Hospitality exchange service

Hospitality exchange services (hospitality exchange platforms, hospitality exchange networks or HospEx) are social networking services used for accommodation of travellers, where hosts do not receive payments. The relationships on hospitality exchange services are shaped by altruism and are related to the cyber-utopianism on the Web in its beginnings and to utopia in general.

On HospEx, members typically create public profiles that describe themselves and their travel plans, and then searching for potential hosts or guests based on various criteria such as location, interests, and availability. Travelers connect with local hosts who are willing to offer free accommodation, meals, and/or other forms of hospitality during their trip. The concept of hospitality exchange has been around for a long time, with informal networks of travelers and hosts existing for decades. However, the advent of the internet and social media has made it much easier to connect with people from all over the world, and hospitality exchange networks have become increasingly popular as a way for people to avoid commercial tourism and experience local cultures in a more authentic way. These networks are usually non-profit, registered under .org-domains, built up by volunteers and use open-source software.

Uniqueness
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". CouchSurfing used utopian rhetoric of "better world," "sharing cultures," and of much better access to global flows and networks of all sorts. It was featured as a means to achieve a cosmopolitan utopia. 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." After CouchSurfing became a for-profit corporation in 2011, some members urged others to join BeWelcome. Many volunteers, who had become brand ambassadors of CouchSurfing, left to BeWelcome and other non-profit platforms because of the change in legal status and insufficient management transparency.

Non-profit hospitality exchange services have offered scientists access to their anonymized data for publication of research on trust and cooperation. Before becoming for-profit, CouchSurfing offered four research teams access to its social networking data. In 2015, non-profit hospitality exchange services Bewelcome and Warm Showers also provided their data for public research.