Company:BeWelcome
BeWelcome (BW) is a hospitality exchange service accessible via a website or an Android app. The platform is a gift economy; hosts are not allowed to charge for lodging.[1]
BeWelcome is operated by BeVolunteer, a nonprofit organization organized as a voluntary association registered in Rennes, Brittany, France, which is composed solely of volunteers. The software behind the website, the BW-rox platform, is free and open-source software.[2][better source needed] Members are motivated to cook together exchanging recipes, improve foreign languages, and sleep at the a local's residence.[3] It is reported to have neither signup fees no verification process in 2015.[3]
The site has about 160,000 users, approximately 150 login per day, and 20% have logged in 12 months.[4][clarification needed]
History
The idea for the website came in 2005 after members of Hospitality Club had a disagreement with its founder.[5]
The website was launched in February 2007 by ex-members of Hospitality Club.[6][7][8]
Growth
Bewelcome.org has been mentioned in la Nacion[9], The Guardian[10], The Guardian[11], Mitteldeutsche Zeitung[12], and the Irish Times.[13]
It has also been recommended in various guidebooks, such as Lonely Planet (Le Best of 2014 de Lonely Planet)[14], Bradt's Madagascar[15] and the ULTIMATE Guide for the Solo Woman in Italy.[16]
After CouchSurfing became a for-profit corporation in 2011, some members urged others to join BeWelcome.[17]. Many so-called (CS 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.[18]. The divergence between the for profit and non-profit versions of hospitality exchange has drawn greater attention. BeWelcome is registered as a nonprofit in France, is run democratically by volunteers, and kept its operating costs below $3,500 in 2020. [19]
Homestay requests
BeWelcome grants trustworthy teams of scientists access to its anonymized data for publication of insights to the benefit of humanity. In 2015, an analysis of 97,915 homestay requests from BeWelcome and 285,444 homestay requests from Warm Showers showed general regularity — the less time is spent on writing a homestay request, the lower is the probability of success. Since both networks are shaped by altruism, low-effort communication, aka 'copy and paste requests', evidently sends the wrong signal.[20]
References
- ↑ "Alternativen zu Hotels und welche Vorzüge sie haben" (in de). www.derwesten.de. 21 May 2019. https://www.derwesten.de/reise/diese-vorzuege-haben-alternativen-zum-hotel-id219233523.html.
- ↑ "About BeWelcome". BeWelcome. https://www.bewelcome.org/about/getactive.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Santos, Anderson (1 February 2015). Citizens of the World: An Autoethnography of Couchsurfing and Uncertainty Reduction Theory. https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/masters/353/. Retrieved 1 February 2022.
- ↑ "BeWelcome Stats". BeWelcome. https://www.bewelcome.org/stats.
- ↑ Baker, Vicky (18 April 2008). "Going local in Caracas, Venezuela". The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2008/apr/19/caracas.adventure?page=all.
- ↑ Baker, Vicky (26 August 2011). "Budget Travel: Not-for-profit Couchsurfing becomes a company (with a conscience)". The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2011/aug/26/couchsurfing-investment-budget-travel.
- ↑ Kugel, Seth (7 January 2014). "Tips for Travel Savings in 2014". The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/12/travel/tips-for-travel-savings-in-2014.html.
- ↑ Rodemann, Julian (29 March 2016). "Couchsurfing mit Haken" (in de). DIE WELT. https://www.welt.de/print/die_welt/finanzen/article153750482/Couchsurfing-mit-Haken.html.
- ↑ "Cómo usar la Web para hacer amigos y poder viajar... gratis" (in sp). wlanacion.com.ar. 27 March 2008. https://www.lanacion.com.ar/sociedad/como-usar-la-web-para-hacer-amigos-y-poder-viajar-gratis-nid998987/.
- ↑ "Going local in Caracas, Venezuela" (in en). theguardian.com. 19 April 2008. https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2008/apr/19/caracas.adventure.
- ↑ "Going local in Caracas, Venezuela" (in en). theguardian.com. 19 April 2008. https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2008/apr/19/caracas.adventure.
- ↑ "Ein guter Gast sein: Tipps für das Couchsurfing" (in de). mz.de. 28 January 2009. https://www.mz.de/leben/ein-guter-gast-sein-tipps-fur-das-couchsurfing-2453191.
- ↑ "Berlin’s sharing economy: a glimpse of the future?" (in en). irishtimes.com. 4 January 2016. https://www.irishtimes.com/news/consumer/berlin-s-sharing-economy-a-glimpse-of-the-future-1.2475033.
- ↑ Planet, Lonely (1 February 2014). Le Best of 2014 de Lonely Planet. https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Le_Best_of_2014_de_Lonely_Planet/. Retrieved 1 February 2022.
- ↑ Bradt, Hilary (15 August 2017). Madagascar (Bradt Travel Guides). https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=9781784770488&i=stripbooks&linkCode=qs. Retrieved 1 February 2022.
- ↑ Busch, Sierra (1 May 2021). The ULTIMATE Guide for the Solo Woman in Italy. https://www.creativeedgetravel.com/post/the-ultimate-guide-for-the-solo-woman-in-italy-pre-sale. Retrieved 1 February 2022.
- ↑ Brown, Kristen V. (26 November 2014). "A rough ride to profit for CouchSurfing". San Francisco Chronicle. https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/A-rough-ride-to-profit-for-CouchSurfing-5920089.php.
- ↑ "Managing a non-profit hospitality platform conversion: The case of Couchsurfing.com" (in en). Tourism Management Perspectives 30: 138–146. 2019-04-01. doi:10.1016/j.tmp.2019.02.018. ISSN 2211-9736. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211973619300297. Retrieved 28 May 2021.
- ↑ "Paradise lost: The rise and ruin of Couchsurfing.com" (in en). inputmag.com. 15 November 2021. https://www.inputmag.com/features/rise-and-ruin-of-couchsurfing.
- ↑ Tagiew, Rustam; Ignatov, Dmitry I.; Delhibabu, Radhakrishnan (2015). "Economics of Internet-Based Hospitality Exchange". (IEEE/WIC/ACM) International Conference on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology (WI-IAT). Singapore. pp. 493–498. doi:10.1109/WI-IAT.2015.89.
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