If you add articles and informations about every city and every country and use local guides to help on that, try to let people talk and share thier own private experiences on the platform and this kind of sharing will go viral
When you have new members select a specific city in thier profile you can provide them with some information about it and about places and experiences at let new members make a review on the platform for this experience
It will not only sharing couch but also experiences
Hi Abou and welcome to the Couchers forum. This is an interesting idea.
In fact, CS tried to do something similar with the idea of âlocal favorites,â which as far as I know is still being tested and only available for verified members. People in each location choose some of their favorite spots and can write about why, and the site compiles that info for people who came to the âexploreâ section of the site. Of course, like many CS features, this was only ever available on the website, not the app.
I think something like this is useful, but I also feel that other services already do it well: TripAdvisor, Google Maps, and the like. Itâs possible that CSers have special and unique advice to offer, though.
A âlocal guideâ could maybe fill the role that a CS ambassador did, but fleshed out a bit more so that they send an automated message to people looking for hosts in that area or have a greeting on the page for that location.
Anyway, welcome again, hope to hear more ideas from you in the future.
Yes some other platforms are doing well. Having them under our platform will save time which means I can find everything under one site. Secondly I trust and rely on CSers experience and comments more than some random dude on TA or Google.
CS Ambassador was the thing! I totally missed that a lot. The name doesnât need to be ambassador and we could come up with a better, friendlier name but the concept should continue. Those days were the peak of CS. Casey made a world tour in those peak days then sold it : )
These are very interesting thoughts. I think thereâs an interesting direction we can head in here.
Perhaps when you search for a city, each one can have a home page. This could include a small description, as well as a list of regular events and activities that would be a good starting point, all provided as comments by the community. On top of this, there could be a list of trusted âorganisersâ, hosts and guides that can be contacted for more information (rather than relying on one ambassador if you can even find them)
Can we consider a format like Atlas Obscura?
Example: https://www.atlasobscura.com/things-to-do/paris-france
Every time Iâm researching to go to a new country, I have to trawl through like 50 articles of generic advice - âTop 10 spots blah blah blahâ. I would LOVE if we had an itemized page for each city, where Couchers could comment, recommend (sorta like a reddit upvote), etc⌠these could even include local events.
As Iâm typing this, Iâm realising this sounds more and more like TripAdvisor lol. But maybe the difference between Atlas Obscura and TripAdvisor is how curated the former is, and the UX experience in general is much more pleasant. Food for thought?
Hereâs what the âfavoritesâ section looks like on CS, to those of you who canât see it. It appears at the bottom of the page (who knows why) when you are using the website and choose the search option âExplore.â The example is for Paris.
Oh wow. Iâve literally never seen this before 
Thanks for sharing. Good to know that a feature like this seems to be used by some surfers, provides a validation of some sort.
And also the design is atrocious. Definitely on par with TripAdvisor 
Why would you! CS has a tendency of pushing all itâs best features to the bottom of pages on itâs website, and somehow leaving them out of the app. 
But also you need to be verified to use it⌠premium content, I suppose!
Agree about the design. Sad all around. I liked the feature when it first came out, though! On your favorites you get to write little blurbs, too.
I like the idea, but itâd be good if instead of the things listed, it could be things that you wouldnât know about unless a local showed you. This kind of âbest things in Parisâ info can already be accessed from a million places
Yes! Actually, Atlas Obscura is pretty much that, things off the beaten path that tourists wouldnât typically go for. Perhaps we can add in things like food places, etc. and have an upvote mechanism for a natural curation of listings.
Maybe a new version of the old city pages of Couchsurfing is an idea? These were local community pages and wiki contributed as kind of Wikitravel. Thereâs a bad version of it now on BeWelcome. So every member could contribute and local ambassadors/representatives can modify if it when needed.
Every time I was visiting a city I was always checking these pages since there was so much useful information in every sense and budget, how to get around by public transport, hitchhiking spots, cheap spots to eat, the alternative scenes to party etc. And itâs easier to search for info then this current local page of CS if it will be implemented as a similar way as Wikitravel.
And perhaps include a forum to discuss local matters? (love this forum style 
). Guess it would be a good way to create kind of local community sense and bond? Old CSâers were really pissed when they deleted these city pagers out of nothing back in 2015.
@anon46748786 I disagree, I think thereâs a lot of benefit that can be gained from a repository of knowledge about a place thatâs easily accessible. Thereâs no reason we canât implement that as well as a forum (completely agree with your points about its importance). If itâs something you really wonât use though, thatâs more a matter of customizability on the users end. Maybe we can include a way so that you can not display this on your app.
I do agree, however, that we donât want something thatâs like Tripadvisor. When I look up a page for my home town, for instance, I havenât done most of the things on that list. What we want is a collection of advice from locals that is better tailored to surfers. And not just things in a conveniant list of places, more explanations.
I really like this approach. In a way, each community can find its own way of doing this if we provide the infrastructure (like a wiki)
True. But in the end everyone is gonna ask the same questions 10 times and youâll have too much moderation work for the (local) moderators.
See this happening in a lot of local FB groups, most people are too lazy to search the group (or in this case a forum) and ask the same questions. So think itâs easier to centralize it in some way and use the forum to discuss what should be added.
Good point! There should be some ways to avoid this happening?
Gonna quote myself again 
[quote=âdude.read.my.profile, post:14, topic:51â]
See this happening in a lot of local FB groups, most people are too lazy to search the group (or in this case a forum) and ask the same questions. So think itâs easier to centralize it in some way and use the forum to discuss what should be added.[/quote]
We did have a âlocal wikiâ on our Belgium page with some useful info on public transport, languages (some useful sentences like: "where is ⌠street?). Also some links to city wiki pages. Timetables on travel times with different types of transport. Public holidays (as mosts things are closed than), things to do/not do as a tourist. We even had a good collaboration with the people from Use-It who creat free to download maps of several cityâs with the local hangout spots only known by locals.
CS has a couple of city groups that have posted useful links at the top of their group page, such as the one for San Francisco Bay Area:
Sorry, looks like I canât link to that page, but members can search for it.
There is also a âCouchwikiâ page for Los Angeles, which is separate from CS:
https://wiki.trustroots.org/en/Los_Angeles
I often refer visitors to those pages for a quick look at travel resources. I think something like this would help visitors with quick basic info, since the links help any questions about things like lodgings, transportation, communication, tourism, restaurants, etc.
I think the Favorites list is mainly a list of the top tourist sites without really providing that much more useful info that can help. A FAQ list for each âfavoriteâ would be helpful.
A list of local members available to provide guidance would be ab easy way for visitors to know who would be best to contact for advice.
I like the idea of creating a city page (local guide/wiki) that is in wiki format since many people are already familiar with that format from wikipedia. It could be modified to included whichever categories make sense for that area, but here are some examples of categories that might make sense:
Am I missing anything else that should be included on there in terms of city-related information that a traveler on the Coucher platform might want?
Sounds like Wikitravel! Itâs a great website but doesnât get a lot of use so many places are a bit out of date.
Itâd be awesome if we could maintain an up-to-date travel wiki as part of the platform. I think itâs a good way to get people more involved as well.
I think itâd be cool if we also allowed people to make their own guides for cities. E.g., if I was interested I could make âItsiâs guide for walking paths in Sydneyâ, which could appear in a list that is separate from the main guide. People could upvote ones that are useful to them
CS has a âfavoritesâ tab on each profile on the desktop site but not on mobile. This is just a list of favorites that includes the reason why that person liked it as a favorite. The favorite is then added to the city page automatically and you can see on the city page how many people also liked that favorite (the list is sorted by âmost favoritedâ at the top). This is a beta-only feature on CS though so not everyone can see it. But I think it would be nice feature to implement on Couchers.
