Is anyone hosting just for fun?

I’ve hosted a few people through CS and similar sites. It’s fun, but it attracts a certain crowd. Typically someone who has quit his/her job to see the world.

When I suspended my career to see the world, I had some great AirBnB experiences:

  1. A host drove me to a free laser show in the town square
  2. On numerous occasions, I met other guests in the common areas and we did things together: Sightseeing, cooking etc.

If I set up my apartment for CS, is it worth it to also register on AirBnB, even if I don’t need the income ? Then I’ll also meet employed people.

Mainly for extra income but I enjoy meeting guest sometime. And when they ask about transport around the city I offer to drive them around and have nice conversations in the car about their life back home and why they came to my country.

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No one hosts “just for fun”, frixx, and it’s belittling of the time and effort it takes, to portray hosting as ever being that. I say that because while hosting can be quite enjoyable, it’s also a lot of work. No one cleans other people’s hair and soap scum out of the shower drain, or works to get stains out of sheets and towels “for fun”. There is also work involved in keeping one’s listing and calendar up to date, answering guest messages in a timely fashion, and dealing with platforms which constantly make changes, many of them not at all what hosts consider to be improvements. There are also guests who can be stressful to host- constant complainers, scammers, people who don’t clean up after themselves, those who push boundaries. It’s a job, like any other.

That said, yes, most hosts do it as a money maker for sure, and rely on the income, but there are some of us who wouldn’t do it just for the money.

I started hosting my guest room because it just sat empty for most of the year unless friends or family came to visit. The money isn’t something I rely on, but I wouldn’t do it for free, either.

I only host one guest at a time, and have met people from all over the world, almost all of them really cool, interesting people. I have taken them to beaches they’d never know about as tourists and wouldn’t be able to get to without a car, invited them along to a party, walked around town with them, pointing out the good places to eat and shop, talked over a bottle of wine late into the night. Because I share my kitchen with them, we sometimes also share meals. Some past guests I have kept in touch with.

I think that’s what you mean by “for fun”- that it’s an experience that enriches my life in ways other than financially.

But when you list on a booking platform, not all guests are going to be the sociable types, and I have certainly had guests who I see very little of- they are out and about most of the time, are quite private when home, staying mostly in their room, not interested in hanging out or chitchat, eat their meals out, so might only use the kitchen to stash some drinks in the fridge or fill their water bottle.

That’s fine with me- I take my cue from the guests as to how much interaction they want. You can somewhat control what type of guests you get by how you write up your listing ad, who you market to, and by not using Instant Book, so you have an opportunity to check out a guest’s past reviews and commumicate with them before accepting their booking, but just be aware that you won’t have a huge amount of control over only getting the same kind of guests that you are.

Ideally guests who book homeshares enjoy that type of living situation, and the “live like a local” vibe, and are a good “fit”, but some guests just book private room/shared space listings because they are cheaper.

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Most folks on this forum are Airbnb hosts who host for money and if they let someone stay free it’s probably through the Airbnb.org program or another local charity, not “fun” per se.

I would think so. I’ve made a couple of people I’d consider friends through Airbnb and I’ve also had a host invite me to an event. I don’t see much downside to it.

@frixx, we host for the money primarily, but we find hosting to be a lot of fun, even with all the work. We have made a lot of friends through hosting, and we have dozens of return guests.

We home-share with our guests, so we get to know almost all of them.

If it were all work and no fun, I don’t think we’d host at all.

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I don’t know what CS is.
I host for money. There’s too much work and deprecation of my property to do this for free.
If it weren’t for the money I’d use my time doing something I actually enjoy.

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I have no idea what CS refers to in the OP, either. I can never quite understand why people assume everyone understands the acronyms they use.

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CS = couch surfing. It took me a while to figure it out.

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It’s my opinion and many wont’ agree, but the CS crowd tends to be more open minded and interesting than Airbnb guests. They truly believe in sharing and connecting. The Airbnb experience is more transactional as money is involved. Airbnb has more people who are employed (so they can pay for their travel), but many of them lead dull boring lives making lots of money.

I host on Airbnb primarily for the money, but I have fun doing it. I have fun extracting maximum revenue from guests, and also obtaining five-star reviews. I enjoy reading how guests had a good time, proposed to their girlfriend, took a parent or spouse for the first time to a tropical island, enjoyed snorkeling or sunset dinner cruise, etc.

I have been scammed a few times, but now I mostly beat the scammers. I get a kick out of denying refund to a scammer.

Overall hosting is a fun and lucrative real-life game.

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It depends on what kind of listing you have. My private room listing in the countryside on the outskirts of a touristy beach town, for one guest, sharing my kitchen with me, tends to attract those kinds of guests. I’ve never had a complainer, all are onboard with not wasting water here, as I don’t have an endless supply, recycling and using my compost pail instead of throwing food waste in the garbage. And most have been interesting people with unusual life stories. And I’ve only ever had one right-winger, but at least he wasn’t some evangelical fanatic, and he was an easygoing guy, not pushing his agenda.

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I say that I host for both income and fun. However, when I add up my expenses and think about what my time is worth, perhaps I am just hosting for fun, lol.

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Is hosting actually fun?

Wow, learn something new everyday.

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Hosting is fun if you are every selective. The easiest and most interesting people to host are long distance cyclists: You point at your lawn and say “Pitch your tent there then come in for your shower”. (Hence the name of their hosting website: Warm Showers). In return they tell you the most incredible stories: Like accidentally entering a military town in a country run by a dictator.

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I agree with @muddy - hosting isn’t something that you can just do ‘for fun’.

If you are considering doing it just for the fun of it, then don’t do it.

Hosts are professional people doing a professional, and sometimes thankless, job. It’s not something you can play at doing or try out so that you can see if it attracts a better crowd.

You’ll need to be registered with your local authority, have relevant licences, ensure that you have proper STR insurance, depending on your area be subject to annual inspections which you may or may not pass, invest money to bring your place up to standard if not local code… the list goes on.

So, if your goal in joining and posting here is to find out if Airbnb is going to be ‘fun’ for you, then I think that maybe you should read a lot more of our posts here.

I too didn’t know what it meant. Guess I’m too old.
My son couch surfed about 10 years ago, but came down with scabies and then nobody wanted him anymore. Wonder why???

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Haha. That reminds me of when a young boarder I had years ago in Canada, when hearing that I was going to Mexico, told me I should take the Green Tortoise, a bus that make trips down to Mexico. She told me it was so much fun, even though they sometimes had to go days without a shower. That all these beds fold down in the bus every night. I told her it sounded like a really good way to get scabies and head lice.

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True, for me it’s not fun. I met interesting people, surely, but that’s a fraction of my guests. My guests are on a Gaus curve: very few interesting, very few horrible, and the vast majority just run of the mill, no conversation, not even met them in person.

CS is for young people, I think. Since I’d never CS myself, I’ll never receive CS-ers either. I’m too much freaked out to receive this type of people. I mean low Airbnb prices attracted people less inclined to respect my property. We had discussions on this forum about how increasing the price will attract better quality people. Free lodging will attract ruthless people, I think and why would I do that? Hosting costs money and time on my part. Utilities, cleaning supplies and cleaning lady. Why would I want to pay these without recouping my investment and making a profit? No, thanks, not for me.

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I have some neighbors who have done Couch Surfing, both as guests and hosts. They are not at all young, nor have their couch surfer guests been young. And they have only had positive experiences.

So it isn’t true that it is only for young people nor that it attracts a bad element. Travelling on a budget has nothing to do with being a bad guest. (I have a budget-priced listing for my area, which has never attracted less than good quality guests). And since you are free to communicate as much as you want with potential couch surfers, without pressure to accept or decline in 24 hours, you can request and receive as much info as you want.

Their website also, in contrast to Airbnb and other str listing platforms, strongly stresses writing up a complete and informative profile.

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Interesting. I’m going to look into it, maybe later.

I’m not saying I would offer couch surfing myself, nor would I be inclined to take a chance on couch surfing while travelling, was just correcting some misconceptions.
My neighbors travel quite a bit internationally, in fact she works as an international tour guide and is really sociable, so they have made some new friends they then visit or stay with when they travel.