Mar 28, 2008
Free or nominally-priced hospitality services are finally getting the recognition they deserve
This week's issue of Time magazine (March 31, the one with the Dalai Lama on the cover) carries a short article on the emergence of hospitality services around the world, but specifically mentions only two of them: Servas (www.usservas.org) and Couchsurfing.com (www.couchsurfing.com). Which reminds me to draw your attention to a constant increase in the several hospitality websites that we've been careful to describe in this blog. Most recently, I wrote about www.educatorstravel.com, which enables teachers and their families to stay for a total of $40 a night in some 6,000 homes in 50 countries; the charge to join is $46 a year.
Educatorstravel.com has just been joined by a newer organization called teacherstravelweb.com (www.teacherstravelweb.com), whose members live in America, Canada, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, and host each other free-of-charge, without a nightly fee. Membership fee to join: €45.
A broader group supports the hospitality offers of the Evergreen Club (www.evergreenclub.com) for people over the age of 50 who mainly live in the United States (only a few members presently reside overseas). Evergreen has always believed that if a nominal charge is assessed for an overnight stay ($15 for two people per night), the transaction will be conducted in a more professional and reliable manner. You pay $75 a year to join Evergreen, but thereafter, your only cost is $15 a night for hospitality.
At a time when hotel rates are going through the roof both domestically and around the world, free hospitality clubs -- "you stay in my home and I'll later stay in yours' or in the home of another member" -- are enabling many Americans to continue traveling. Though you may not have considered this option in the days when the dollar was king, you might now want to shed your inhibitions and accept these offers of home hospitality. They make sense.
Write and read comments about this post.
Educatorstravel.com has just been joined by a newer organization called teacherstravelweb.com (www.teacherstravelweb.com), whose members live in America, Canada, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, and host each other free-of-charge, without a nightly fee. Membership fee to join: €45.
A broader group supports the hospitality offers of the Evergreen Club (www.evergreenclub.com) for people over the age of 50 who mainly live in the United States (only a few members presently reside overseas). Evergreen has always believed that if a nominal charge is assessed for an overnight stay ($15 for two people per night), the transaction will be conducted in a more professional and reliable manner. You pay $75 a year to join Evergreen, but thereafter, your only cost is $15 a night for hospitality.
At a time when hotel rates are going through the roof both domestically and around the world, free hospitality clubs -- "you stay in my home and I'll later stay in yours' or in the home of another member" -- are enabling many Americans to continue traveling. Though you may not have considered this option in the days when the dollar was king, you might now want to shed your inhibitions and accept these offers of home hospitality. They make sense.
Write and read comments about this post.
Labels: accommodations, websites
Fifty years ago, 
Arthur Frommer is generally acknowledged to be the nation's foremost travel authority. He is the founder of the
