Tired of fancy and expensive hotels?  Looking to find FREE accommodations on your next trip?  Want to make a new lifetime friend the moment you arrive to your destination?

There is a little-known, secret hospitality exchange and social networking community by the name of CouchSurfing International.  Okay, that’s a lie.  It’s not little-known or secret, we just didn’t want you to feel out of the loop for not already knowing about it.  There are actually 10 million current members and more joining every day.

CouchSurfing describes itself as a “global community of 10 million people in more than 200,000 cities who share their life, their world, their journey. CouchSurfing connects travelers with a global network of people willing to share in profound and meaningful ways, making travel a truly social experience.”

CouchSurfing sells itself on the idea that there are no strangers in the world, but, rather, friends you haven’t met yet.  Becoming a member of CouchSurfing not only connects you with hundreds, if not thousands, of welcoming “friends” willing to let you sleep on their couch for no charge at all.  What’s more is that they usually also serve as an irreplaceable local [FREE!] guide.  In our experience, our hosts even prepared home cooked meals for us, have given us house keys so that we could come and go as we pleased, and have ended up joining us on future travels as new lifetime friends and travel buddies.

As a member of the community you can also serve as a host yourself, and provide your couch to other like-minded travelers from all over the world that visit YOUR city.

Most members are verified and every profile has an unlimited number of reviews from past guests so you can formulate an idea of exactly who this person is before you ever even speak to them.  Of course, we do recommend you contact any potential host and try and form a relationship with them before you arrive.

So what are you waiting for?  There are “friends you haven’t met yet” waiting for you all over the world.