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Homestay

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For the film, see Homestay (film).
Part of a series on
Homestays
Hospitality exchange services
Hospitality for work
Hospitality for money
Home exchange and others
A homestay in Vietnam
Tibetan Argali Homestay, Tsokar, Ladakh

Homestay (also home stay and home-stay) is a form of hospitality and lodging whereby visitors share a residence with a local of the area (host) to which they are traveling. The length of stay can vary from one night to over a year and can be provided for free (gift economy), in exchange for monetary compensation, in exchange for a stay at the guest's property either simultaneously or at another time (home exchange), or in exchange for housekeeping or work on the host's property (barter economy). Homestays are examples of collaborative consumption and the sharing economy.[1] Homestays are used by travelers; students who study abroad or participate in student exchange programs; and au pairs, who provide child care assistance and light household duties. They can be arranged via certain social networking services, online marketplaces, or academic institutions.[2]

Advantages and disadvantages

Homestays offer several advantages, such as exposure to everyday life in another location, the opportunity to experience local culture and traditions, opportunities for cultural diplomacy, friendship, intercultural competence, and foreign language practice, local advice, and a lower carbon footprint compared to other types of lodging; however, they may have rules and restrictions, such as curfews, facility usage, and work requirements, and may not have the same level of comfort, amenities, and privacy as other types of lodging.[3][4][5][6][7][8][9]

Notable social networking services and online marketplaces for homestay arrangement

Name Compensation to host Non-profit? Year founded Notes
9flats Monetary payment No 2010 9flats was launched by German internet entrepreneur Stephan Uhrenbacher – founder of Qype, and former head of northern European operations for lastminute.com.[10] It has over 50,000 members and 30,000 hosts in 104 countries.[11]
Airbnb Monetary payment No 2008 Founded by Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia and Nathan Blecharczyk in 2008, Airbnb is one of the largest networks for arranging homestays with over 6 million listings.[12]
BeWelcome None Yes 2007[13][14] BeWelcome (BW) is a non-profit, open-source hospitality exchange service accessible via the BeWelcome website or Android app. BeWelcome is operated by BeVolunteer, a nonprofit organization organized as a voluntary association registered in Rennes, Brittany, France, which is composed solely of volunteers. Membership in BeWelcome is motivated by the absence of for-profit pressure, democratic decision making, and a strict privacy policy.[15][16] The site had 180,000 users as of 2021, across 216 countries.[17][18] BeWelcome was formed by members of Hospitality Club who had had a disagreement with its founder.[19][20][21]
Booking.com Monetary payment No 1996 Booking.com has 6.2 million listings of homes, apartments and other unique places to stay.[22]
CouchSurfing None No 2004 Founded in 2004, guests using Couchsurfing do not pay for lodging, although users in many countries must pay a subscription fee to access the platform. The website, launched in 2004, was originally not for profit and built by volunteers, but changed to a for-profit structure in 2011.[23][24][25][26] This was an instance of commodification.[27][26][28]
Friendship Force International None Yes 1977 In 1977, Presbyterian minister Wayne Smith and U.S. President Jimmy Carter established Friendship Force International, with the mission of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, friendship, and intercultural competence via organized trips involving homestays.
Helpx Farm work / chores Yes 2001 Hosts provide food and lodging in exchange for up to 28 hours work per week. Some hosts will also provide day trips and transport. There is a €20 registration fee.[29]
HomeExchange.com Home exchange No 2011 Members can either do reciprocal home exchanges or non-reciprocal exchanges using "guest points".
Pasporta Servo None Yes 1974 Pasporta Servo facilities free lodging for Esperanto speakers and was established from the work of psychologist Rubén Feldman González in Argentina.
Servas International None Yes 1949 Servas International is a volunteer-run international nonprofit organization advocating interracial and international peace.[1] People wishing to join SERVAS must supply letters of recommendation and be interviewed to ensure that they understand the purpose and protocol of being a Servas member, whether as a traveller or host. Members pay an annual fee to the organization, which is determined locally by country.[30]
Snow Leopard Conservancy India Trust None Yes 2003 In 2003, Snow Leopard Conservancy India Trust, a non-profit organization based in Ladakh, India, pioneered conservation-linked homestays where people trekking in the mountains stay in village homes instead of camping. This brings much-needed additional income to villagers, helping them offset livestock loss to snow leopards.
Trustroots None Yes 2014 Trustroots.org facilitates free lodging for "circles" of people with common interests such as hitchhikers, nomads, dumpster divers, vegans and vegetarians, hikers, eco-living, food sharing, cyclists, musicians, artists, spirituality, yoga, dancers, cookers, climbing, rainbow gatherings, LGBTQ, punks, vanlife, photographers, hackers, gardeners and farmers, naturists, families, feminists, sailors, surfers, jugglers, slacklining, acroyoga, buskers, pilgrims, anarchists, squatters, Burning Man, lindy hoppers, motorcyclists, circus, skateboarding, beer brewing, ravers, winemakers, activists, zero wasters, runners, filmmakers, scuba divers, and others.[31] Trustroots has over 80,000 members.[32]
Vrbo Monetary payment No 1995
Warm Showers None Yes 1993 Warm Showers is a non-profit homestay platform for traveling cyclists. As of April 2021, It has over 171,000 members; including 114,000 hosts in 161 countries.[33]
WWOOF Farm work / chores Yes 1971 WWOOF ("Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms") is a network in which food, lodging, and education is provided to guests in exchange for housekeeping and farmworker services.[34]
Workaway Farm work / chores Yes 2002 Volunteers or "Workawayers", are expected to contribute a pre-agreed amount of time per day in exchange for lodging and food provided by their host.[35]

Defunct services

Name Compensation to host Non-profit? Year founded Notes
Hospitality Club (defunct) None Unknown 1992 In 1992, Hospex.org was launched online; it later was folded into Hospitality Club,[36] which was created in 2000 by Veit Kühne.
Traveler's Directory (defunct) None Yes 1965 In 1965, John Wilcock set up the Traveler's Directory as a listing of his friends willing to host each other when traveling.[37] In 1988, Joy Lily rescued the organization from imminent shutdown, forming Hospitality Exchange.

Hospitality exchange services

Part of a series on
Utopias
Mythical and religious
Literature
Theory
Concepts
Practice

Social networking services where hosts do not receive payments are called hospitality exchange services (HospEx).[38][39][40][41]

The relationships on hospitality exchange services are shaped by altruism[42][43] and are related to the cyber-utopianism on the Web in its beginnings and to utopia in general.[27][44]

Non-profit hospitality exchange services have offered scientists access to their anonymized data for publication of insights to the benefit of humanity. Before becoming for-profit, CouchSurfing offered four research teams access to its social networking data.[45][46][47][48] In 2015, non-profit hospitality exchange services Bewelcome and Warm Showers also provided their data for public research.[16]

The biggest HospEx platform in 2012, "CouchSurfing appears to fulfil the original utopian promise of the Internet to unite strangers across geographical and cultural divides and to form a global community"[49] CouchSurfing used utopian rhetoric of "better world," "sharing cultures," and of much better access to global flows and networks of all sorts.[50] It was featured as a means to achieve a cosmopolitan utopia.[51] Commodification of CouchSurfing terminated "the existence of a project run as a flourishing commons, a cyber-utopian dream come true; an example of genuine exchange outside and free from the dominant logic of capital, a space highlighting cultural instead of monetary values, understanding instead of commerce. This space still exists, but instead of outside, now within the market."[27] After CouchSurfing became a for-profit corporation in 2011, some members urged others to join BeWelcome.[52][53][54] Many brand ambassadors, who had become volunteers within CouchSurfing left to BeWelcome and other non-profit platforms because of the change in legal status and insufficient management transparency.[55]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Koszewska, Julia Maria (2008). Gift, Exchange and Trust: Information (its role, management and access to information) in modern society on the example of free-hospitality networks (Masters thesis). University of Warsaw. 175528 – via Academia.edu.
  2. ^ Clarke, Alan (June 2014). "Homestay Lodging: The Next Disruption in Travel". Wired.
  3. ^ Prasher, Kalyani (January 7, 2016). "7 Reasons To Choose Homestays Over Hotels On Your Travels". HuffPost.
  4. ^ Green, Molly (January 30, 2016). "How a Homestay Will Make Your Experience Abroad Richer". HuffPost.
  5. ^ "7 Benefits of Living with a Local Host Family". Go Abroad. October 30, 2013.
  6. ^ Andres, Elaine (April 25, 2012). "The Pros and Cons of a Homestay Abroad". Go Overseas.
  7. ^ McDaniel, Kelly; McDaniel, Ryan (January 29, 2016). "Airbnb vs. Hotel: Which is Right For You?". TravelPulse.
  8. ^ "Experience South America And Find The Perfect Homestay". Forbes. November 18, 2014.
  9. ^ Rivers, William P. (1998). "Is Being There Enough? The Effects of Homestay Placements on Language Gain During Study Abroad". Foreign Language Annals. 31 (4): 492–500. doi:10.1111/j.1944-9720.1998.tb00594.x.
  10. ^ Wong, Venus. "These Are The Best Alternatives To Airbnb". Refinery29.
  11. ^ "9flats.com". 9flats LinkedIn page. LinkedIn.
  12. ^ "About Us". Airbnb.
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  14. ^ Tagiew, Rustam; Ignatov, Dmitry I.; Delhibabu, Radhakrishnan (November 2015). "Hospitality Exchange Services as a Source of Spatial and Social Data?". 2015 IEEE International Conference on Data Mining Workshop (ICDMW): 1125–1130. doi:10.1109/ICDMW.2015.239. ISBN 978-1-4673-8493-3. S2CID 8196598.
  15. ^ Ossewaarde, Marinus; Reijers, Wessel (21 August 2017). "The illusion of the digital commons: 'False consciousness' in online alternative economies". Organization. 24 (5): 609–628. doi:10.1177/1350508417713217. ISSN 1350-5084. S2CID 149344352.
  16. ^ a b Tagiew, Rustam; Ignatov, Dmitry. I; Delhibabu, Radhakrishnan (2015). "Hospitality Exchange Services as a Source of Spatial and Social Data?". ICDMW: 1125–1130. doi:10.1109/ICDMW.2015.239. ISBN 978-1-4673-8493-3. S2CID 8196598.
  17. ^ "Alternativen zu Hotels und welche Vorzüge sie haben". www.derwesten.de (in German). 21 May 2019.
  18. ^ "Ditch The Hotels: Stay In Someone's Home On Your Next Vacay". outlooktraveller.com. 28 January 2020.
  19. ^ Baker, Vicky (18 April 2008). "Going local in Caracas, Venezuela". The Guardian.
  20. ^ Baker, Vicky (26 August 2011). "Budget Travel: Not-for-profit Couchsurfing becomes a company (with a conscience)". The Guardian.
  21. ^ "Tips for Travel Savings in 2014". The New York Times. 7 January 2014.
  22. ^ "Booking.com: About Booking.com". Booking.com.
  23. ^ Lapowesky, Issie (29 May 2012). "Couchsurfing Dilemma: Going for Profit". Inc.
  24. ^ Longenecker, Justin G.; Petty, J. William; Palich, Leslie E.; Hoy, Frank (15 January 2016). Small Business Management: Launching & Growing Entrepreneurial Ventures. Cengage. ISBN 9781305405745.
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  26. ^ a b DeAmicis, Carmel (10 January 2015). "How Couchsurfing became the Friendster of the sharing economy". GigaOm.
  27. ^ a b c Schöpf, Simon (2015-01-25). "The Commodification of the Couch: A Dialectical Analysis of Hospitality Exchange Platforms". TripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. 13 (1): 11–34–11–34. doi:10.31269/triplec.v13i1.480. ISSN 1726-670X.
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  29. ^ "The adventure of helping out". Positive News. September 21, 2011.
  30. ^ Hull, Dana (July 14, 1996). "SERVAS WITH A SMILE". The Washington Post.
  31. ^ "Circles - Trustroots". Trustroots.
  32. ^ "Trustroots Statistics". Trustroots.
  33. ^ "Member Statistics". Warm Showers.
  34. ^ Coppard, Sue (7 March 2006). "Good lives". The Guardian.
  35. ^ Katsoni, Vicky (2017). "An Investigation into the Sharing Economy Phenomenon in the Greek Tourism Industry in the Accommodation Sector". Turystyka i Rozwój Regionalny. 7 Współczesne problemy rozwoju turystyki (7): 25–35. doi:10.22630/TIRR.2017.7.3. ISSN 2353-9178.
  36. ^ Koszewska, Julia Maria (2008). Gift, Exchange and Trust.
  37. ^ Kirk, Robert William (1985). You Can Travel Free. Pelican Publishing Company. p. 100. ISBN 9780882894379.
  38. ^ Ikkala, Tapio; Lampinen, Airi (15 February 2014). "Defining the price of hospitality: networked hospitality exchange via Airbnb". Proceedings of the Companion Publication of the 17th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing. CSCW Companion '14. Association for Computing Machinery: 173–176. doi:10.1145/2556420.2556506. ISBN 9781450325417. S2CID 39491376.
  39. ^ Spitz, Tara (2017). The commodification of hospitality An analysis of tourism encounters between interculturality and difference in regard to Turkish couchsurfing experiences (Graduate thesis). Kadir Has University.
  40. ^ Håvardsholm, Angelica Kolstad (June 2016). How does gender influence couchsurfers behaviour intentions based on trust and perceived risk? (Masters thesis). Universitetet i Stavanger. hdl:11250/2413810.
  41. ^ Ronzhyn, Alexander (2020). "Online identity: constructing interpersonal trust and openness through participating in hospitality social networks". The Journal of Education, Culture, and Society. 4 (1): 47–56. doi:10.15503/jecs20131.47.56. ISSN 2081-1640. S2CID 213038501.
  42. ^ Rosen, Devan; Lafontaine, Pascale Roy; Hendrickson, Blake (1 September 2011). "CouchSurfing: Belonging and trust in a globally cooperative online social network". New Media & Society. 13 (6): 981–998. doi:10.1177/1461444810390341. ISSN 1461-4448. S2CID 14552636.
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  44. ^ Latja, Piia (2010). Creative Travel - Study of Tourism from a socio-cultural point of view - The Case of CouchSurfing (Masters thesis). University of Tampere.
  45. ^ Victor, Patricia; Cornelis, Chris; De Cock, Martine; Herrera-Viedma, Enrique (2010). "Bilattice-based aggregation operators for gradual trust and distrust". World Scientific Proceedings Series on Computer Engineering and Information Science. World Scientific: 505–510. doi:10.1142/9789814324700_0075. ISBN 978-981-4324-69-4. S2CID 5748283.
  46. ^ Dandekar, Pranav. Analysis & Generative Model for Trust Networks (PDF). Stanford Network Analysis Project (Report). Stanford University.
  47. ^ Overgoor, Jan; Wulczyn, Ellery; Potts, Christopher (20 May 2012). "Trust Propagation with Mixed-Effects Models". Sixth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media.
  48. ^ Lauterbach, Debra; Truong, Hung; Shah, Tanuj; Adamic, Lada (August 2009). "Surfing a Web of Trust: Reputation and Reciprocity on CouchSurfing.com". 2009 International Conference on Computational Science and Engineering. 4: 346–353. doi:10.1109/CSE.2009.345. ISBN 978-1-4244-5334-4. S2CID 12869279.
  49. ^ Molz, Jennie Germann (2012). Travel Connections: Tourism, Technology, and Togetherness in a Mobile World. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-68285-5.
  50. ^ Picard, David; Buchberger, Sonja (March 31, 2014). Couchsurfing Cosmopolitanisms: Can Tourism Make a Better World?. transcript Verlag. ISBN 978-3-8394-2255-7.
  51. ^ Chen, De-Jung (March 2018). "Couchsurfing: Performing the travel style through hospitality exchange". Tourist Studies. 18 (1): 105–122. doi:10.1177/1468797617710597. ISSN 1468-7976. PMC 6294175. PMID 30595668.
  52. ^ "A rough ride to profit for CouchSurfing". sfgate.com. 26 November 2014.
  53. ^ "Money causes schism in sharing economy". sgpress.ru. 22 May 2019.
  54. ^ "Paradise lost: The rise and ruin of Couchsurfing.com". nputmag.com. 15 November 2021.
  55. ^ "Managing a non-profit hospitality platform conversion: The case of Couchsurfing.com". Tourism Management Perspectives. 30: 138–146. 2019-04-01. 2019.
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