When Jade Moller was deciding earlier this year whether to attend the Rhode Island School of Design’s graduate school of architecture, she came from Denver to Providence to check out the campus. While here, she stayed on the couch of a stranger who’d only seen a picture of her and knew some basic details of her visit.
Welcome to CouchSurfing.com, a travel-based Internet community in which members offer a traveler their sofa, or guest room, in return for the promise that, eventually, they’ll be paid back in kind by another member.
Kevin O’Connor, the hospitable stranger, is a 24-year-old senior at Roger Williams University studying architecture and living on Providence’s East Side. Both Moller and O’Connor are “couch surfers,” as members of CouchSurfing.com are called.
When The Couch Surfing Project was conceived during 2004, there were four couch surfers. As of last month, the Web site’s international membership hit 500,000. Last week, there were about 130,277 American members and a quick online search revealed about 290 Rhode Islanders.
When a visitor is heading to Providence, for example, they can search for another member and check out their profile, which is much like the type of networking profile you’d find on social-networking sites like facebook.com or professional networks like linkedin.com.
“So somebody looks at your profile and sees that they’re compatible” and then they ask to stay, O’Connor explained. During the past year, he has hosted more than 10 guests, hailing from around the United States, Canada, England, France, China, Australia and other places.
Usually, O’Connor gives visitors a tour of College Hill and downtown, maybe takes them out for a drink. “And I introduce them to my friends, so they don’t feel like so much of a tourist,” he said, adding that that’s the focus of the Web site: creating a worldwide network of friends.
The Web site’s mission statement is similar to O’Connor’s take on couch surfing. It says: “Couch Surfing is not about the furniture, not just about finding free accommodations around the world; it’s about making connections worldwide.”
Crystal Murphy, 24, a volunteer spokesman and an event organizer for couchsurfing.com, said the site is “about making friends, and what else is better than having a free place to stay in every town and a tour guide in every city.”
She got involved with the Web site about two years ago and is at the top tier of the volunteers, of which there are many, she told Providence Business News in a phone interview last week from her Birmingham, Ala. home.
The site only has three paid employees, including co-founder Casey Fenton, 29, of Conway, New Hampshire, she said. And the members are mostly young. The site’s average member age is listed as 26 and nearly 75 percent of the members are less than 30 years old.
“But there are a considerable amount that are over 50, and there are members who are members of AARP,” said Murphy. “We really encourage couch surfing for every age group. We even have members who couch surf as a family.”
The Web site, which boasted 399,668 available couches (though not all members offer their sofa) as of a week ago, also tracks the number of meetings that actually take place. For example, on Monday, May 05, there were 897 new couches added and 3,299 face-to-face introductions recorded on the site.
A few weeks ago, Murphy hosted Daniel Bass, a 26-year-old Rhode Island resident who was traveling around the United States and Mexico for about 12 weeks.
Bass became a member in January and, after staying with others for the last three months, came home last week to a request for his hospitality on Providence’s East Side. Two Canadians coming to Providence for a concert this past weekend asked if he was available.
“They’ve never seen Providence, so I have the pleasure and the opportunity to show them our great town, our great city,” Bass said last week. “I get to be an ambassador, of sorts, of Providence.”
And for some, staying on a sofa around the world can lead to lasting friendships, O’Connor said.
Earlier this year, he went to Spain to stay with a couch surfer that had stayed with him in Providence. “He was actually the only one in the family who spoke English and we ended up staying with his family in Pamplona for a weekend,” he said. “Instead of going someplace and staying in a hotel in the area, I was staying with somebody who was going to show me the insider’s perspective of a country.” •
