BeWelcome News

We are proud to announce that BeWelcome is getting a new design! You can already have a look at the first round of improvements. Go to https://beta.bewelcome.org to see the new home page.
 

After logging in with your well-known username and password you will see some more changes to the menu structure:

Additionally, a new footer has been created that contains links that were in the top menu before but added some visual clutter there.

There is more planned in the future especially with the upcoming…

Hi Vivolynn, 

how did you get started with BeWelcome? 

I suppose it grew from my own younger days of travel and a desire to pay forward the kindness I received from strangers in strange countries. Having had three kids, travel was much harder than it was before and so we decided that we could introduce our children to the world by hosting. As our children are in French school, we often tried to take in a couple from a French speaking country twice a year. It made home life more fun as we

…

On November 27th, BeWelcome was featured in a "digital café" at Le Rize cultural centre in Villeurbanne (Lyon metropolis, France). The evening's topic was "European digital alternatives", with the purpose of introducing alternatives to big (mostly US) tech companies in different fields. A first part of the evening was dedicated to discussion about online tools such as Framasoft, chatons.org or Peertube. Then there was a focus on BeWelcome, as an alternative to commercial hospitality sites.

This…

We asked Nielske, one of our community members and active hosts, four questions about his hosting experiences in Tilburg.

Niels with Carolyn in Ladybird skate park (Tilburg)

Question: How is it to host in Tilburg?

Nielske: It’s great! Tilburg is a small town that’s off the beaten path, so there’s not much tourism (yet) but lots of interesting culture and sights to show. Very underground. Every guest i had was pleasantly surprised by this city! The fact that they chose to visit me is also quite…

Does spending a looong weekend with likeminded people of various #hospitalityexchange networks sound interesting? And you have some free days in October (Oct 2-6)? Then you should consider joining the 
Basque Autumn Days 2025 in Bilbao:
https://www.bewelcome.org/activities/5125

Big thanks to the organizer tomwzn!

He put together a nice program with Pintxos (the Basque version of refined tapas) and craft beer, a walk to get to know the old town of Bilbao, avisit to the world famous Guggenheim museum…

Recently more fake profiles and scammers are using Artificial Intelligence (AI) for their messages, and it is also happening on BeWelcome. They only aim at getting you into a love / investment / whatever scheme to make you lose your money. Be Aware!

Here is an example of how they proceed:

1. Here is the first message I received from a now-banned profile:

Hi duesseldorf,

Reading your profile felt like talking to someone I’d enjoy sharing long conversations and laughter with — maybe after salsa…

Hi all,

You can now use the remember me functionality again.

Cheers,
The dev team

BeWelcome needs more presence in the media!

[En français en-dessous - Deutsch unten]

As the largest free hospitality community with more than 200.000 members of all ages worldwide, BeWelcome.org is the best couchsurfing alternative and your Door To The World. But still many travelers who would like to stay with locals for an authentic travel experience, and hosts who would like to welcome travelers to their homes, don’t know about us. You can help change this by spreading the word and making it…

We will be performing maintenance on bewelcome.org this Saturday, December 7th, from 2:00 AM to 10:00 AM Central European Time (check which time that is for you). The site will  be not reachable for this time. We need to run a full hardware checkup, after the server crash we experienced a month ago and the login issues we have been facing since then. Sorry for the inconvenience.

I would like to thank our sysadmins who have been working on these issues!
 

The annual General Assembly of BeVolunteer (the non-profit association running BeWelcome) will take place in Bern/Switzerland on 9-10 November 2024. This is a chance for the BeWelcome volunteers to meet and to discuss the future of our site, as well as to elect the next Board of Directors. If you wish to know more, please ask in the related forum thread or contact a BoD member.

We also organize a public meetup in a restaurant on the evening of Friday 8th, for BW members who would like to meet…