you.

Couch Surfing was set up with the idea to bring like minded people together and offer a means for them to share.  It came about at after the early successes of rival site Hospitality Club, and as the name suggests, it was based around offering and receiving hospitality.  With Couch Surfing, you offer your couch, a spare bed, mattress, or even just the floor to travellers, show them around, feed them, take them somewhere, any combination of the above, or anything else you can think of fun!  In return, they offer you their, hopefully enlightening, company and anything else they feel they’d like to share.

I was introduced to Couch Surfing quite recently, but I have to say it has proved really, really good fun.  We’ve met really cool people every step of the way, from the UK to New Zealand, Turkey to Thailand, and every step of the way, home and abroad.  You offer what you can, and what you get in return can  surprise you every time.  We’ve had a private performance from a singer songwriter, been cooked for by a professional chef, helped to make our own beer and shared a cake as our hosts 100th and 101st guests!  And that is what Couch Surfing is all about.

Some people are, of course, worried about the possibilities of meeting unscrupulous or dangerous people through Couch Surfing, but through my experiences and the people I have met too, this is very rare.  From all of them, there have been about 2 cases of unscrupulous people, neither involving myself.  I may have met a couple of people I wouldn’t usually choose to spend time with, but even then they were good company.  If you just use your common sense, you can stay out of any trouble, just like in the rest of life.

Why choose couch surfing, though, when there are other hospitality exchanges available?  Simply, it comes down to numbers, and ease of use.  While Hospitality Club can claim to be the first, set up in June 2000,  it has a fraction of the members.  Couch Surfing can boast almost 3.5 million members, while Hospitality Club can claim under half a million.  There are of course others, but the largest of these, GlobalFreeLoaders, has attracted just over 50,000 members since 2005.  The other benefit Couch Surfing gives is the comprehensive search function - allowing you to select hosts exactly to your preference.

There are, of course, problems and criticisms.  The founder has set Couch Surfing on its way to becoming a for profit corporation - a long way from the original aims of the project - while the changes to the website have made it more personal.  Yet this should not effect your Couch Surfing experience.  So long as you don’t spend any unnecessary money on the site, you will still get the means to find cool, likeminded people to share hospitality with.  In much the same way people have always done.  If your only aim is to meet cool people, then Couch Surfing is a great way to do that.  So, enjoy the ride!

CouchSurfing  |  The Hospitality Club