Surfing around the globe, one couch at a time

What if you had a friend in every city in the country — no, on the planet — you could visit whenever you wanted? A roof over your head, a couch to crash on, maybe even a tour of the real hotspots you never see on the tourist-trap maps? And the best part . . . what if it were almost free?

WHEN IN ROME…FIND A COUCH

Enter couchsurfing, a trend propagated by upstart social networking site Couchsurfing.com. The site aims to link users with a sense of wanderlust in need of a place to crash with comfy couches for a night, or three, and it caters to the college crowd: Almost half of its users are between 18 and 24.

The service offers people a cheap place to stay when they travel, and an entirely different experience. To sign up, “couchsurfers” build user profiles on the website similar to those on network dating services, which most importantly include references from other users, who leave reviews of their hosts or guests for others to see.

“Not everyone wants to go to Paris and see the Louvre,” explained Michael Gunnuscio of Boston. “I’ve surfed in Las Vegas, California, London and Paris.”

Some hosts are so keen to build new relationships that they don’t even mind if guests stay for an extended period of time.

“I was hosting a German guy when I was [living] in Spain and he was bicycling around Europe . . . we got along great,” said Boston couchsurfer Eli Barnes. “He stayed for nine days instead of two.”

“Its all based on references from other couchsurfers,” Barnes said. “[You] read what other members have said about them, you read their profile and see if you click together. There’s that initial leap of faith you take with someone who has no reference.”

Barnes is one of Couchsurfing’s Boston ambassadors, people who welcome travelers and organize couch surfing events in their corresponding cities.

For the past two years, Barnes has couchsurfed at a number of locations around the world, and has hosted a multitude of international travellers at his own place in Boston.

“The mentality of the site is to be trusting and honest and just overall open to new people [and] new ideas,” he said.

There are currently 340,557 couchsurfers worldwide, representing 223 countries and 32,410 cities and speaking 1,092 languages, according to Couchsurfing.com statistics. Boston lists 865 couchsurfers.

NEVER TRUST A STRANGER?

So what if you’re staying with someone you’ve never met?

“Safety is the biggest question I get,” Barnes said. “I’ve never had an issue of safety and I think out of 320,000 members worldwide, there’s been less than five [issues].”

Barnes said he has only heard of two incidents involving police action.

“If you really feel uncomfortable you can totally just leave,” he said. “It almost never gets to the point where it’s beyond leaving.”

Gunnuscio said he heard of one incident where a guest stole a checkbook and credit card information of his host. The host alerted the network, however, and within no time at all members received an email regarding the incident and the name of the guest to watch out for.

Couchsurfing co-founder Daniel Hoffer said the network also responds to police reports. To date, only one report has been filed.

“We had one theft [that] was reported and when that occurred we sent out an email to the entire community, which at the time was about 200,000 members,” he said. “We believe that people fundamentally mean well and our community in particular is a self-selecting group of warm hearted adventurers.”

Northeastern University senior and couchsurfer Michael Atlas said he has heard a few horror stories of bad surfers, but they were far removed to friends of friends.

“The unofficial statistics [are] 98 to 99 percent positive experiences,” he said. “Its amazing. Everybody’s been really good. Quite a few of them I still stay in touch with because they want me to visit their homes.”

IN IT FOR THE LONG HAUL

Gunnuscio and Barnes, who now live together in Boston, said they initially met and became friends through the couchsurfing network.

Gunnuscio said he arrived in Boston from Salt Lake City, Utah, for job interviews and wanted to make connections.

“I just wanted to meet local people in the area, so I contacted some surfers,” he said. “I had a hotel room, so I didn’t really need a place to stay, but since I was planning on moving [to Boston], I contacted surfers to get to know people.”

Gunnuscio, a Harvard Medical School laboratory supervisor, said Barnes was the first person he met and that the two of them hit it off right away.

“When I went back home to Salt Lake, I actually was looking for apartments [in Boston] on the internet,” he said. “I would contact [Barnes] and have him look at them for me.”

Over the summer Gunnuscio said he and Barnes hung out regularly and decided to get an apartment together. They’ll be hosting five couchsurfers this weekend alone, Gunniscio said.

The roommates keep two extra bedrooms and extra living room available for Boston-bound couchsurfers.

THEY’RE NOT SELLING OUT

Hoffer, of Brookline, said he and co-founder Casey Fenton launched the project in Jan. 2004 without raising any initial money.

Hoffer said he came up with the idea for the nonprofit organization when his partner was looking for a place to stay in Iceland.

“He asked students if he could stay with someone and a bunch responded that he could,” Hoffer said. “He had a great time.”

Hoffer runs the business operations and Fenton handles programming and technology for the site.

As a nonprofit, Couchsurfing.com only asks money for site maintenance and safety services. It charges $25 for an identity verification service, which officially checks members’ addresses and names and is required of users who wish to actively couchsurf — the service that give users a sense of security — Hoffer said.

“We make enough money to pay for all of our operating expenses, including a staff of four full-time employees and some contractors,” Hoffer said. “We also have about 500 volunteers.”

Despite the huge advertising investments and revenue sources being explored by other social networking sites such as MySpace.com and Facebook.com, Hoffer said his main priority for the network is not to make money but instead to facilitate an intercultural understanding among its varied users.

So no worries, surfers: The site’s founders are not holding out for that $50 billion Google bid.

“A corporation would be committed to shareholders at the expense of facilitating this concept,” he said. “We’re not going to do anything that risks jeopardizing the achievement of our mission.”

Couchsurfing brought in almost $102,000 total revenue in the third quarter of 2007 but only profited about $34,000 after expenses, according to its website. It also takes money each quarter to establish a fund to cover expenses in the event of an emergency.

For many, their couchsurfing travels were not isolated visits to exotic locations but the springboards for close friendships and cultural exchange. Barnes said he plans to cross the Atlantic to further bond with his former guests.

“I’m hoping to go back to Europe next summer and visit some of the places that some of my surfers are from.”

BUT IT PAYS OFF FOR SOME

Gunnuscio said couchsurfing is also economical on the users’ end. Saving money while traveling helps backpackers, but he said the local perspective he gains while staying on people’s couches proves more important.

“Everybody kind of tailors it to themselves,” he said. “All people agree on is that people that couchsurf tend to be like-minded, which generally means they get along.

“For a lot of people, it’s a way for them to travel,” he added.

Barnes said he has saved probably $3,000 to $4,000 by couch surfing, as opposed to staying in hotels or hostels over the course of a year traveling.

Couchsurfing is not meant to encourage freeloaders, though. Barnes said he often buys groceries for his host and prefers to buy his own meals and cook for his hosts when he surfs. But he added neither surfers nor hosts feel any obligation on either side.

“When I host, I offer whatever’s in my fridge,” he said. “I always try to cook food for people I’m staying with.”

Atlas said guests of his who have requested to stay more than a few nights have gone grocery shopping and fixed him dinner.

“It’s been amazing, actually — a lot of people tend to ask, ‘do you meet bad people?'” he said. “In terms of personality, couchsurfers just in general seem to be open-minded in the first place because they’re willing to stay on a stranger’s couch.”

GIVE SOME TO GET SOME

Atlas said he first got into couchsurfing after a friend suggested he try it out, but without prior surfing experience and reference, he came up short.

“I wasn’t able to find someone who was willing to host me,” Atlas said. “I got no responses.”

Eventually, Atlas said he had to take the initial “leap of faith” and host a couchsurfer at his place to boost the site’s reputation.

“I started to build up references,” he continued. “They would say ‘Mike was a good person,’ and I go on their profile and say ‘he was a good guest.’ The more experience, the more trustworthy you seem to other people and what’s interesting is the more references I got, the more requested I got.”

“I basically had a revolving door all summer in my apartment,” Atlas said, noting he’s hosted 25 people over the last three to four months, each for an average two or three days.

Gunniscio also stressed on the necessity of trust.

“The foundation of coach surfing is the belief that people are basically good,” Gunnuscio said.

Barnes said his worst couchsurfing experiences involved weak host-guest connections.

“I’m not trying to paint a rose-colored picture, but the quote un-quote bad experiences is me not connecting as well with some as others, but [the hosts or guests] were still gracious,” he said.

THE FLIP SIDE

But Boston isn’t as welcoming as other cities. Couchsurfer Tim Ahrens said in an email that he believes the possible risk of inviting strangers into his house are minimal compared with the opportunities allowed.

Still, Ahrens said he needed a place to stay in Boston on couches until he was able to find a job and a place to live. Looking back, he said it is impossible to find people who are trusting enough in the city.

“I hopped on couchsurfing.com and wrote messages to about 15 people explaining my situation and asking for hospitality,” he said. “I only got replies from five people over the course of the next few days, only one of which offered me a place to stay just for a night or two over the weekend.”

Ahrens said his potential host ended up cancelling the offer, forcing him to wait until he could stay with a friend for a week until he found a job and apartment.

“In reality this is nearly impossible in Boston,” he said. “My timing probably had an influence on my difficulties, as college had just begun and people were still settling in. It also seems that there just isn’t an abundance of people that are laid back and open enough to invite outsiders into their home.”

Ahrens said he did, however, encounter one Hub resident generous enough to let him use his apartment while he was in New York.

“The graciousness of this dude rocked my world,” he said.