For those of us who grew up enjoying the ability to hitchhike and travel through Europe in the 60's-80's - there are many stories of kind strangers picking us up and then becoming a good friend. In the process, our world got a little larger and I got an appreciation of thinking a bit outside of myself for once.

With the United States being as closed and paranoid as it is of strangers, I wondered about the possibility of Ebay's community control integrating with the Youth Hostel movement. With the advent of portable and affordable wireless laptop computers for travelers, I think an amazing opportunity is afforded to us. Here's how it would work:

1. Both Travelers (Pilgrims) and Hosts (People who would be willing to allow people to stay at their house for free or low cost) register at a website. Both groups would try to build up an impressive array of testimonies from people about how nice they are including photos.

2. When travelers make their plans, they could search the website for the city they are going to and look at the hosts in that city, their location, interests, and/or availability. Hosts would be able to specify dates that they are open to having people, gender, number of people, things they like to learn, talk about, or things about their city that they like to show off, etc.

3. The traveler contacts the host via email through the website and requests the opportunity to stay with them.

4. The host is then able to contact the references for the traveler - hopefully, like Ebay, this will include a wealth of previous other places where the traveler has stayed and they have left a wealth of information about their experience with the person. So like Ebay, if you have a high rating - it means you have been a good guest a peoples' houses. Likewise, on the Host's website, there are ratings indicating how much people did (or didn't) enjoy staying there.

5. Once the Host is confident of their decision, they contact the traveler via email through the website.

6. When people visit, they are sure to take pictures to show all of the friends they have made and perhaps a paragraph about what their experience was like together.

Hopefully this will help to build the first link or contact necessary for people to make more friends and become more trusting of the world at large. A friend suggested that this could first be implemented using Churches as host areas and then once the system is set up and successful, then broaden it out to individual homes.

What do you think?

What do you think of this idea or comment?
(You can change your vote at any time)

I agree

No opinion

I disagree