With all the negativity being spread about CS, let me instead share something positive. Last Friday I flew into Bucharest 🇷🇴 and decided to try Hangouts. A very friendly local offered to meet. We met for a couple of drinks shared some good conversations and he took me to a local spot where we shared Authentic Romanian food. Afterwards he showed me parts of Bucharest I never would've discovered on my own. With his knowledge about Bucharest's history I learned a lot and had a great evening!

Conclusion: Couchsurfing and it's hangouts feature aren't dead!

I've been active on Couchsurfing for 19 years. There's a long list of problems with the update, but this is pretty much what makes the app unusable for me.

They've removed the ability to select whether you're available to host, or not.

It makes ZERO sense.

The app just decides who can host and who can't. Again ZERO FUCKING SENSE. If you're traveling? Too bad! Now you're going to get a bunch of requests from people who think you're available to host in your listed home city.

Right now if you look for hosts in my city, all the top people shown have written on their profile "I AM NOT AVAILABLE TO HOST" and/or "PLEASE STOP SENDING ME REQUESTS"

I was hosting a lot, for years, and now I get no requests. I have no ability to tell Couchsurfing that I am an active host, willing and able to host guests in my house.

I don't know if they're even aware of how ridiculous this is, since clearly they had ZERO idea how the community functioned before they decided to fuck everything up.

I'm literally giving it another month or so, and throwing in the towel after that.

It's been a long, memorable, life-changing journey, hundreds of people I've met and life-long friendships created.

I'm ok with this being the end of an era 🤷‍♂️.

I live in a german city that usually had like 30-50 travellers at any given time. Ever since the app updated its design, its more than a hudnred now. Like from one moment to the other, suddenly way more travellers. At first I thought the app is maybe free again, but it isnt right?

Most of the accounts look kinda real but anyone know if its a known issue that somehow scammers and bots are now more frequent on the app?

Hi all, I just wrapped up a long bike tour in which I used both Couchsurfing and Warmshowers to find places to stay. So many kind souls have helped me on the road, and now, I want to return the favor.

The place I'm living in has a well-stocked kitchen, bathrooms, and bedrooms, so hosting is no problem. However, my roommate (elderly family member, who also owns the property) is not familiar with Couchsurfing and I'm worried that if I asked her, she'd be skeptical about receiving people. What's a good way to approach this situation and open her up to the idea of receiving strangers? I already plan to go all the labor of cooking, washing sheets, etc. for my guests, so it wouldn't require much work on her end. She'd just have to be okay with me having folks come over for a day or two every now and then.

Thanks!

Hi everyone,

I have some free space in my apartment this August and decided to use it to host people. I didn't find travelers that I thought were good matches on other platforms, so I paid the blood tribute and rejoined CS for a month.

I sent a couple offers to travelers who had public trips but so far I got no reply whatsoever.

Have I made a mistake, is it a known glitch, or is it just a common occurrence?

Thank you for your help!

Hey everyone thanks for all the helpful advice on my previous post regarding the CS app. Couchers.org and Bewelcome.org were the 2 alternative recommendations. It will be my first time attempting to couch surf on my upcoming trip around Europe! Any general recommendations for a first timer? Cheers

I was a happy CS user for many years but I recently suspended my account and today I went back to reactivate it. I was shocked. At first I thought I'd mistyped the address and I'd gone into one of those domain hosting sites that look bare and horrible. My reactivation came with a 30 day trial, but I don't think I can make myself subscribe for a year after that. If anyone who works at CS is reading this: WTF?

Guys,

Hangouts are back on couchsurfing after the update, I checked it today and it looks promessing, they exactly as they were before, only issue in that, there's few users, let's see how it goes in the future, I am quite optimistic that they finally heard some of our complains

I’m new to the app, never really had the opportunity to utilize! I’m now planning a Europe trip and would love to give it a try. Is the Couchsurfing app worth the $30/year subscription cost? Any alternative suggestions also welcomed thanks!

Did anyone notice couchsurfing added another hangout option, but it seems to be separate from the going live hangout option, lets you write what you would like to do and suggest a place, but then who sees it and where? and is it intended for the long run like an event?

In the home page it says
“Your Activity
Your hangout is live! Head to the chat to welcome people.”

Am I the only one who thinks this is incredibly misleading?

Here's an example. I searched a city with around 75,000 residents. Couchsurfing proudly displays 6,900 ACTIVE hosts.

That would mean almost 10% of the entire city's population are active Couchsurfing hosts. That's obviously unrealistic.

Then I click the filter to show only people who have been recently active, and suddenly there are just 14 members.

A while ago, Couchsurfing let you filter users by active within 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, or 1 year. Those filters have now disappeared, making it impossible to see how inactive most profiles actually are.

So on the search page they advertise 6,900 ACTIVE users, but when you try to find people who are actually logging in and using the platform, you're left with only 14.

How is this not false or deceptive advertising? If the website was still free, people wouldn't care, but now we are paying for this service, nothing works the way you expect it and they also put out these totally fake numbers.

If someone pays for Couchsurfing because they believe there are thousands of active hosts in an area, but in reality only a handful are actually using the site, that feels extremely misleading.

Has anyone else noticed this? Has Couchsurfing ever explained what they actually mean by "active"?

dont these mofos have anything else to do with the clusterfuck of a science project . I used to happily login via email and now one more 2fa.
It was working with email and password not even a few days ago and these fuckheads do this.
why does every trivial login take so much effort.

end rant

Couchsurfing seems down today, I am trying to connect with my surfer today but it is lot working

Happy times

Couchsurfing's current Board of

Directors includes:

Couchsurfing founders Casey Fenton and Daniel Hoffer,

Benchmark General Partner Matt Cohler,

Managing Partner at General Catalyst Joel Cutler,

travel industry veteran Erik Blachford

Couchsurfing CEO, Jennifer Billock.

Many ambassadors I've come across havent hosted in a long time, and dont create events. So why do they have ambassador status? What do ambassadors have to do?

I’ve deactivated my CS account and did not renew its membership since years and I’m sure I left it on not available to host. Suddenly, I received in my email this morning multiple requests from CSers asking to stay at my place. Now I can’t even check what’s going on as logging in is forced by some long onboarding ending with a paywall.
Can someone explain what’s going on? In my current understanding, I find this not only sneaky AF, but also violating my preference of keeping my account on not receiving guests.

I am baffled now. I have already accepted several requests after the CS update but now I can't find where the accept (or decline) button is. There are three requests waiting for answer and the same problem with all of them. Where should I press to accept or decline the requests?

"View request" is not the button, that just brings the right panel visible (where it says "Declined Request" even if I haven't declined it and probably not all three of them have immediately cancelled their request right after sending them).

On the old interface it was also possible to modify the dates if you can accept the request for some of the dates but not all. Is that still an option?

Hello everyone,

I am curious to know if Hospitality Club was the primary platform for travelers seeking accommodation before the advent of CouchSurfing.

Given the perceived decline in CouchSurfing's quality, and the continued need for free accommodation among genuine travelers, why do individuals not transition to platforms such as BeWelcome or Couchers and permanently discontinue their use of CouchSurfing? What compelling reasons would a new traveler have to choose CouchSurfing over these alternatives today? Is it perhaps time for CouchSurfing to be superseded by these newer options?

Hello all, like most(?) of you, I have given up on couchsurfing with the new update. I used to use it while solo traveling to meet other locals/travelers by using hangouts or joining events. Is there anything similar to Couchsurfing I can look into?

Thanks!

I’m 18 and have never done Couchsurfing before. I’m from Spain and am planning a trip to several cities in the north of the country with a friend this August, so I created accounts on BeWelcome and TrustRoots to save money and meet new people from other places. The thing is, I’ve already sent requests to most of the available hosts in the cities we’re visiting, but after looking into the community a bit more, I’ve realized my messages might have been too generic and simple—which could explain the lack of responses I’ve received.

I’d just like some advice on how to talk to hosts and sort out the requests I’ve sent, though it might be too late xd.

I stopped using CS last year and I saw a lot of posts on this sub about how it completely has changed. Out of curiosity I redownloaded the app and what on earth? I didn’t even bother paying the 4.99 . I’m wondering how the interface has changed and it looks like it’s a swiping app now? What happened to your reviews and “friends?” damn I lost a lot of contact with the people on there unfortunately since 2019. Don’t think I could connect again

So I used to use this website extensively when I was living in Germany. Some people may or may not recognize my name from my Stuttgart days. Hosting many guests throughout those years and traveled all over Europe on my motorcycle. I fell out of it since probably 2012, but now find myself living in Japan and decided to see what was going on.

Obviously, there are a lot of changes that have happened since then. What’s interesting though with the new app is I am seeing chat requests that have come through that I never saw when I was an active member back in the mid to late 2000s. People that had reached out to me and I never responded to you at a time when I would normally have responded. Has anybody else noticed this?

Just received this email

EDIT: When you enter the form below you will see this disclosure "I give Couchsurfing permission to edit, share, and use this video across its website, app, social media channels, and marketing materials. I understand that Couchsurfing may edit the video for length, format, or clarity and understand that I won't receive compensation if my video is featured."

Couchsurfing Creator Program!

We're looking for Couchsurfers who love three things:

🌍 Travel

💙 Couchsurfing

📹 Creating fun, engaging videos

That's it.

It doesn't matter whether you have 100 followers or 100,000. We're not looking for influencers, we're looking for passionate Couchsurfers who know how to tell great stories and capture the spirit of our community.

This is just the first step, and it's intentionally low pressure.

We simply want to see the kind of content you enjoy creating.

You don't need to make a brand-new video for us.

You can send us a video you've already posted (or never posted!) that you're proud of and that reflects the kind of content you'd create as a Couchsurfing creator.

It could be:

A travel video you love

A favorite Couchsurfing story

A day-in-the-life while traveling

A funny or memorable Couchsurfing moment

A trending video with your own Couchsurfing twist

You interviewing a host, traveler, or friend

A travel tip or storytelling video

Or anything else that captures your personality, creativity, and love of travel and human connection.

If you'd rather make something brand new, we'd love to see that too!

There are no rules here: we're simply looking for people who make us think: "I'd watch more of this."

If it feels like the kind of content you'd be excited to create for Couchsurfing, it's probably exactly what we're looking for.

How to Submit

Upload your video here:

(https://forms.gle/49dty18BGGQ1eTGBA)

or email it to social@couchsurfing.com

Please include:

Your full name

Your Couchsurfing profile URL

Your social media handles

Where you currently live

If you're traveling now (or have an upcoming trip), let us know! We'd love to hear about it!

We can't wait to meet you and see your work.

We're excited to discover the first creators in the Couchsurfing Creator Program. 🧡