Hospitality Club

April 18, 2004 5:24 PM

The Hospitality Clubis a similar idea to CouchSurfing in that both sites provide a database of people offering free lodging to each other when visiting foreign countries. The Hospitality Club has been going for nearly three years and has over 12,500 members in 142 countries. The site has wiki-like features allowing members to edit travel guides for each country, region and city.
posted by cbrody (7 comments total)

It's a good idea--It's always wonderful to meet locals everywhere. I didn't see anything about vetting people tho. Is it safe?
posted by amberglow at 7:15 PM on April 18, 2004

Is it safe? Probably slightly safer than meeting a tourist on the street and offering them a bed for the night. New members are vetted by volunteers (though the process is not fully explained) and members are required to provide a passport number in order to verify their identity to their host. It's possible to leave comments about other members, although with several of these websites around now it would be easy to join a different one if you get any negative comments.

The site's founder says that he is working on ways of exchanging information with other free-accomodation sites, including globalfreeloaders and couchsurfing (which also has verification and a vouching system.)

In the end I guess it depends on your view of humanity as to whether or not you would sleep on a stranger's couch or let an unknown foreigner into your house.
posted by cbrody at 9:28 PM on April 18, 2004

I discovered Hospitality a few months ago, when researching my upcoming trip through Europe. It looks like a fantastic service, especially because of how entrenched it is, abroad. I'll be making great use of it - it was too bad I missed to Hospitality-Club-Get-Together here in Montreal, last month.
posted by Marquis at 9:37 PM on April 18, 2004

My landlord/roommate is in this club, and we have some girl from Australia staying here right now.
posted by bingo at 9:53 PM on April 18, 2004

There'll be 8 of her friends there before the month's out.
[/London joke]
posted by i_cola at 1:23 AM on April 19, 2004

I can imagine worse fates.
posted by bingo at 6:16 AM on April 19, 2004

There should be a limit to the number of Aussies they let on these sites. Who wants to visit there anyway?

/joke
posted by cbrody at 10:20 AM on April 19, 2004