Stay with a stranger, meet interesting new people, possibly die a violent death.

AirBed&Breakfast is a new site that gets all Web2.0 on the Hostel and Hotel trade. Basically its a paid version of couch-surfing – people offer a spare room/mattress on the floor/kennel all over the world for a nominal or astronomical fee, depending on their commitment to capitalism.

Essentially the idea is to provide a viable alternative to hotels for travellers so that you’ll be able to score some cheap accommodation and perhaps meet some interesting folks along the way. (As always there exists the ever present possibility of staying with a lunatic who’ll chop your head off and make sweet love to your still warm corpse. You just never know in this topsy-turvey world of ours. Just ask your mum, she’ll assure you that there are plenty of weirdos out there, most of whom use the internet.)

Each listing contains such valuable info as location, pictures, an owner profile and the availability of Wi-Fi. Both hosts and guests write up profiles and there is messaging facilities so that you can suss each other out before committing to sharing a roof together. After the stay is complete you can both also leave feedback on each other’s respective profiles. Perfect. What could possibly go wrong?

All cynicism and bad serial killer jokes aside, it’s a pretty nifty service and has great potential. There’s already heaps of listing in most major US, European and Australian cities. It’d be interesting to hear from anyone who’s made use of this service.

Visit them by clicking the big word here

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