Research paper
CouchSurfing – The World Without Boundaries Or A Low-Cost Adventure?
Did you use to look forward to staying overnight at a friend’s house when you were a kid? Would you rather crash on a couch in someone’s living room than drive home after a game? Well, CouchSurfing takes this experience to a completely new level. Now you can choose a couch anywhere in the world and stay with a friend, you have not met yet…
If asked about the meaning of the word “CouchSurfing”, most people would raise their brow in dismay and ask you to clarify. Those who know what you are talking about would describe it as a risky venture for travelers on a tight budget. And only a few enthusiasts would rate Couchsurfing as a safe and convenient modern way to travel the world (Pultar, 2011).
Having been around for over 14 years, this alternative to traditional travel is still fighting prejudice trying to form and maintain an attractive image. So, is CouchSurfing a risky adventure or a new travel philosophy? What is the main motivation: to save a few bucks or to discover the world in a new way?
As a new way of travel, CouchSurfing entered the market in 2004. This new kid on the block has been slowly but surely taking over a big chunk of the tourist market of accommodation providers. Large established hotels, smaller chains, B&Bs and even apartment rentals have all been influenced by this new phenomenon (Pultar, 2011). Now CouchSurfing unites 14 million people from over 200, 000 countries worldwide.
So, what is CouchSurfing? Is it a booking tool, an agency, an internet resource, or a social network? The founders of Couchsurfing - Casey Fenton, Sebastien Le Tuan, Dan Hoffer, and Leonardo Bassani da Silveira - like to think of it as a “global community of travelers” making the world a better place – “one couch at a time” (Couchsurfing.com).
It all started with Casey Fenton’s trip to Iceland in 2000. Unable to afford a hotel, he sent out a bunch of letters to the student community of Reykjavik half-jokingly asking if he could “crash on their couch” for a short while. The number of positive responses was overwhelming that gave Fenton an idea for a future business.
However, despite being a successful business with over 4 million deals a year, CouchSurfing is still viewed by many travelers as a weird and funky way to spend a vacation. Multiple studies have been conducted in attempts to examine and understand the mechanism that makes some people fall in love with CouchSurfing while others turn away shaking their heads in disgust.
The large group of CouchSurfing fans, including both hosts and guests, tends to think of it as a special travel philosophy. They form an international community with special ties. Moreover, the founders of the business do everything to support and develop this trend by organizing annual gatherings and even rewarding the most remarkable participants. Through these events and aggressive advertising, CouchSurfing is being promoted as a key to the world without boundaries.
Hosts are thriving at a chance to meet new people and share with them their love for the home city or country. Normally, CouchSurfing works both ways, and those who serve as hosts will later become guests. However, many hosts never intend to travel. They are perfectly happy with the international flavor added to their lives by the guests. Guests, on the other hand, rarely list savings as their main goal (Skog, 2012). The driving force behind their decision to join CouchSurfing community is the chance “to live like a local”. Fed up with artificial touristic routes and overly advertised attractions, they want to be introduced to real people in the real-life environment and discover the local hangout places most tourists never get to see (Liu, 2013).
Dr. Emery Ayers-Greenidge, a professor of Psychology at the Wright Institute, offers a scientific base for this phenomenon, exploring CouchSurfing from the perspective of social psychology. Her research is aimed at defining the mechanism of motivation that makes the tourist select a potential host based on similarities in their lifestyle and character traits. Her findings indicate that tourist’s initial motivation to save money later turns into something she calls “intimate tourism” – the person’s desire to stop being a tourist and start being a traveler (Ayers-Greenidge, 2012). The “tourist” definition implies someone whose options are limited by the traditional travel agency-hotel-excursion circle while the word “traveler” projects an image of a seasoned adventurer roaming the world freely and openly.
So what is the portrait of a typical “couchsurfer”? One photographer took this question literary and came up with a wonderful project. Dustin Cantrell and his wife explore the true idea behind the CouchSurfing through the faces and stories of the real travelers (https://matadornetwork.com/life/humans-couchsurfing-portrait-project/). Their project features both hosts and guests sharing their personal experiences and trying to find the answer to what makes CouchSurfing so special for them. What makes people want to spend the night at a stranger’s house? And what is even more interesting to me, who are those willing to play the role of a host? If the guests might have at least some financial motivation (“crashing on a stranger’s couch” costs them nothing), what makes hosts tick is a real question…These people open up more than their doors to welcome guests from the unknown – they open up their lives to total strangers without any obvious benefits.
Most people Cantrell interviewed talk about the feeling of freedom and integration in the local community that CouchSurfing offers (Cantrell, 2014). They accept Couchsurfing as a new travel trend where people share their lives with others in exchange for new liberating experiences. However, it is not all so romantic. Many respondents also recall some awkward situations none of which luckily turned into really dangerous encounters. So, safety is still among major concerns when it comes to CouchSurfing.
This brings us to the views and reasoning of those strongly opposing the very idea of CouchSurfing. Many people seeing this travel experience through the prism of traditional pros and cons. While they acknowledge the obvious financial benefits of staying at a stranger’s house, they focus on the potential threats that in their eyes by far outweigh the benefits. Safety, safety, and safety. The opponents of CouchSurfing cannot accept the fact that someone could stay at a stranger’s house without being abducted, molested or ripped off. These people still live by their parents’ warning to “never talk to a stranger”. I bet they must feel very uncomfortable in the age of internet and digital technology where our every step, every action and every expressed thought immediately becomes visible to thousands of strangers through social networks, mobile applications, and even college class assignments (think Weebly for a second).
The second most common concern is hygiene. Basically, you are staying with someone you do not know, sleeping on their couch, soaking in their bath and drinking from their cups. That is a valid concern but then isn’t it the case with every other place you stay at? Can we be absolutely sure that all hotels thoroughly clean their rooms, scrub the shower after each guest and really wash the beach towels rather than just drying them? Most likely, not. Just as not every street café is safe to eat at and not every ride we catch is a guaranteed accident-free venture.
Unfortunately, bad things happen regardless of our finances, social class, intentions, or choice of accommodations (think Titanic). According to the recent studies on CouchSurfing, no more accidents happen to tourists staying with CouchSurfing hosts than to those staying at hotels or other accommodations (Ronzhyn, 2015). There is no proven connection between the number of crimes against travelers and the negative host or guest reviews on CouchSurfing.
However, those worried about safety are not completely off track. There are numerous articles listing the potential dangers of CouchSurfing-gone-wrong. Harriet Line, the author of “Would you sleep with a stranger?” piece in The Telegraph, lists major “dos and don’ts” to follow if you want your experience with CouchSurfing to be a positive one. Her advice includes communicating with potential “partners” through official channels, carefully reviewing profiles and reading feedback, learning about cultural aspects and religious expectations beforehand and, most importantly, trusting your instincts (Line, 2014).
Since couchsurfers mainly rely on other travelers’ reviews and feedback in their choice of guests and hosts, honesty and thoroughness in this matter are crucial. It can literary save lives. Maura Cherney of Illinois State University in her 2014 study “Surf’s Up: Communicative aspects in Couchsurfing” talks about how online reviews affect people’s choice of potential hosts. She starts with the very definition of trust being “the belief that another person will behave with intelligence, character, and goodwill” (Cherney, 1) and links it to the CouchSurfing experience. In her studies, Cherney proves that other users’ feedback plays an equally significant role in evaluating the profile of a potential host or guest.
It is interesting to see tables turning. When discussing the dangers of CouchSurfing, most of us tend to refer to the hosts as the source of the potential threat. Since people tend to evaluate CouchSurfing from a personal perspective, we assume that guests (if we identify with this category) are “normal people” with good intentions. Therefore, from our perspective, the potential danger comes from the hosts’ side. However, guests are also being evaluated thoroughly since hosts are equally intimidated by the new experience. Handing the keys from your apartment to a stranger can be frustrating. Many hosts describe their experience as “handing over your whole life” (Bialsky & Batorsky, 2010). However, there is still some bias. Cherney’s survey discovered that while hosts even with one negative reference are highly unlikely to be considered again, a guest with a negative reference might still get the benefit of the doubt. It turns out that there are people out there who are willing to host a person with negative references as long as they have less than three unfavorable reviews (Ronzhyn, 2015).
The main argument used by the opponents of CouchSurfing is a variation of “how can you stay with a total stranger” or “entrusting an unknown person with your life is insane”. However, these arguments fail to see that all our friends were once strangers. If people were not capable of creating new social ties, we would have never been able to build a society. Most international business projects are started in a team with a “total stranger”. We all know happily married couples who have met at a bar or a party as strangers and hit it off right from the start. It goes without saying that we live in a dangerous world and should take extra precautions to keep ourselves and our families safe. However, it does not mean that a stay at a hotel or a bus trip to a family gathering are necessarily safer than spending a vacation at someone’s house. Common sense and proper planning go a long way. Whether we plan to stay at an established hotel or with a host found through CouchSurfing, we are responsible for our actions and our lives.
I once had a personal experience with a hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia that was not only “potentially unsafe” – it was plain dangerous. The hotel was located in a very bad neighborhood with constant shooting and yelling in the streets. The very next day we ended up moving in with the woman, we met at a local botanical garden – a total stranger at the time. She claimed to be an American working at a local university, but we have never checked her words or asked to see her passport. So what made us trust her? What convinced us that her house was a safer option? And what is even more important, what made her take in a woman with a child she did not know and could not benefit from?
Looking back, I would say the similarity must have played the biggest role: she was a fellow expat, she had an education similar to my mom’s and she came across as a nice person. Paula Bialski and Dominik Batorski in their 2010 research “From Online Familiarity to Offline Trust” dig further into the phenomenon of trust building on CouchSurfing as they recreate the process from making the first contact to building trust and maintaining a relationship within the structure. In their research, they have used a survey of over 3000 tourists from Couchsurfing.com members and conducted 30 personal interviews. Most of the respondents name “familiarity” in character traits, common interests and social backgrounds as the most important factor in building up trust through online and offline contact. In other words, we tend to attract like-minded people. Some of the interactions develop into real friendships. In my case, this Malaysia incident happened five years ago, and we still stay in touch with our host. That is an example of a long-term friendship that developed from a spontaneous meeting of total strangers in a foreign country.
Such human characteristics as “sympathy” and “trust” play important role in making CouchSurfing a successful project despite the prejudice. However, the community also has a well-developed mechanism of “early communication” designed to bring down potential risks. CouchSurfing offers rules and guidelines that stress the importance of early communication and interaction. The more messages users exchange the more likely they are to become a successful match (Cherney, 2014). This makes perfect sense because this is how most human relationships develop – through communication. That is true for online and offline interaction. The best way to learn about your potential partner, friend or companion is to ask questions, and CouchSurfing host-guest communication is no exception. The more you know about each other, the easier it is to determine whether staying together is a good idea or a potential disaster. Some people smoke - others have asthma. Some animal lovers allow their pets to jump anywhere they want – others are allergic to dogs and do not want cat hair on their pillow. All that needs to be discussed in advance or even listed in the profile.
Since hosting on CouchSurfing is voluntary, and no payment is involved, hosts have every right to set the rules. That is why CouchSurfing helps find the best match for “hosts and guests” – not “clients and service providers”. If you are a guest, you are expected to act like one – treat your hosts with respect, offer help with household chores, bring a small gift or buy a cake. Hosts also have obligations in addition to offering a clean set of sheets. Most hosts would offer guests a special meal, show them around the city or treat to a special event. It is not required but certainly is expected of a good host. Remember those reviews? They determine whether or not your profile will get noticed again and again.
Despite the obvious advantages, CouchSurfing is not for everyone. Those who value independence and are willing to pay for it would be better off staying at a hotel or renting a private apartment. The visual below is a very clear model of options available to travelers in the modern age.
However, once again, CouchSurfing is not about just a place to stay – it is about the experience. This is what makes it stand aside from other services helping people locate holiday accommodations.
The CouchSurfing founders’ intention was to bring together people from various parts of the world and help them share insights and love for their home cities with other travelers. Such experiences are unforgettable and last a lifetime.
Couchsurfing is a way to unite people. It is based on the idea of mutual help and reciprocity. You offer your place to someone and someone will offer his place to you. Once the money is not a part of the deal, it is the human part of the interaction that really matters.
In my opinion, CouchSurfing is a travel philosophy rather than a simple accommodation- searching tool. Participants and travelers tend to choose “friends” rather than “a place to stay”. This is exactly what makes CouchSurfing unique. It is not about the money or the convenience. It is certainly not about accommodations because with CouchSurfing you never know whether your host’s place is a palace or a hut. It is not even about travel as much as it is about creating the world without boundaries. It is about the feeling of empowerment and belonging, about finding friends and becoming a part of the global community. Couchsurfing is about the “friends we haven’t yet met” (Couchsurfing.com).
John Bachir, a host from New York, NY summarized the main idea of CouchSurfing in his profile: “It’s Freedom. Being brave enough to choose a place to stay, people to love and world to create – choosing freedom over all other things in life is something I am always working on” (Cantrell, 5).
I chose this topic out of genuine curiosity, as I am one of those people who cannot imagine “crashing on a stranger’s couch”. However, after completing my research I saw the other side of the issue. And this other side seemed extremely appealing. In fact, it was appealing enough to make me change my mind mid-paper and end up arguing a totally different side of the issue. And even more – it was appealing enough to make me consider CouchSurfing for my first upcoming adult travel experience this summer. My host in Germany is Marcus, and I am looking forward to meeting him and seeing the city of Berlin through his eyes of a local resident. Maybe, by joining the CouchSurfing community, I will take a step closer to the world without boundaries and the friends I have not met yet.
Works Cited
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