Couchers is officially out of beta

Very fond memories of couchsurfing met very nice people both as a traveler and a host. But this was long ago. Not sure this will ever work again though

Hosted loads for a while, a brilliant time. We were living somewhere unusual at the time, everyone that came through was interesting, intelligent and fun. Zero bad experiences. Made some friends for life.

My flatmate at the time ended up marrying a couchsurfer we'd hosted, after reconnecting many years later.

We all got sulky and huffy when they started charging and stopped engaging, but the sad thing is we just got too busy. Couchsurfing was like hosting a party constantly, and as work picked up I found it harder to engage.

Still seems to be a community there. I found myself in Split a while ago and stumbled upon a meetup, had a great evening unexpectedly.

What's changed? Did you get older?

After CS went downhill, I created accounts at most of the alternatives around. I just leave it there, offering our living room.

I'm not living in a very touristic area, but every other month, I get a request for a night and if it fit's in my schedule, I'll accept. It's been only nice experiences so far and no one gave me the vibe of seeing it as a cheap alternative to hotels only. Most people ask on bewelcome.org by the way.

I just like that even though I stay in my bubble most of the time, I get the opportunity to spend some quality time with a stranger. Especially because those strangers are often on some kind of a mission, else they typically wouldn't come to my area.

I wonder how much of it is down to the internet changing - similar to the eternal september, or overtourism.

Couchsurfing used to be a relatively niche thing which allowed it to work and thrive. The percentage of freeloaders or bad actors was low enough not to be a problem.

But now with more people being aware of it/its alternatives, the percentage of bad actors would increase too (and maybe not even proportionally to the number of good actors).

I lived in a house where one of my housemates was also into couchsurfing and for a few month in summer and early autumn 2008, we were very active hosts. One weekend while there was a CS event on in my city, we hosted 12 people at once.

In 2009, I was living somewhere I couldn’t host, but my primary social group for that year was other local couchsurfers — we used to meet up twice a week. One of them got married to one of my friends. Others I kept in touch with for many years.

I haven’t been part of it in a long time, but I haven’t many fond memories of the couchsurfing community. Like you, I didn’t have any bad experiences.

Never hosted or surfed, but joined the meetups in a couple of different cities when traveling, and it was great every time. (This was 2013) Seems like it just had a nice group of people.

Same. I hosted do many people. Super interesting, sometimes weird. I have soo many good memories and I still gave many Of them as my friend.

Unfortunately the whole platform changed a few years ago.

Very low quality requests, hosts had to paid, bad support, and bad filtering.

It’s too bad, bc it left a sour taste at the end. Many people would chat in English, but in reality they can’t speak nor write English. Also, the last few years pale just use it as a cheap hotel. No interaction and sometimes plain rude behavior. I even had to kick someone out.

The Internet changed the nature of tourism quite a bit as well. You have to remember most people used to use services like travel agents or tours to organize things for them. Anyone who went off the beaten path and was interested in experiencing another place by sleeping on a stranger’s couch was probably someone interesting.

Now everyone is used to using the internet to organize their travel and get the best deals on anything they can - and so websites like couchsurfing become a free booking.com alternative for people who have no interest in the human experience side of it.

It probably also belonged to a certain period of time and a certain generation. The peak of couchsurfing coincided with millennials coming of age, and provided something that appealed to them at the time. Namely, cheap travel and interesting, random experiences to brag about.

That demographic is a lot older now, and the younger generation has other interests and expectations which couchsurfing likely does not appeal to.

CouchSurfing still has a very active community. I'm hosting these days and get multiple requests every week.

How have your interactions been with CS members? Do people bother reading your profile, do you get a lot of freeloaders requests?

I was hosting around this time too (and surfing a bit, but less so), it was a great experience. Never got up to 12 but we always had someone with us, someone crossing over ... and probably someone we were doing a favour for. At one point had two Italian climbers in a tent in our living room for multiple weeks, who ended up moving to our city and becoming good friends.

I tended to go out my way to try and accept people to stay who were either very new the the platform (which usually made it hard to find a place as karma was low) or were very different to my normal group of friends. Which definitely made for some interesting experiences and conversations. Price of entry was usually a list of their favourite albums. I discovered so much great music out of it.

Finally gave it all up when I moved back to Australia and wasn't in a position to host anymore. So many fond memories tho. I miss it.