Hospitality exchange couchsurfing project · CouchSurfing Project in Hospitality exchange
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CouchSurfing Project in Hospitality exchange
CouchSurfing Project in Hospitality exchange
The CouchSurfing Project is the largest, hospitality exchange organization, founded in January 2004. While it started off as a non-profit organization, in 2011 it became a for-profit corporation. As of July 2010, there are over 2,000,000 members in 70,000 cities of 236 countries. Membership is free. Profiles are very comprehensive and extended search is possible (Allowing to search for specific characteristics such as "wheelchair accesible"). One important feature of this site are the groups. The groups allow people create "posts", make questions and interact frequently, creating a stong sense of community. The groups are set by interest (cyclist, vegetarians, alternative consumers,etc) or by location. There are several security measures. After using the service, you can comment ("leave a reference") about your host or guest. You can create links to people you've met through a friend list. It is optional to become "verified member" (one-time fee, amount depends on your home country) providing another layer of security and keep the project running. Another safety system like verifying is called vouching, in this system you can vouch for others you know and feel are trustworthy if you yourself have been vouched for by 3 other members. This system was started by allowing the founders and core admins to vouche for others from the start and it is spreading pretty well. It is possible to see if people are traveling themselves, and the percentage of messages responded to. Despite a system failure in June 2006, the majority of the data was recovered, and the system restored to functionality.
There is also a wiki on the site with helpful notes about couchsurfing, safety, countries, cities and other couchsurfing related topics.
Unlike the next largest hospitality exchange, hospitalityclub, couchsurfing is much more focused on "social networking", and members organize many events, viewable in a database on the website. Alongside with the surfing/hosting expereince, events are good oportunities to interact with people living or traveling in the places you visit.
CS mission is to facilitate inspiring expereinces. CS vison states that the creation of meaningful conections across cultures leads to appreciation of diversity and ultimately to a feeling of community and more understanding among people.
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Hospitality exchange Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.