Comments on: Death of Hospitality Club

By: Rafal

Rafal — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 13:55:15 +0000

Well ..

IMHO

The HitchHikersDataBase was the first.
than stay4free and then Freeloaders

By: a

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 06:58:12 +0000

I wonder if it is the nature of people in charge of a good thing, having volunteers work for free, to get corrupted with power. I came to this site as I had experienced problems with the CS site (the lack of accessible/responsive hosts with reliable availability and then ascerbic CS volunteers). Can anyone who starts these things keep it going without becoming a dictator or abusive in some way?

Regardless, Nature does love diversity so I guess it is live and let live.

By: F

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 21:55:32 +0000

Actually HC is strong in Eastern Europe thanks to the merge with pre-existing Hitch Hikers Database, where Veit copied the application form from and then succeded to have them join in.
Even before there were several other internet networks: Travelhoo (where I met Veit in 1998), Hospex, Stay4free just to name a few.
Hospex was very special at the time (1996/97): you had to send an email to a bot address following a precise scheme and after some time (minutes but sometimes even hours) you got an email back with a list of people satisfying the search paramethers.
And of course there was Servas, but not online.
So, HC is not the first online hospitality exchange service.

By: Sitarane

Sitarane — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 21:20:54 +0000

I still receive requests for HC. I’d say 4% of my requests. But I never actually met one of them. They just stop existing after sending request.

By: HC is still good for some regions

HC is still good for some regions — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 12:25:53 +0000

If you want to get a couch with cool people in Eastern Europe, HospitalityClub is still *the* network to use. Very few of them ever signed up for Couchsurfing, and their impressions of it are often negative because they see it as a very mainstream community. Veit’s dictatorial control doesn’t bother them as long as they still make lots of connections with people they like. It’s really a pity that CS can’t attract them, since a lot of them are very active in hospex and are constantly hosting, traveling, and arranging gatherings.

By: Spyro

Spyro — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 07:40:47 +0000

Wasn’t Global Freeloaders the first web based hospitality exchange network?

By: Benny Lewis

Benny Lewis — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 05:08:41 +0000

Good riddance. I joined CS and HC at the same time, filled out the same profile info and contacted the same number of people, treating both sites equally for the first 5 months and never made any connections through HC, despite getting great connections in CS. Afterwards I started changing address regularly (once every 2 months), waiting for that to be confirmed in HC meant that I could never host.

By: Yodude

Yodude — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 01:03:28 +0000

I’m happy to see it go. It needs to make room for something better.

The natural course in life.