just wanted to share one aspect that always felt a bit unfitting to me when using hospitality sites… that is that the sites present themselves in one static way, but there are at least two very distinct usage scenarios: traveling and hosting. Over the course of a year I mostly hosted and then travelled about once or twice, wanting to stay with other hosts. I realized I always rewrote my profile for these trips, because I felt I want to present myself in a specific way and also differently than as a host. That might be something personal, but I wonder if it’s not a good idea in general to have these use cases as distinct aproaches in mind. I feel it could help to nudge towards certain engagement, like when listed as a host, then present community building/organizing features more prominently and when travelling maybe more socializing features…
This is a great point. Workaway.info has the setup you mentioned, in that there are two different sites and logins for hosts and workawayers. You have a very different profile on each and different tools at your disposal depending on how you logged in.
By the way, welcome to the forum!
Thanks 
Yes, though on workaway it’s entirely separated and I think in this case it’s much more fluid and connected. I also thought about it with regard to two contexts that I think didn’t work well on CS: dating/hookups and the loss of community building… i think it supported the first one too well and discouraged the latter and maybe a solution could be to not offer one usage scenario/ user type that i would associate mostly with it: the resident that just wants to hang out.
so if you are a resident you are presented with options to host and/or organize community events or you are just not active. while if you are travelling you could also look to just hang out, have individual encounters.
Thanks for your reply! I’d like to say again that I did not think of a strict separation like on these sites. Just that there are obviously different use cases and you typically have to make choices regarding these when you set your status to “i can host” or “i am travelling”. But then these choices are not picked up to present you with different possibilities how to engage on the platform. And I feel this could be a handle how to support certain agency. From the other discussions on this platform I understand that local community building is a wanted feature. So when you choose your status like “i am local”, you could then pick “i want to host” and/or “i want to offer events”, just to encourage that locals offer more community oriented activities and not just hanging out with one person. If you are travelling, you could set your status to “I’m travelling” and select choices like “i want to stay with locals” and/or “i want to hang out with locals”. So in the end, could also hang out just individually, but the agency for this kind of engagement would be switched to travellers.
Anyways, what came to my mind was not a very strong separation, but just one or two different features based on use case/status that could be used to encourage behaviour and engagement, that is discussed elsewhere on this forum (like community building, hookups). Kind of an old school engineering behaviour approach instead of urging people to check their cognitive states.
I don’t agree with the statement nolo is making.
I had my profile on CS and it stayed the same, as guest and host.
To me a profile presents some key features about your life you want to share with others,
and that helps to see to some (small) degree to guess if someone fits your lifestyle, interests, mentality, …
to be a guest of host for a short while.
thanks for the feedback pelgrim. i did enjoy adapting my profile when travelling, mostly by giving more information about my travel plans and also putting pictures from the trip. but anyways, that’s just my personal experience. Regarding this thread i did not want to suggest setting up two distinct profiles or usage sites, but slightly adapted options, depending on status (as traveller or local). For example, as a traveller you could post a simple shout-out, announcing you are in town and happy to hang out, or also looking for a host. (like public trips). whileas as a local you would be offered a more structured event form, asking for a date, number of participants,…
Definitely what I think is a great idea is the ‘Dashboard’, first page you see when logging in, being different depending on if you’re travelling or at home.
I agree, I think this is a great idea.
I’ll write briefly please do ask me to elaborate if something is not clear:
*Great idea, huge fan.
*Not two separated profiles, like repeated here many times.
*Perhaps different sections and allowing the user to decide which sections show in which order.
*Traveling - where I am in the world and what I like, hosting - what I do in my daily life, locals - who I would like to meet locally and what I would like to do together.
Some personas based on the people I met while couchsurfing:
John: lives in a small village. Likes to travel and surfs a lot. He only uses the community for holidays.
Suzie from Ghent: likes to visit community events all over Europe
Bernard: feels lonely and therefore hosts a lot. Surfers stay at his place quite long. He does not travel.
Rachel and Ross live in New York: they have a baby (yes: Emma) and like to host and surf likeminded couples.
Michelle from Kyoto: is a professor and likes to surf when visiting conferences. Does not host.
Colin from Perth: visiting his boyfriend in Aberdeen, dumped this afternoon, now looking for a place to stay.
Marie: visiting her mother in town for a few days and looking for some other company to share some hours with this afternoon.
Jens and Morena from Madrid: had some great surf experiences but now both work and would like to host interesting people to have something going on at home.
I agree! We actually plan to make the dashboard modular! Users will be able to re-arrange items on their dashboard (for example, when you’re traveling you don’t really need to see “people looking for a host” but you would probably like to see “upcoming events nearby” or “active hangouts in your area”.
Making the dashboard modular to me is the absolute best idea I have read on this community forum since July when I joined. Congratulations to who had this idea! 