FEW men get away with leaving their wives behind when they go on holiday — especially if they’re going with other women. But 53-year-old John McCall had good reason. “There are things I want to do on holiday that my wife doesn’t, so I went online. She was a bit sceptical — particularly when I arranged to go to Barcelona with four complete strangers.”
McCall is among a growing number of people turning to the internet to find a travel companion. Websites dedicated to bringing lone travellers together are springing up all over cyberspace.
The latest to launch is www.travellersconnected.com, which goes live next month with more than 4,000 hopeful travellers already registered. It is free to join. “The site can be used to share information, meet travel buddies and to arrange to meet other travellers,” said its marketing manager, Andrew Ashenden.
Members create a profile of themselves, including interests and destinations, before searching for others of like mind and emailing matches via the site. The website also offers an online travel journal facility. You can upload text and photos en route, and your friends and family are alerted by email.
While travellersconnected is created for the diehard backpacker, other sites appeal to all inclinations. One of the first, Travel Chums (www.travelchums.com) now has more than 30,000 members, 75 per cent of them American, with 5 per cent from the UK, and has a large pool of travellers in the 46-55 age group.
Advertisement
A particularly user-friendly site is www.companions2travel.co.uk, which went live in October and now has more than 5,200 members, each paying £25 a year. In May it launched Holiday Search, enabling members to look for specific trips, such as sailing in Europe, and link straight to the tour operator’s website.
It was in the companions2travel chat room that John McCall’s trip to Barcelona took shape. Anne Williams, aged 49, was one of the five people who went. None had met before. “As the day approached, I got more and more terrified of what I was doing,” said Anne.
Fittingly, the five got on famously. “We talked about everything under the sun and laughed non-stop as we got to know each other,” she added.
Although the aim of the travel websites isn’t romance, that can be an added bonus. One British couple in their sixties, Tricia Milton and Richard Turrington, met via the travel magazine Wanderlust’s online connections pages in June 2003. They visited France three months after they met and now live there together. “Were we looking for romance? Who isn’t?” was Tricia’s response.
Page 2: Couch surfers unite ()
Advertisement
COUCH SURFERS UNITE
IF YOU have made the big decision to take a gap year, bought a round-the-world ticket and now find your ambitious travel plans don’t leave much of the budget to live on, help is at hand.
The Couch Surfing Project is a website that puts people all over the world in touch with others who can offer them somewhere to stay free, even if it’s only on their sofa.
Couch surfing is the brainchild of Casey Fenton, an American who once e-mailed 1,000 students at the University of Iceland in the hope of finding a local person to stay with when he bought a cheap flight to Reykjavik. After having a whale of a time and seeing sides of the country he would never have discovered from a hotel room, he hit on the idea of creating a website to let everyone join in.
Now, according to the website, there are 17,759 couch surfers in 142 countries, and accommodation offered ranges from a place to pitch your tent to a penthouse apartment.
Advertisement
The site is open to both potential hosts and guests, who make initial approaches and arrangements by e-mail. It is a system based on trust, but members are encouraged to vouch for each other. www.couchsurfing.com
CAROLINE HENDRIE