A - Z PRIMER: “A” IS ALSO FOR ACCOMMODATION

I hope everyone had a good mother’s day last Sunday.  Perhaps you had breakfast in bed, dined out, or had a mini-vacation. 

Speaking of vacation, I want to continue with “A” in the “A to Z” discourse.  Whenever we take a vacation, holiday, excursion or leave our homes for an overnight or extended period of time, we need to find accommodations.  As the way we go about finding and using accommodations may be quite different than the “ordinary”, I thought it worthy of a blog topic. 

I want to preface this blog discussion by first stating that I have nothing against chain hotels/motels or 5-star accommodations, but as it generally doesn’t fit our budget or lifestyle, we rarely, if ever, go that route. 

So what do we do? 

1)  First off, in keeping with the principle of not spending more than we earn, we always pay attention to the cost of accommodations.  But of course it’s not just about cost.   

2)  We spend a lot of time looking at reviews from others.  As people tend to comment if a place was “absolutely terrific” or “a real dump”, sometimes it can be difficult to get an average perspective.  Nonetheless, it’s immensely helpful to read reviews from others. 

3)  Depending on the purpose of our stay often determines what we are or are not willing to overlook/include/exclude.  For example, if we need an overnight accommodation for an early morning flight, our criteria is much different than if it’s a holiday stay.  I’m sure most people do the same thing; they adjust their criteria depending on the situation. 

4)  Assuming we need accommodation for vacation, we try to use local businesses versus chain hotels/motels.  It’s not just that they tend to be cheaper (which usually is true) but we feel that “going local” or “buying local” is an important way to support the economy where we’re staying.  

When you stay local, you have the added benefit of tapping into the knowledge base of the locals, as well as the opportunity to develop personal connections.  Developing personal connections in an area you are visiting adds tremendous value and enriches the time spent.  I’ll come back to this point again…and again…and again. 

There are zillions of websites and apps to find just about whatever type of accommodation you are looking for.  I’ll let you do your own internet searches. I want to talk about two of my favorite websites/means of accommodation; CouchSurfing and Airbnb. 

Yes, I suppose I could have covered CouchSurfing when I got to the letter “C”, but I didn’t want to wait that long. 

 

What exactly is CouchSurfing?

CouchSurfing is exactly what it sounds like…People (i.e., “surfers”) ask to stay with a CouchSurfer host.  No money is exchanged; however it is common practice for the surfer to bring something to share with the host (such as food, beverage or other token of appreciation) 

CouchSurfing was founded in 2004 and is one of the better known “hospitality exchanges” (where people host other people for the sake of cultural exchange).  Hospitality Exchanges are terrific forms of accommodation, but in reality, are much, much more than that.  They are a means to make connections with others, to share ideas and foster cultural interchange.   

Many people have HUGE trepidation thinking about hosting strangers, or staying with people they don’t (yet) know.  CouchSurfing is more popular outside of the USA and is more popular amongst the Gen X and Y’ers.   

I would say that Americans tend to have much more xenophobia than other cultures.  I base my premise on the reactions we’ve gotten from our family and American friends (“You what?  You have strangers stay in your house??  You stayed with strangers???  Didn’t you fear for your life????) versus the reaction from our non-American friends (“What a great idea!). 

CouchSurfing is worldwide and one can conduct searches for where/who to stay with by: location, gender, age, as well as subcategories/groups.  We are a member of the CouchSurfing family group and try to stay with families. 

Our experience with using CouchSurfing, being both hosts and surfers has been nothing but positive.  During our travels in Europe, over the course of two months we stayed with 16 different CouchSurf hosts.  We choose several hosts based on their profile (we wanted to meet them!) rather than where they lived.   

What we found is that by staying with a local, in their home, that we gained much more intimate knowledge of the area.  It was as if we had our own personal guides – Wait – we DID have our own personal guides!  Furthermore, we now have incredible friendships in Spain, France, Germany, Switzerland and Italy. Here we are with one of our favorite CouchSurfing families in Seville, Spain:

 

 

 

We have also done a bit of surfing in the USA – and it was absolutely terrific!  In fact, we ended up buying our trusty Subaru wagon (the one with the British flag painted on the hood) from our CouchSurf hosts! 

 

 

Note:  There are also other ways to stay with hosts, other than Hospitality Exchanges.  There’s HelpX and WOOFERS, but there is an expectation of doing work (i.e., labor) in exchange for accommodation.

 

Airbnb 

Airbnb was founded in 2008 and is based out of San Francisco, CA.  The idea is to connect people to unique travel experience whereby people (hosts) can rent out their homes, spare rooms, or other potential accommodations (i.e., tent, yurt, travel trailer, castle, island, etc.), like a hotel.  So, on the one hand the idea is similar to that of CouchSurfing in that you (often) stay in people’s homes.  But it has a business element (and perhaps some would argue a higher level of safety/security) in that the traveler pays the host.  A host can create a webpage listing their type(s) of accommodation on the Airbnb template.  They set up a profile; decide what to charge and what to offer.  Airbnb takes a small percentage and the rest of the payment goes to the host.

Airbnb is currently in about 192 countries and in more than 26,000 cities.  During our two months of travel in Europe, we used Airbnb four times.  Each host and each accommodation was different than the next; all were equally wonderful.

To use the Airbnb services, one types in a location (city), dates and number of people needing accommodation. The resulting search provides a listing of potential Airbnb sites. One can filter by price, proximity and services.

Being the entrepreneurial spirits we are – we recently (as in less than one week ago) made a profile to be Airbnb hosts.  So – anyone out there needing accommodation out our way?  We cater to families and allow well behaved pets.

To view our Airbnb link, go to:

 https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/1171593

*As I'm writing this and getting it ready to be published, we already received our first Airbnb request!  Wow - This is very, very exciting for us!! 

 

Well, I think that's enough of the letter "A" for the moment.  Next week I'll move onto the letter "B" and talk about things like: Bargains, Budgeting, Buying in Bulk, Bicycling... and whatever else comes to mind.

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Disclaimer time: I’m not a financial planner, nor am I a business guru.  What I am is a very practical person with (as my mother always said) “a good head on her shoulders”.   I have good common sense and am old enough to have accrued plenty of wisdom and practical sense.