Couchsurfing is a fantastic way to backpack around the world. Chance meetings with fellow travelers in hostels or on tour that result in an offer to come stay when you are in each other’s cities are the best. I have been fortunate enough to stay with a few people I have met whilst traveling and was completely overwhelmed by these new friends not just offering me a couch, but most times a private bedroom, use of their cars, meals, laundry facilities and invitations to family gatherings.

Today couchsurfing is not only offered by people you meet or friends of friends. Couchsurfing.com is the go-to site to try and find a free place to sleep (and hopefully good company, possibly a tour, and maybe a friendly drink or two) whilst you are on the road.

The couchsurfing.com concept is excellent. People list their couches and availability, references are provided by previous surfers, a description of what sleeping surface is available (couch, sofa bed, actual bed, hammock) with a hopefully well completed profile of both hosts and surfers. Almost all travel blogs and websites that have written about how to backpack around the world, or how to travel on a budget will refer to couchsurfing as an amazing and inexpensive way to do it. And they are right. I was fortunate enough to recently couchsurf in Bordeaux, France. I desperately wanted to visit the area and discover the beauty of the world renown wine region, however as there are no hostels in Bordeaux and my backpacker budget could not afford the steep cost of a hotel room, the only way I was going to be able to make it work was if I could couchsurf. Luckily for me Marie, my wonderful host, had just had a cancellation on the dates I was proposing and therefore had availability. I ended up staying with Marie for 4 nights and she was kind enough to give me a tour of the area, cook me dinner and invite me to spend time with her friends. This truly made my experience in Bordeaux unique and memorable.

However so far Marie has been my only couchsurfing.com success story. Traveling around the world I like many others I’m sure, had lofty ambitions that when I wanted to couchsurf I could just go onto the website, enter my location and dates and easily find somewhere to stay. In reality, this was not the case.

For months I tried to find couchsurfing hosts as I moved across Europe. Not being entirely sure of my itinerary, as is the case for many backpackers, I tried to find hosts somewhere between two days to two weeks in advance of my arrival. The majority of requests I sent out never received a response. Of those hosts who did respond, many said that they already had surfers on the dates I had requested, and some said they were on holiday themselves and not able to host. After a few weeks, trying to find a couchsurfing host became frustrating.

My request rate was also not, I thought, a minimal amount. For many of the major cities such as Barcelona, Paris, Nice or Florence I was sending out at least fifty requests if not more for each city, all of which were not successful. Couchsurfing.com also has city discussion groups that you can join rather than contacting hosts directly, however most of these resulted in people asking if I wanted to me them for a drink or be shown around the city. Whilst this is a great way to meet new local people, it didn’t provide me with a bed. I explained my frustration to my Bordeaux host Marie who it turned out hosted people almost constantly. She said that fifty requests was nothing and if I wanted to be successful I needed to send at least a hundred out to each city I was hoping to stay. Trying to find a host was becoming a full-time job and with limited access to wifi and wanting to enjoy the place I was in, not something I was willing to let absorb all of my time.

So whilst the couchsurfing.com concept is excellent, the website has recently been overhauled and the opportunity to travel the world meeting new people on a very limited budget is certainly achievable, it’s often not as easy as sending out a couple of requests and hoping you get a yes.