AirBed & Breakfast is a directory and booking site for couch lodging across the US. The site takes the 676,000 member CouchSurfing concept and monetizes it, converting hospitality exchange into what I term consumer-to-consumer hospitality. Transactions are done through the site. Travelers now have an alternative to hotels (that won’t make them feel like they’re receiving a favor from a stranger) and anyone with a living room has a chance to subsidize their mortgage or rent.
Watching to see if this takes off will be interesting. Sometimes people snub a money-making alternative for a nonprofit solution. After all, the idea of being a couch surfer is that for every traveler you host, you know you’ll be networking a new place to visit for free. Yet I strongly predict this will grow at a faster rate than CouchSurfing did because capitalism makes strangers less creepy, and there’s no position more vulnerable than being asleep 2000 miles from home in the living room of someone you met an hour prior.
The public majority will love it and the hardcore backpackers, drifters and grifters will stick to couch surfing.
