Here's $5. Let me crash with you!

May 26, 2011 8:51 AM

I love couchsurfing.org. What websites would you recommend where you can stay with people in their homes, in exchange for a little bit of money - specifically, for England, Scotland and Ireland?

I'm going to be in London for two weeks taking a class and traveling around the other areas for the rest of the time in August. I've found roomft.com, looking for recommendations of good, trustworthy sites.

Thanks so much!!!

posted by ashtabula to opelika to Travel & Transportation (5 answers total)

airbnb has some listings.
posted by backwards guitar at 8:57 AM on May 26, 2011 [3 favorites]

9flats.com has recently launched and is meant to be the equivalent to airbnb for Europe. Never used it or even looked at the site until I grabbed that link. But it's been getting some press coverage.
posted by Magnakai at 8:58 AM on May 26, 2011

I think Gumtree has some listings, although couchsurfing is less well known here outside of the Aussie community.

As it sounds like you do this a lot, I don;t need to remind you to avoid listings like these!
posted by mippy at 9:31 AM on May 26, 2011

A friend of mine started Global Freeloaders and I think it's pretty awesome.
posted by guster4lovers at 11:33 AM on May 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

I used to use Hospitality Club fairly often traveling in Europe (as well as Global Freeloaders, which had a rougher interface but for some reason friendlier hosts!). I haven't investigated either in several years, and pretty much exclusively use Couchsurfing these days. An older equivalent, pre-internet, is Servas. It's membership-based, and in the past you'd get a booklet listing potential hosts' contact info and a few details about the setting/their ages/interests..
posted by soviet sleepover at 1:12 PM on May 26, 2011