Come crash in their pads - and your stay is free

Squeezed into Rich Murray's none-too-big bedroom is an air mattress that has accommodated more than 100 strangers in the last three years.

Don't get the wrong idea.

On this day, the 36-year-old financial consultant from Willow Grove is offering his room to two guys from Switzerland who, like Murray, are members of Couchsurfing.org. The online hospitality site allows travelers to network with hosts and stay, free of charge, for a night, a week, a month, on their couch. Or floor. Or porch.

Murray hosts about six people a month. They wash the dishes, sit on the back porch, and eat Spanish rice cooked by his neighbor. On weekends, Murray takes guests on a tour of Philly. (He has seen the Liberty Bell so many times with so many people, he says, that many staffers instantly recognize him.) Couchsurfers often are couchsurfees as well, and, as Murray alternates between host and guest, he has logged 58 "surfs" of his own beginning with a trip to Europe four years ago.

"I've gotten to go a lot more places than I would have otherwise," said Murray. "And I've been less reliant now on traditional methods of sightseeing like using guidebooks."

But how about seeing Independence Mall enough times to write your own guidebook?

"It's a great way to see your city through someone else's eyes."

Murray is one of about 4,700 Philadelphians who are members of the ever-growing CouchSurfing.org, conceived in 1999 by Casey Fenton, then 21 and living in New Hampshire. Fenton and three friends launched the site in 2003 with the intent of creating, "a world where everyone can explore and create meaningful connections with the people and places they encounter."

After six years, worldwide membership hit 1 million in 2009. But in the last year, that number has doubled. The exponential increase, experts say, is due to travelers' growing desire to go outside a commercial framework and have authentic experiences. Polish researcher Paula Bialski calls this "intimate tourism" - as opposed to cookie-cutter, follow-the-guidebook trips.

Jennie Germann Molz has been studying Couchsurfing and similar hospitality networks - such as freeloaders.com - for five years, and said the popularity of these websites is fueled by a new wave of American backpackers as well as an integration of technology with travel. It's also indicative of shifting perceptions.

Couchsurfing "challenges what we understand by hospitality," said Molz, a sociology professor at Holy Cross college in Massachusetts. "The distinction between host and guest becomes blurred," since so many are both hosts and guests.

"Instead of responding to the stranger with mistrust, Couchsurfing encourages strangers to trust each other and to get to know each other in a deep and meaningful way."

The experience isn't sought just by laid-back college students, either. A quick Philadelphia-area search for members turns up a 55-year-old carpenter, a 39-year-old mother, and a couple in their 50s, one an author, the other a family physician. All have couches for the taking. Overall, surfers represent 238 countries (Philadelphia is ranked ninth among U.S. cities for number of surfers) and have a median age of 28.

So how do regular folks trust these strangers to camp out in their personal space? They look to a resume of sorts. The member certification system is similar to eBay's; members write reviews, or references, of one another after surfs. A member who gets a bad review - anything from "he drank all the milk" to "she stole my favorite jeans" - may not be offered another place to stay.

"It's built upon kind of a trust system . . . you leave references for people, you vouch for people, and whenever you get a request, you look at that and see if they're someone you want to host or not," said Soh Nagano, 21, a Couchsurfing member and University of Pennsylvania undergraduate.

As part of her research, Molz conducted 37 interviews with Couchsurfers around the world, and negative experiences were the exception (Couchsurfing records a 99.8 percent positive experience rating). She feels confident enough in Couchsurfing's trust network that she herself is a host, even with a 6-year-old son at home.

That's a common sentiment.

"I've only had good experiences," said Scott Partenheimer, an elementary school teacher who lives in Collingswood. Although, reflecting on a taciturn tractor repairman who hosted him in Memphis, he added, "You're not going to click with everyone you meet."

Partenheimer also hosts guests, occasionally turning people down. Recently rejected hopefuls included a French woman looking for two months' lodging and a professional masseuse with unprofessional profile photos.

"I try to be discriminating and a little picky about people who stay in my place," he said.

Nagano and his roommate Yu Tazawa have hosted more than 50 guests in the last year. Tazawa said that the nature of the project - sleeping in strange houses and inviting others to do the same - fosters "a self-selecting group of open-minded people."

For Penn student Tazawa, college has put a hold on travel plans, but he said that hosting surfers is a good substitute.

"The best thing about traveling is meeting people. . . . [Hosting is] like traveling while actually staying at home," said Tazawa.

Kara Snyder, a spokeswoman for the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp., doesn't expect couches to replace hotels - even in a down economy - because people want to be comfortable when they travel. But "the impulse of wanting to connect to people is definitely something we see."

Often, avid travelers just want somebody they can relate to.

"You come off the road, you're exhausted, you haven't showered in a couple days, you don't know where you are," said Partenheimer. "All you want is a shower, maybe a beer, just a nice bed to sleep in, and travelers understand that."

His maiden couchsurfing experience was on a cross-country trip three years ago; he began hosting - with his father - after that. Their first surfer was a world Frisbee freestyle champion.

"We tossed the disk around for a little bit and shared some beer, shared some stories. I was hooked," he said.

Sitting on their West Philadelphia front porch, where a stranger from Los Angeles had crashed the night before, Nagano and his roommates reminisce about their own inspirations for welcoming strangers into their somewhat cramped spare room. Foremost in Nagano's bevy of memories is an unlikely Italian host.

"She had no picture up, she had no references, her English was broken and we were like, 'If anyone's going to kill us, it's going to be this woman,' " Nagano said.

Living alone at the time, and on her way to work, the woman simply handed her house keys to Nagano and his friend so that they could rest at her house - 10 minutes after meeting them.

"When you have that kind of experience, you just kind of want to give back," said Nagano.