Imagine a scene that you find yourself on not-so-much familiar street in Paris, at almost midnight of a rainy and chilly April, nowhere to go and with nothing more than your ridiculously heavy backpack which proves no use at a troubled situation like that. Plus, you have neither battery nor internet on your phone to check some hostels to spend the night. I almost hear what you are thinking: how can someone possibly end up in a situation like this? And more importantly, what can be done after all to turn this disadvantage to an opportunity? It’s not like as in the movie Midnight in Paris some mysterious carriage will stop by and take you to a magical nostalgic trip in order to introduce you to the bohemian circles of the writers and artists of old times.

Let me clear up some confusion for you the readers of this seemingly unfortunate story of mine. I’m telling you this very personal experience so that you’ll be informed about how I discovered the blessings of virtual communities based on the principle of sharing economy, yet, one of which actually being the very first reason of my misery at that moment in a rainy April night. So, this one incident is the gist of the possibilities that you might want to consider before deciding to travel with the help of the social network within these communities. What they have in common is that the relationship between the members that depends on building mutual trust.I will mention about these communities later in the article, focusing on CouchSurfing and BlaBlaCar and how much reliable they can be and how the users can contribute in gaining trust of one another. What’s more, I will present a comparison between CouchSurfing and its alternatives made by expert users in order to raise awareness to their policy of sustaining security for their users. Finally, I will discuss if it’s worth to take the risk benefiting from these communities when travelling after having known of their shortcomings.

Once more I am returnining to my story. It all started when I’d suddenly decided to go all the way across France, all alone, on an invitation to a music festival from a friend of mine whom I met during my Erasmus program in Germany. It was the spring break of the University in Germany. So, the idea of surprising my friend without any notice beforehand seemed attractive enough to venture on a trip that’ll last 12 long hours on the road. Since it was a last-minute decision, the cost of any transportation faster than car or bus was also enough to make me want to forget all about the trip. After a couple of hours of searching, I finally discovered the cheapest and at the same time the best way to make new friends along the way. And hey! Isn’t it the whole point of travelling to interact with new cultures and people and have a change once in a while.

So, the website I found was called BlaBlaCar which I’d heard several times from students in Europe that they prefer this way to travel more common than I thought. BlaBlaCar is an online platform which enables its users to share their car in return of a small price with other people who go on the same route in a specific time, even from one country to another in Europe. Recently, they launched their service in Turkey, too. Still, the understanding of its trust exchange principle has a long way to go. The platform has its own measurement to decide a fair price to pay for the distance the ride will take. Determined according to their mesasures, the colored tags shows you whether the price is low, fair or high for the available rides corresponding your choice of time, departure and arrival cities. So, it prohibits drivers to take advantage from the passengers on a possible purpose of trade.It also allows you to check out how many seats are already taken and the gender of the passengers you will be travelling with. This way, it assures a little more safety for its female users providing a choice in case they don’t feel comfortable enough to travel with male strangers. The safety is enhanced by the system that demonstrates the level of experience of the driver with the ratings and comments by the passengers of previous ridesharings. This is a pretty helpful factor in your deciding process for the right driver. Another useful function offered by Blablacar is that once you decide the right driver, you have an access to the contact information of that driver. Thereby, you can discuss about the details of your ride and have an idea about the person whose car you will be using. For the payment, there are two options: you can pay the driver when you meet or with your credit card via the platform before the trip.Even if you choose a driver who prefers to receive the payment online, the payment you already made in the website cannot be received by the driver unless you meet with the driver and tell him the special code of reservation only you can see. This way any possible scam, for example the chance you encounter a fake ride-sharing becomes very unlikely.

Yet, there are some disadvantages of this system that you must keep in mind. In my case, it was driver’s miscalculation of the duration of the ride. I arrived in Paris 2 hours late because of the delay in our meeting and the road took more than it’s promised on the website. That caused me to miss my second ridesharing. As you know, there I was nowhere to go. So, if you arrange a trip that involves a transition from one shared-ride to another, in order to avoid any delay, I suggest you give a few hours between the two. In other words, being prepared against any obstacles will benefit you more than trusting that everything will be exactly the way it is written on the website since a community based on human interraction can not guarantee a full accuracy.

Still, I belive if something didn’t go wrong, I would never meet such great people thanks to another version of shared economy, that is to say, CouchSurfing which is an internet platform with thousands of people who offer their home to travellers for free staying. Of course, midnight time is usually not a perfect time to look for an accomadation in this site since the motivation behind sharing is not all about giving a free place to stay. It’s more like to get to know people and enjoy spending your time with the host and other surfers while you stay. Their motto is “Participate in Creating a Better World, One Couch At A Time.” Generally, there’s a noticable care on the expectations from the guests written on the profiles of the hosts which they like to refer as “CouchSurfing spirit”. This spirit requires surfers to be willing to exchange culture, time and friendship and encourages specifically the travellers and adventurers to participate. Although the priority is exchanging experiences and meeting, the free accomadation is still its huge plus especially for the travellers with limited budget. So, it’s more likely for a person having that mentioned spirit and whose purpose is not just about taking advantage of free accomodation to plan ahead and communicate with the host several days ago before coming. So, a last minute request may raise some suspition and probably makes no good impresion on the host especially if you don’t have any reference on your profile. However, there are some emergency groups whose hosts are willing to accept people in their home upon a last minute request. Of course when sending the request it would be helpful to add a well expressed explanation of your condition. The question is this: to what extent you can trust a person who opens up his\her house for free and expect nothing in return? Actually the question of trust is not only applied to this situation or involves only the surfer. For the surfer, before taking the decision to stay in some stranger’s house a feeling of doubt inevitably evokes. At this point, to be more precautios, the website allows the users to check the references for the host. So, the experience you will have is higly dependent on how carefull you read the user’s profile. In Paris,I knew before I even went there I would stay at someone who devoted himself for hospitality which is apparent on his reference list. But still you never know there are nicest and kindest people out there even more than you imagine without taking a bold decision to stay in a stranger’s house. My experience was one of the example for the validity of my statement. My French host also hosted 3 more people at that same night except for me: one of them coming from Canada, the others from Poland. We all shared good memories enriched by good laughters, cheerful moments and even local Parisian food he prepared in front of us with a special racquette machine he just bought only for the good of his guests, although there was this tiny little incident that he was about to set the house on fire because he didn’t know how to use it! Besides, even though he had to go to work very early in the morning, he sat with us chatting and treating extremely kind for hours till very late at the night. I was mostly surprised when he offered us his keys while he was leaving for work. I regard this experience as a compensation for the misfortune with my first BlaBlacar ride. So, this compensation restored my trust for using sharing economy.

In CouchSurfing, with the recent upgrades, the credibility of the references has been increased. With the new system, the references are published when both the surfer and the host leave a reference for each other. Before this system was introduced, the user, either the host or the surfer, despite his/her bad experience, was inclined to leave a positive reference out of gratitude if the person whom the user had bad experience with left a positive reference first. The new system, thereby, motivates writing more accurate and honest information about the users. In case of one of the sides doesn’t comment, after 14 days passed, that reference is still published. After 14 days, neither the surfer or the host can leave any reference. By this way, the mesasures have been taken against giving misleading references and motivates people to comment while the memories are still fresh.

All of these features of Couchsurfing above mentioned anticipates the system is well-functioned. However, starting as a non-profit organization in 2003, the website adopted a for-profit status in 2011. The reason behind this change was expressed by the founders that their nonprofit status denied by the existing law in USA which requires an appropriate definition that fits to the IRS categories. From this year onward, some complaints by the former members of the website have started to be seen in blogs and discussion forums more and more. Some of the annoyance coming along with the new process the website underwent is resulted from organization’s new policy to expand by advertising on various media forms. In the past years, the reputation of the website was spreading among only who are real fit to the organizations’ principles as a result of recommendations through word-of-mouth. But the advertisement in the masss media made the website pretty popular also among the people who doesn’t understand the intended purpose of it. Everyone became free to join. Hakan Akdağ, 41, a long-term CS member and the owner of the title of ambassador , expresses his concern regarding this issue: “ After the organization adopted a corporate status, I observed a high increase in number of young profiles lacking any references and I started to receive much more demands. What I understand from CS is that it’s an organization thanks to which people can come together with the interest of learning from locals and developing a better understanding of the visited country even though they have money to give the hostels. After 2011, I encountered many people who asks only for beds to sleep at night. Even some of them wanted me to send them the pictures of the rooms and tell them about the properties of my spare bed. I deny these demans kindly by reminding them the principles of CS. Another type of interesting requests are the ones from people who come from other cities of Turkey. They look for free-accomodation to spend the weekend. I have to come up with excuses and refuse them. It would be wrong only to blame it over capitalism since these things happen in any organization where the membership is available to wide-range of target user. You can notice the people who have the CS spirit evaluating from their profiles. The increased demands only cause me to send much more messages because otherwise, the response rate is reflected as low in the profile.” Also he adds that there are a lot of discussion going on in some forums on the topic of if the CS become a “dating club”. Akdağ states that: “These discussions more or less are based on generalization resulted from long-existing problems between women and men which they blame each other with various reasons.” One of the few ambassador in CS Turkey, Can Eroğlu, 35, indicated that “I suppose, as expected from every growing social system, the problems came along with the growth, such as abusement. However, Hospitality Club which is an organization founded before CS still continues to be a non-profit organization. I’ve got my membership in Hospitality Club before CS but I didn’t receive or send any request for years.”

Another change coming along with the for-profit status of CS is that the members have an option to be verified by a certain amount of money via their credit cart. I asked Akdağ about the significance of the verification system in terms of sustaining security. The question is if it is really necessary to become verified in order to gain the other person’s trust and guarantee security or if it is just a means of contributing the website financially. He replied “Of course the verification is important. Especially, I know some solo female travellers are extremly careful on this matter. I think, it is important for the detection of identity and location in case of any criminal incident to mobilize the authorities (Forensic criminal cases such as rape and theft slightly occur.) Personally, on the one hand, I try to encourage people start to give chance to the users who don’t have references. On the other hand, I support the idea of valuing the verification more when it comes to the solo female travellers and the couples.” Eroğlu also contributes this debate by saying: “It’s not necessary to be verified. When I host my guests I never look at either their verification or references. I think it’s wrong to get to know people by only judging by the comments made by others. I believe in humanity. It was my main reason of being a member in CS to see this belief of mine happening in practice.”

Another common claim encountered in a few blogs and forums is that with the request of some people who have good relations with the company team have the power to get the negative references removed from their profile despite of having no authoritization and valid reason. Considering this posibility, when we encounter a user who has dozens of positive but not even one negative reference, what are the chances that the user is perfectly trusthworthy? Akdağ states that “In this matter, the representatives of the cities may have been responsible in the process of deleting references. In fact, the removal of a reference is dependent on approvals of multiple sources. So far, I’ve never given a negative reference and nobody has given negative reference to me. I don’t know precisely how that works. Still, I know that a reference given to a close friend of mine appearring as negative on the old system have turned to a neutral reference in the new system. The fact that all the references are positive on the profile doesn’t indicate that the user is one hundred percent perfect. At least a thirty percent of the references are, in fact, are not given voluntarily and they should be neutral references. This is the way it is… At least, for me.”On the same issue, Eroğlu suggests “It’s true that I tend to be less selective in my encounters because men probably face less threatening situations compared to women. In this case, it would be my advise to trust mostly people with many references since the main reason of the website is to provide this service. Unfortunately, I cannot help with the hesitations about the reference system since I tend to trust more than being sceptical.”

Apart from providing great opportunities, some bad experiences must inevitably have been occuring since it is a huge community with millions of members. But are the people courageous enough to give their honest opinion at the expense of getting a reaction? Or do they feel some sort of indebtedness or guilt and tend to leave unrealistic descriptions in the references? I asked if Mr. Akdağ if he had any bad experience with the surfers and what he thinks about the honesty of people when leaving reference. He replied: “ I think CS is a very succesful project. As a person who hosted more than 50 people, I would say any other similar startups never went this far. The other projects seem amateur and inadequate to me compared to CS. In CS, reference is a must. As I mentioned before we selfishly hide our true feelings to ourselves. Even if you are the best host ever, as long as you leave a negative reference, likewise you get a negative reference in return. Besides, let’s say, among 150 positive references, that negative one highlighted in red draws the most attention of the surfers. Accordingly, the negative reference given in return of yours is mostly nothing more than mummbo jumbo words intended to confuse other surfers. If bad experience means someone attempting on my life or any other kind of criminal case, I’ve never witnessed any of them. Other than that, I have some experience with unrespectful, inconsiderate guests who completely consider my home as a restaurant or a hotel, or who don’t know or care cleaning. Of course, the cultural differences also play an important role in this. I found especially hard even to find a common interest to talk about with people from Far Eastern countries. All these things aside, I like meeting new people and showing how to live in a proper avarage Turkish house to break the long established negative notion about our country in others’ mind. Without any restriction, providing comfort for my guests so that they feel as if they are in their own home is my main principle.” Eroğlu takes a similar approach in this matter. He says “I wrote sometimes negative references. But generally people are afraid to leave negative references for someone because they believe if they do, they’ll get the negative reference from that person regarless if they deserve or not. But I encourage my friends to leave negatives also when they feel uncomfortable or disturbed.”

Although the name of sharing economy suggests a budget solution for travellers to cut down on accomodation and transportation costs, it’s preferred that the travellers develop the understanding that the primary motivation behind these communities is to interact internationally and create long lasting memories. Founded with these intentions, those websites continue to welcome the members with the same mindset. Creating the mutual trust between the members who don’t have any opinion about each other depends on a lot of factors. Not only the system in the websites but also the users in those communities have their share in proper functioning of these principles. However, every great formation has a few bad apples who try to exploit the system. Therefore, we shouldn’t give up on the chance to come out of our shelves and gain new perspectives just beacause of one bad exception, or a rumour we heard circulating in internet. Still, it is better to keep in mind that it’s our own responsibility to protect ourselves as a traveller by meticulous choices, and to know beforehand incalculable failures can always occur. Al in all, it is important to be a trustworthy traveller before entering peoples’ personal spaces as much as finding a trustworthy host or driver.