- free accommodation worldwide
- meet friendly people
- no cost at all
- intercultural understanding
- no obligations
- safety features
- non-commercial
...come onboard!
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Feel free to use this sample article and publish it in your newspaper, or in any student, travel, organization or any other magazine! You can change and adapt it to your needs any way you like. |
The Hospitality Club - free accommodation and a world wide web of
friendly people
The idea is the simple: building intercultural understanding and peace
through hospitality exchange. Members of the Hospitality Club
(www.hospitalityclub.org) offer each other help when they travel, be it
a tour around town, free accommodation or an invitation to dinner. There
are no obligations, what matters is the personal contact. Use of the
club is totally free - the Hospitality Club is not commercial.
The club was founded by Veit Kuehne (25) from Germany in August 2000 and of May 10th, 2005 had more than 53000 members in 185 countries. Kuehne is now
hitchhiking around the world trying to find one million members for the
club and fascinating people with the wonderful idea of hospitality
exchange - you can follow his journey at
www.bringing-people-together.net.
The Hospitality Club makes use of feedback mechanisms to increase
security: every member can write a comment about any member he/she
knows. Those comments appear in the profile. Guests are required to show
their passport on arrival to identify themselves. Also, sensible data is
not displayed on the site - name and address can be hidden and the email
address is not visible online - first contact has to be made through the
website.
Registrations can be made on the internet, by email, fax or by sending a
normal postal letter to a volunteer who will enter the information into
the database. The club is supported by volunteers who believe in the
idea that bringing travelers in touch with people in the place they
visit and giving "locals" a chance to meet people from other cultures
can make this world a better place to live.
Addresses:
Hospitality Club - www.hospitalityclub.org
Veit's
Project - www.bringing-people-together.net
Contact - info@hospitalityclub.org
Questions and Answers (you could put this into a box next to the
article, if you like)
Are members obliged to accommodate people at their home when they
register for the Hospitality Club?
Answer (Veit): No, you are not required to do anything as a member. If
you don't have any space or no time to accommodate someone, that's no
problem. What counts is the will to meet and help other people from time
to time.
Is the club really free?
Yes, we don't want to make any money with the club. We are fascinated
with the idea of bringing people from different cultures together and
are having fun while doing so.
How safe is this?
We thought a lot about security and established this mechanism: when
someone asks you for accommodation, he/she has to tell you the full
name, user name at the club and the passport number. This way, you can
check the identity when he/she arrives. And even more important - you
can read comments from other members in the profile of your future
guest. So if there are already five positive comments, it's quite
unlikely that you are going to have an unpleasant experience. Finally -
you personal data like name, address and email will not be put on the
internet, if you do not want to. So when someone contacts you, you can
always first check his/her profile and then decide if you write back and
how much information you give about yourself.
Is the club working already?
Yes, a lot of people are establishing contact on the site and visiting
each other. Today you can go almost anywhere in the world and find free
accommodation and meet people. Myself, I have met and visited many of
our members and can tell you that there are really lots of interesting
and friendly individuals in the club. Just come on in and join us!
Do you need help?
Yes, we need every helping hand, head and mouth. And if you want to help
me on the long road to a million members, just spread the idea and the
link among your friends and organizations.
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