Website for sharing a place to stay with travellers?

February 11, 2005 4:31 PM

I once saw a website for folks willing to share a place to stay for travellers. Hosts would describe the accommodations and conditions, photos were posted. As I recall it was started by college students but people of all ages now are members. There may be a fee involved. Google fails me. TIA to pointers.
posted by NorthCoastCafe to Travel & Transportation (5 answers total)

was it Servas?
posted by amberglow at 4:34 PM on February 11, 2005

CouchSurfing.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 4:41 PM on February 11, 2005

There are also GobalFreeloaders and the Hospitality Club [and HC has a group on Orkut if you use Orkut]. I don't know much about DigiHitch but they seem to be a semi-wired nomadic group doing a similar thing geared towards hitchhikers. Dmoz has a whole section on these hospitality clubs which is your Googling term for hte future.
posted by jessamyn at 5:24 PM on February 11, 2005

Response by poster: Couchsurfing is the site I wanted. Thanks Monju! I'll explore the others. Thanks all.
posted by NorthCoastCafe at 8:11 PM on February 11, 2005

Hospitality Club has become one of the best - and definitely the biggest- of these. It was started by a German hitchhiker who's since been around the world.
As Veit says on his site, "I believe in one idea - bringing people together from different cultures and social classes can build intercultural understanding and reduce prejudices and intolerance. I travel the world to fascinate one million people with this idea and build a world wide web of friendly people.

Several years ago, a Dutch hitchhiker named Ramon thumbed around the world, surfing couches through invitation at Letmestayforaday.com.

Hotels are for couch potatoes...
posted by digihitch at 12:01 AM on February 12, 2005