Couchsurfing or sexsurfing?

Agness Walewinder is a Polish girl in her twenties, one of the many adventurous youngsters in our world and an avid Couchsurfing user. Well, at least she was one. “I was very naïve, I must admit,” she says.
Her experiences last year, whilst back-packing in Europe, weren’t clearly the best times of her life. When Agness decided to travel around the continent, she picked her hosts for being males because, as she states, they are much more “easy going” whereas girls tend to be more conflictual.
What she didn’t know is that a new trend was coming to the block and she was about to become a part of it: the “sexsurfing experience.” In total, she was hosted by five men and two women during her journey. She was asked to have sex twice, and two other of her hosts admitted they only accepted the requests because they were hoping to take her to bed.
For those of you who are still not aware of it, Couchsurfing is a global network created by Casey Fenton in 2004 which reached one million members in 2010 and nowadays is used by seven million people in more than 100,000 cities. Its main goal is the exchange of hospitality between the members: they can be “hosts”, people who offer their home and time to their guests; or “surfers”, travellers who enjoy free accommodation but are committed to share their culture with the hosts.
According to a survey made in 15 cities of all parts of the globe, through the Couchsurfing website, 90% of the people still believe that the network provides the best option for travellers with a small budget, a survey in which 40% of the participants have been a part of it for more than three years. Nevertheless, it also showed a serious preoccupation of half of the people: there are too many users who don’t relate to the core values of the community – “Create connection; offer kindness; leave it better than you found it”. So what is happening with this organisation that used to be the church of the open-minded world explorers?
The website has experienced a decrease in its accession since it changed to a for-profit organisation in 2011, which encouraged some of the members to change to its rival BeWelcome. This year, 40% of the staff was cut off in October and CEO Tony Espinoza stepped down, stating he was proud that “Couchsurfing is poised for the future with a great team and a passionate, growing community.”
Markus Nittman is a 19-year-old boy from Austria, who couchsurfed for a couple of weeks in Australia. “I stayed at this guy’s house, he was a bit older than me but pretty nice, and showed me around some really good places in Melbourne. He took me to this fancy bar, we had some cocktails, and the night was going pretty great.” So far, so good, right? “After a while, I was already feeling a bit drunk. He took advantage of it and asked me if I wanted to have sex with him.” Markus politely said “no” and was lucky to be in the presence of a mature person who respected his position and stepped back.
The same thing didn’t happen to Agness. She admitted her hosts’ attitudes changed when she refused: “Unfortunately, most of the guys turned into cold and ignorant people. They stopped talking to me and used plenty of excuses not to show me around the city. It was a very childish and disappointing behaviour.” After that, she shared what happened in her blog and received more than 200 different responses, some of them from people describing that they have gone through the exact same situation.
Malia Moss, former Producer of Couchsurfing Stories, made a serious statement in her YouTube channel: “You, as a surfer, are not expected to have sex with your host in exchange for a place to stay. That is prostitution! If you feel uncomfortable, at all, leave that place immediately.”
Not only during travelling this kind of situation happens. According to the Couchsurfing official statistics, there are more than 300 cities in the world organising weekly events, which seem rather attractive to some of the members. Victoria Martin, 27, was one of them when she had a one-night-stand with a fellow surfer named Joe in Amsterdam. “The truth is, when I saw he was going to the meeting, I knew I was going to like him and that I had to go too,” the Spanish stated.
On December 7, the website Bussinessinsider.com published a controversial article called “Couchsurfing’s Sex Secret: It’s The Greatest Hook-Up App Ever Devised”, to which the almost-a-decade organisation CS replied on its Twitter: “There is no sexual obligation when it comes to Couchsurfing. Our safety team removes members from the website who are using it for sex or dating purposes – that is not what we’re about!” The fact is that, nowadays, it is too easy to create a fake image of ourselves online. The website allows us to pay to be a verified user and exchange references with people we met through real life travelling experiences; however, most of these “sexsurfing” situations remain unreported.
This problem is being carefully handled by the safety team of the website, which has a special section on “Personal Safety Tips.” They advise the surfers to look for hosts with a complete and consistent profile and good references before choosing, to make sure they know what to expect from the houses and to immediately contact the authorities if they feel unsafe or in danger. When in a safe location, there is also the option to report the incident to the Trust and Safety Team.
For Agness, the fact that Couchsurfing is not the safest option, especially if you are a female solo traveller, just makes the challenge harder but not impossible. “People need to realize that Couchsurfing can be a great as well as a bad experience and we should be extremely careful when signing up for this. I'm totally fine with Couchsurfing as long as I stay with girls, and although I had some bad experiences, I also have some great memories I will cherish forever.”