Free Accommodations with genuine hospitality - couch surfing

At the top of every budget traveler’s bookmarks should be the new hip CouchSurfing 2.0, a website that offers free accommodations, and possibly meals, to almost anyone. Couch surfing is two year old online community with about 50,000 members offering their a room or couch for a free bed to travelers.

There is not real hitch, except that to join the community, you would be expected to offer a room or couch of your own for someone to stay at. The majority of couch surfers age anywhere between 20 and 30 years old, and its members reside in pretty much every country worth traveling to.

Couch Surfing is not the only hospitality community available to use on the internet. HospitalityClub.org is another alternative that was started in 2000. Hospitality Club is actually the largest hospitality club, and it works the same way Couch Surfing works.

A third and final free travel and accommodation website is GlobalFreeloaders.com. I believe this is the smallest of the three, and they are alot like the other hospitality sites. Although, Global Freeloader states that if someone should accept a free stay from someone else, they should be able to offer a free stay at their place in the next 6 months. This is a good idea to discourage people who want to cheat the system.

[tags] couch surfing, budget travel [/tags]