A couple or two or more friends get together for traveling/surfing or hosting could they have their own “couple” or “group” profile?
I had the same thought a while ago! We could potentially implement a feature where you could temporarily combine profiles if travelling together, and it’d show up as e.g. Matrix & Itsi.
We should see how much people would want this feature though, because it might be a bit tricky to implement.
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A combined profile is not a good idea. Been there, done that, lost years of references and contacts and memories. Very bad idea.
Also, I´ve had “combined” profiles requesting the stay for 2, but when I wnet to see the profile all the comments and refferences where about only one of them, so technically the other had zero references or description of their own, was a ghost, and of course your bae is not going to tell me if you are messy or never do your dishes, because, you know: love.
Devs will not be happy with this idea, but I think this is a great idea, so both of the profiles can send a request togheter, they both get the reference and score and can reference back. But well, I imagine this is not easy to implement at all, so I don´t expect the guys to be super eager to work on this.
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Whoops…
And yeah, not to be a debbie downer, but having another couple/group option means making a lot of other stuff more complicated, like verification… not just for the devs, but for the UX designers as well 
-coughs-
Perhaps simply allowing group chats and enabling the inclusion of a third party in requests would work? I really don’t recommend having a combined profile option - and I can foresee it happening anyway like it did in CS, let’s not make it any easier.
@Matrix, thank you VERY much for bringing this up. I really like the idea of enabling a feature on the platform that helps couples, housemates, or travel companions surf/host together. I agree with @Aleja that combining profiles is not a good approach for a number of reasons, particularly as @kellyt pointed out, it would be difficult to implement.
A different approach would be the ability to link 2 or more accounts together (for a specific period of time or indefinitely). You can send a request to link profiles (along with a definition of the link that both are agreeing upon) and once linked, that link would be clearly indicated on your profile. The 3 profile-linking types that would be relevant to couch requests/hosting:
- Partner (spouse, domestic partner, girlfriend/boyfriend of the linked person)
- Housemate (currently lives at the same residence as the linked person)
- Travel Buddy (person is traveling and overnighting together with linked person)
When traveling, you would have the ability to “add” the linked-person to your couch request. When when hosting, a request sent to one housemate would be received by any other linked housemates on the platform (the requester would be notified that the request is being sent to linked profiles). This also would help prevent any surprises (“Oh, I didn’t know you have a housemate!” or “I didn’t know you were going to be hosting someone tonight!”)
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Was going to suggest exactly this! Workaway.info does this kind of effortlessly, and I think it’s great. I love the option of categories of linkage, too. Great idea, Jesse! (I hope you don’t mind people using your real first name on here!)
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Will explore this!
Really like this point.
So I just tried to sign up for a workaway.info account, and it requires me to pay so I’m not doing that haha. Could you elaborate a bit more on how they do this - is it during the sign up phase? Is there a section under account settings? Can they request to link with someone on their profile etc.?
Can’t find any screenshots in Google Images either, so if it’s not too troublesome, maybe you could…? 
That’s fine with me! In fact, it probably makes more sense for me to make my username my first name rather than my last name…
I had a joint CS profile with a female travel companion in Japan and Korea, we found it a lot easier to be hosted, surprisingly most of the time we were hosted y women.
Some hosts even told us that they wouldn’t have hosted us if we had requested as individuals and the references that we got spoke separately about both of us.
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We have the same case, I would not refer to it as “problem”.
For +10 years we have 2 accounts on CS, and in real life also still 2 addresses.
My address is on an uninteresting place for travelers, while Amy’s place, where I live unofficially, is right in the middle between 2 interesting cities.
We both stated very clear in our profile that they had to read both profiles and would stay with the both of us.
Amy ended up to be the host with all the references and me with a lot of references, but not as host.
People were kind enough to write 2 references for us, and in a lot of cases the guests ended up with 2 references if they stayed with us.
We’re used to it and have no complaints about it, so it works.
@Aleja
Being in IT, I can imagine mixing 2 profiles has it’s challenges for a website like this.
Like all things, if it’s been giving enough thought, an elegant solution can be found for every problem.
But is it worth the effort ?
@Matrix
We have mixed results for us as guests finding hosts, single men, women and couples,
even once with a bunch of children.
My experience is that traveling as a couple open doors a lot easier, compared if you’re a man traveling alone.
Yes!! When I said combined I was actually imagining something linked, not the 2 profiles mixed, but something like a section right under your name that states “this person liv s/trevels with…” and a link (name a profile pic) to the other profile, and that the request/offer arrives to both inboxes. The more complex part are the references, because I can imagine times when you want to give the same reference to both, and others when you want to individualize.
Anyhow, I imagine this is not simple to pull out, and it’s not a priority, so it’s up to the guys who actually do the work to decide if it’s worth the hustle.
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Hey @kellyt, sorry, just saw your reply.
So it’s part of the main profile/home page settings, listed here -
And when you click to link your profile, you just copy/paste their URL or their username if you know it. I can’t remember well but the last time I did it the other person just needed to accept and then we were linked!
Hope this helps!
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I like that! We would just have to make sure that a request is sent and the other person not only agrees to link the profile, but also to the type of link. Either person could cancel/delete the link at any time immediately (without the other person’s approval).
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Hi,
Hugh and I have been together 36 years, so it is unlikely that we would even think about separate profiles. I’d suggest what is important in profiles is that an honest portrayal is given, be you a couple, a single, a family… real name , real age, real photo, real location. I remember in Couchsurfing the profiles that were portrayed as 101 years old or as a dog, a cat, a pair of feet, location Antarctica and so on. That seemed a bit silly when the basis for a hospitality exchange is honesty.
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The linking profiles could be good, but I’d guess it’ll be relatively difficult to implement, if the ‘combined’ profile is to display at least a bit about each of the group members: it’ll need completely different layout so it’s obvious, who the group is - also how the messages and feedback is handled. If this gets realized, I’m fine with that. If there’s just a link “this person is linked to that one”, one has to still visit two profiles to get the basic info, still can confuse one household for two and has to leave two sets of feedback, that’s a bit uncomfortable and I won’t like it.
Basic couple/group profiles could be implemented right away just by changing a few fields: multiple genders+ages, one “multiple persons” checkbox, custom formatted name.
Linking profiles is not hard to do from a tech point of view.
And i personally ignore request sent by a shared profile.
I can tell a lot of sad stories, such when it happened that the two people were traveling separately and got two references for the same time in different places, but this wasw just silly. fact is that the other people spent later the references of the other one alone.
Or when I had a couple that said that could speak french, english, spanish. I assumed that they could speak the three languages, so was safe to have them together with a group of three from mexico, of which two spoke only spanish. Actually of the french couple one spoke english and french, the other one spanish and french. And to privilege the partner they always at the table spoke french, so one of the mexicans, the only one tha could speak french, had to translate during all the dinner between french and spanish. and left a neutral reference telling that due this duty she was not able to enjoy the meal.
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I really love this idea of linking profiles with different linking types.
The things I would appreciate the most with this:
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Having those links show up easily recognizable on each profile.
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Being able to (automatically or manually with a simple button click) forward couch requests to partners/housemates
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Or the better option, have group chats from the get go where you can add people from your linked accounts to specific chats/requests/trips.
I don’t know if this should be automatic for partners/housemates. I can imagine situations where housemates might not always be relevant (maybe they’re not always home) but still would like to stay linked as to not have to set this up again and again. Or where you want a partner linked but don’t actually live together.
So there could be a checkmark for each partner/housemate to include them automatically in every couch request but the default should probably be off and you can add them manually to the conversation. -
When you have interacted with a group of linked people, you could have the option to write one reference for everybody that gets automatically copied to each profile or leave separate references if you prefer so.
I hope this is still being planned to be implemented!
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It absolutely is! But it might be a while before it is implemented since we still have a lot of other features to roll out first (eg events) and some other things need to be improved first (onboarding, references and messaging).
Thank you for the feedback and ideas!!!
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Yeah, don’t worry, I didn’t expect it to be on top of the list. Just wanted to know, if it’s still somewhere on it since the bulk of this discussion has taken place back in September. Thanks. 
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If I’m being honest, other than the core features we’ve yet to roll out, this is one of the features I’m most excited about! It will be super useful to be able to link profiles based upon housemates, life partners, and travel buddies!
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