The downside of sleepover tourism

Staying at strangers' houses can help save money on travel, but many female solo travelers have been harassed in strange places.

Couchsurfing, the world’s largest free sleep-sharing network, launched in 2004, is popular among travelers for its hotel savings. Today, the app has around 10 million members from 200,000 destinations worldwide. One of the network’s top principles is that it is free, based on trust and mutual respect.

Despite its good intentions, the travel community is divided. One side, mostly male, praises it as a way for millions to travel on a budget. The other, mostly female, tells stories of violence and harassment.

The downside of sleepover tourism — **Rashvinda Kaur, founder of Host A Sister, an organization that helps female travelers find safe, free accommodation while traveling.** Photo: SCMP

Avantika Chaturvedi, an Indian tourist, had a bad experience when she was 18 years old. She used a stranger's sofa service when she traveled to the suburb of McLeod Ganj in Himachal Pradesh, India. Here, the young girl was harassed by a man, causing her to panic and run away. She couldn't sleep and cried all night. Since then, Avantika "swore that she would never sleep in a stranger's house again".

Years later, on a trip to the Himalayas, she met a woman traveling with her who told her that the practice of sleeping with strangers had been turned into a dating app by bad actors. “The catalog of horror stories about sleeping with strangers kept growing,” Avantika says.

That's why Rashvinda Kaur, a Malaysian entrepreneur living in the US, founded Host A Sister in 2019 with the aim of "bringing together female travelers from all over to help each other continue to explore the world." Kaur wanted to offer an alternative solution to ensure the safety of female travelers who want to stay overnight.

Her group now has more than 550,000 female members and provides female travelers with a safe place to sleep overnight in a foreign city. In addition, these hosts are willing to accompany or guide strangers to explore the place they are visiting on a voluntary basis.

The group is run by 12 volunteers living in many countries. Each person will spend 2-3 hours a day to monitor and update the situation in the group. Bella Ross, who lives in Tennessee, USA, was one of the first people to know about Kaur's group. She is satisfied with what Host A Sister does such as sharing travel experiences, providing accommodation and creating a safe space for female travelers.

Kirsi Asposalo, another member living in Finland, opened her home to female strangers for dinner on Christmas Day 2023. Providing safe accommodation for women from far away places is more than just a way for hosts to show kindness. “It’s a way for hosts to push themselves out of their comfort zones,” Kaur said.

Those acts of kindness expanded in 2022 when Russia and Ukraine were at war, and many women opened their homes to the homeless.

In November 2023, Kaur spent a month visiting Sri Lanka. She met Mariyan Malki, a person who rented out a room in a small house. Mariyan had joined the Couchsurfing network, hosting more than 350 people, but only a few of them were satisfied. Most of them expected the place they slept in to be modern like a hotel, complaining about many things that confused Mariyan. When she joined the network with Kaur, Mariyan felt more comfortable because there she could share transparently about the places she could sleep as well as the groups she wanted to host.

Despite the online conflict, Kaur's group has faced multiple forced shutdowns. Giulietta Boakye, a Ghanaian-Italian member, said the best way to have a pleasant experience when staying at a stranger's house is to communicate with the host and guest beforehand to reach a mutual agreement. "It's an effective way to avoid disappointment when traveling," she said.

According to vnexpress.net

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