Backpackers who cannot afford – or do not want – to stay in hotels on their travels are being offered the chance to book accommodation on other people’s sofas through a new website.
According to The Guardian, the website, couchsurfing.com, matches people across the world, and has seen more than 7,000 travellers from 125 countries sign up to the service.
The service was started by Casey Fenton, an Alaska-based web consultant who used the internet to find someone to stay with after booking cheap flights to Iceland. He emailed 1,000 students through a university directory and ended up staying with a student and her friends.
He is quoted as saying: “I had a ball. When I was on the plane back I thought ‘That’s how I want to travel every time’.”
Fenton claims the website has now made more than 1,000 matches, with travellers averaging 29 years of age. In fact, accommodation does not have to be on a couch, as the name of the website suggests.
Fenton adds: “It can be a backyard to pitch your tent in, a room to yourself, a carriage house. Sometimes, people say you can sleep on the floor of my dorm room.”
He claims he has only heard of one bad experience: when one traveller ran up huge bills using his host’s internet connection and mobile phone.
Report by Tim Gillett, News From Abroad Ltd
