Nerve 22 - Alternative Travel

Alternative Travel

HOSPITALITY EXCHANGE

Recent years have seen a worldwide growth in the practice of hospitality exchange. Hospitality exchange, or hospex, is the offer or use of free hospitality - a spare bed, a couch, or sometimes a floor - in the home of a local host. Hospex hosts can be found in most countries, though the networks are probably more developed in Europe and North America. Travellers save money but, more importantly, make a connection with local people, often experiencing places through their eyes. Hosts mainly do it for the enjoyment of meeting travellers. As one host put it - "travel without the sunshine".

Hospitality exchanges are managed online, so hosts or guests need to register with one of the hospex websites. The largest of these is Couchsurfing (www.couchsurfing.org) with around 5 million members worldwide. This site offers the largest numbers of potential hosts, but has been undergoing an upheaval over the last 18 months and there are some safety and data security concerns to be aware of since CS became a for-profit company (see article below). BeWelcome (www.bewelcome.org) is a smaller but growing non-profit hospex network that offers the same services, though it is a bit more chaotic as it is run by volunteers. People engaged in hospex activities also tend to promote other forms of co-operation - car sharing, hitchhiking support networks, social activities etc. and both sites have links to such groups.

WORKING TRAVEL

Work can be another way of covering some of the costs of travel and a number of websites link volunteers with hosts who provide bed and board in return for work. These include WWOOF (www.wwoof.org) - Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms and Helpx (www.helpx.net).

CAR SHARING

As motoring costs and concern for the environment both rise, there has been a growth in car sharing and websites that enable it. Sites like BlaBlaCar (www.blablacar.com) and CarPooling (www.carpooling.co.uk) enable drivers to offer spare seats on journeys for an agreed contribution to petrol costs. They are a bit hit and miss, depending on what is on offer at the time, but worthwhile travel savings can be made - recent offers included Manchester to Paris at £48 or Liverpool to Bristol at £13.

ALTERNATIVE LETS

Within the more commercial holiday scene, there are a growing number of small, local travel lets, ranging from holiday homes to rooms in private houses. These can be checked out on websites like AirBnB (www.airbnb.co.uk).

The Sale of Couchsurfing

The founders of Couchsurfing did not invent hospitality exchange (hospex) – the provision of free local hospitality to visitors and travellers – but CS itself became a global phenomenon. Established in the US state of New Hampshire in 2003, CS now has over 5 million members worldwide. (There are more than 1,700 members in Liverpool alone.) At its heart has been the willingness of people all over the world to open up their homes and lives to strangers in the true spirit of hospitality. Other activities grew around the provision of a place to sleep – from local meets, car-sharing, hitchhiking networks and the like to simple friendships. All of this relied on a voluntary, unpaid, membership.

Over the last 18 months, however, the core membership has become increasingly unhappy with the direction CS is taking. Although set up as a corporation, the propaganda around CS was always that it was operating for the benefit of its members and society as a whole. “Changing the world one couch at a time.” In 2010, the U.S. tax authorities denied charity status mainly because CS was viewed as social rather than charitable in nature. There were alternative options, such as registering as a social & recreational organisation, but CS chose then to convert to a for-profit corporation, despite previous pledges always to remain non-profit. It also appears that CS management had been preparing for such a change and Dan Hoffer, the CS chairman, had been working as an entrepreneur in residence at the venture capital firm, Benchmark Capital, for months before the IRS decision.

On dissolution, the assets of a non-profit organisation in the US are supposed to be distributed to a charity or to the government. CS petitioned to be able to buy the assets itself, telling the court that nobody else could receive the assets and that there were no interested parties to be notified of the plan to sell them. While this was happening, CS volunteers were told that changes were coming, but not that CS would be sold. Members and donors were told nothing. This lack of information deprived these stakeholders of their legal right to oppose the petition. The CS co-founders set up a new company (Better World Through Travel) which then bought the assets for a fraction of the actual value. (The non-profit assets were valued at only about $600,000, based on a valuation commissioned and paid for by CS.) The proceeds of the sale went to a New Hampshire grant fund rather than to the CS community which had largely created them. The co-founders of CS, Casey Fenton and Dan Hoffer, took a majority shareholding in BWTT and sold the remainder of the supposed $600,000 assets for $7.6 million to two venture capital firms – putting the nominal value of their own shareholding at around $15 million. Then, in 2012, CS obtained a further $15 million in venture capital investment.

It seems obvious that such a level of investment would expect a return but there was little visible change at first and CS continued to operate much as it had. Changes, though, began to bite. More and more members were being recruited and increasingly from the 18-25 age group. The website was extensively changed, with a greater emphasis on social networking and events. The CS terms and conditions were altered to say that all members’ data and photos belong to CS in perpetuity. Links were made with Google and Facebook. Groups and information built up by local volunteers was removed. Complaints began to surface that CS was no longer supporting the core hospex activities or even that it was turning into a dating agency. More seriously, safety concerns, particularly for young female users, began to be aired. The site redesign has encouraged requests for hosting or to meet to be posted ‘publically’ on the city homepages, rather than via messaging to members after checking profiles and references. New members are accepted with minimal profiles. (There is a ‘safety’ feature of members becoming ‘verified’ on payment of around £15 but this is widely ignored, provides little or no protection, and mainly acts as an income stream to CS.) Google searches on these homepage posts can be carried out from outside CS, giving names, phone numbers, and locations of solo travellers. Web blogs have even begun to appear with titles like ‘How To Bang CouchSurfing Girls – The Complete Guide’. The CS response to these concerns was largely to dismiss them and priority for the website was to complete the ‘Events’ functionality.

Long term members began to leave. Some chose to remain and argue against the changes within the CS discussion groups. While spouting platitudes about welcoming free speech, CS management has closed down groups and removed the profiles of the most vocal opponents, effectively expelling them from CS. Mentions on CS of other non-profit hospex organisations, such as BeWelcome, were treated as against CS commercial interests and the CS CEO, Tony Espinoza, has issued threats of expulsion for such evils as promoting joint CS/BW meetings.

So, what now for CS? There are differing views about how the investment might be recouped. Will mining the data be sufficient? Will there be more tie-ups with commercial organisations? Is CS being fattened up for another, more lucrative sale? The CS experience shows how personal greed can take advantage of human generosity but, equally, it shows how human generosity continues despite personal greed. Whatever happens, those who had a positive experience from giving or receiving hospitality will look for other ways to continue the best of CS in other places.

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