Participate in Creating a Better World, One Couch at a Time

CouchSurfing belongs to what is referred to as a "online hospitality exchange network" which can simply put be described as a online social networking site fostering offline relationships and contact in the form of non-monetary hospitality exchange. The objective of this book is to explore and analyse the CouchSurfing community together with developments from technological, societal and tourism perspectives in order to explain the popularity, motives and possible future developments on this type of travelling. Theories of networked individualism, which refer to the changing nature of creating and maintaining friendships as a result of technological developments; the blurring between online and oflline, which is referred to as de-differentiation; alienation from hedonism and the desire economy, which relate to the challenge economy and; disintegration of traditional communities explain the increased popularity of CouchSurfing from a societal & technological perspective and will be discussed in this book. These findings, together with findings on the practice & ideology of CouchSurfing will be combined with Plog's & Cohen's models in order to introduce a typology of CouchSurfers