BeWelcome News

Who would have thought that BeWelcome would have a huge influx of new members, especially during a time of global worry and sacrifice? 
Thousands of new members joined BeWelcome after the 15th of May, and to all of you we say Hello, Bonjour, Hola, Zdravstvuyte, Nǐn hǎo, Salve, Konnichiwa ..!

For many of you, it may be a difficult choice to move to a new hospitality exchange community. The debatable decision of the biggest platform in hospitality exchange - to add fees for many of its members - is…

Hi all,

The server was updated and can be used as usual now.

There are a few things worth noting:

• You can download your data from your profile; please be aware that the result is not machine readable,
• It is now possible to search for members based on their username,
• Uploading images to the gallery should be easier now, with the new upload page allowing to upload several images at once,
• All mail messages you receive from BeWelcome now use the same template engine and should look alike,
• Several…

BeWelcome extends a warm welcome to all those from Couchsurfing who have either recently joined, or have re-activated their profile here. Covid is severely restricting travel and hospitality exchange at the moment, but we hope that you will have many successful hospex experiences through this site, once travel safely resumes.

Many aspects of BW are similar to CS. We call references 'comments', but their purpose is the same, and it is just as important to complete your profile. Other things may…

Covid-19 (the Coronavirus) has already had a drastic impact in many countries, and our thoughts are with the BeWelcome community and their families in these difficult times.

The outbreak has affected the ability to host or be hosted. Travelling and hosting are not advised - and sometimes not possible - in the affected areas, and the local restrictions can often change at short notice, as circumstances develop. So, if you have made plans that need to be changed or cancelled, please let any hosts…

BeVolunteer - the registered non-profit association behind BeWelcome - has elected for the 15th time the official Board of Directors (BoD).

The BeVolunteer members who are elected to the board of directors are active volunteers, and this year all Board members are also experienced 'boardies' from previous terms. The main duties of the BoD are: keeping a global overview, checking that things go well and solve problems when they occur, and provide a nice working environment beneficial to all…

On September 19th we became aware that BeWelcome.org had become the target of an attack, like many other Linux-based sites, by the malware "Lilu".

In an attempt to extort ransom money, the malware encrypted the site and member data, making it unusable. Our volunteers immediately started the process of restoring as much of the site and data as possible with the help of backups. We also informed members about the problem on Facebook and Twitter, and published an advisory on the site itself as soon…

Hi everybody,

After years in the making BeWelcome now has a new interface that should be way more mobile friendly than the old one.

There is still a lot to go before this is the way we imagine it but the developers and the Board of Directors of BeVolunteer decided it is time that you get some fresh user experience.

With the new site we also introduced a new feature: Hosting Requests (ah lame :))

If you find bugs or problems when using the new site please report them in the forum thread for this:

I…

On Tuesday 23rd from 18:00 CET onward, we'll migrate to a new website!

There will probably be some downtime in the evening of April 23rd and we hope it will not last longer than a few hours. After that, if everything goes according to plan, everyone can use the new website.

Make sure to have other means of communication with your hosts and guests in that time frame and please check your spam folder in the next weeks, since our e-mail traffic could be sent to your spam for some reason.

See you on…

You might have noticed that the donation bar is now visible on the landing page after you log into BeWelcome. As a non-profit, BeWelcome works with the smallest budget possible. This is only possible, thanks to the time and skills donated by our volunteers.... which come from you, our community.

BeWelcome needs about 2000 Euros to cover its expenses this year. Despite a community of more than 115.000 members, BeWelcome been a non-profit since its launch in 2007.  While it has no offices or paid…

BeWelcome will take part in an event in Rennes: To those who are in Brittanny, Rennes, France: If you have time on saturday March 16 you might want to attend a debate in the afternoon. The association „Adventures at the End of the World“ (http://www.abmrennes.eu/) organises a discussion about free hospitality of travelers in France and around the world. They asked BeWelcome to take part in this event – and our member Isaac2 volunteered to represent BeWelcome :)

It is part of the travelers…