Gay Couchsurfing Tips and Tricks for LGBT Travelers Two Bad Tourists

This post was updated on February 2nd, 2020.

Couchsurfing is a global platform that allows you to stay in people's homes for free, while offering a social experience with your host. Likewise, you can sign up as a host in your own home city and host travelers from around the world. You can even use the platform to find LGBT hosts in most cities around the world. During our round-the-world trip we stayed with at least 10 different Couchsurfing hosts in countries like Germany, Chile and Japan. It was one of the most memorable travel experiences we had and we still keep in touch with many of our past hosts. It's free to use but for a small one-time fee, you can pay to get your profile verified which will greatly improve your chances of hosts accepting your stay requests. We recommend verifying your profile as it helps to maintain safety and trustworthiness within the platform.

Back in 2012 we published an article on Robert’s Leave Your Daily Hell blog where we shared our take on Gay CouchSurfing in Europe with tips on how to couchsurf and find hosts that are a good fit. We shared our experiences about how we stayed with gay friendly hosts during our 1-year round the world trip. Since then Couchsurfing has upgraded its platform and it’s not as straight forward to find LGBT hosts on the website. A recent follower and fellow traveler pointed this out to us but we hadn’t noticed because we don’t Couchsurf as much now after finishing our round-the-world trip. Though when we’re not whoring our guestroom out on AirBnB, we do still occasionally host travelers (mostly LGBT) in our apartment in Madrid.

Here are a few reasons to consider staying with an LGBT host:

You’re on the same page and already understand each other
Less worries about your orientation
Helpful if you’re a couple and it’s super obviously you’re gay (you know who you are…)
Your hosts can show you the best nightlife options around the city
Personal safety not a concern
You might get laid (wait…what?! – did I just say that? No, this should never be a primary reason – but secondary, perhaps?)

How to find gay Couchsurfing hosts on the new website:

Since listing your orientation in your Couchsurfing profile isn't one of the standard stats like gender, age, occupation, etc, it can be a bit difficult to know if a host is gay or gay-friendly if they don't specifically mention it somewhere on their profile. So I sat down and spent some time navigating the new site. Your best bet is still to use LGBT oriented groups to find local hosts. Chances are, if they’re in a gay group – they are gay themselves, or equally as supportive, which is almost the same – at least from a comfort and safety perspective.

Gay Couchsurfing in Madrid — Example: Find an LGBT group like “Gay Madrid” in the group search.

In our original article we explained how you can search your city of interest and then filter the results based on the groups hosts are a part of. For example, if you’re looking for a host in Madrid, you might find a host that is part of the group “Gay Madrid.” The only way you can filter the results now is to type a search term into the box on the right toolbar. Popular LGBT couchsurfing groups include “Queer CouchSurfers” and “Backpackers (for gay and gay friendly).” Also, most big cities have their own group geared toward the LGBT community so search those group names in advance before searching for hosts, so you know what to type into the filter box.

Gay Couchsurfing in Europe — Example: Do a search of available hosts in Madrid

Gay couchsurfing — Example: type the group name “Gay Madrid” into the keyword search box.

Couchsurfing’s Response to the Change:

On the couchsurfing site, they’ve officially acknowledged that the new website is more limited here and they’ve responded with the following answer:

“‘Groups I belong to' and ‘My group posts' – We've heard requests to bring these back to profiles and totally agree that these are useful tools. We'll be bringing them back as soon as possible.”

We hope this is true!

Still not sure?

Maybe you still don’t like the idea of Couchsurfing? Or if you still can’t find a suitable gay or gay-friendly host using the site but you don’t want to pay for an expensive hotel, you might consider renting a room in an apartment from a site like MisterBnB. This gives you an opportunity to have a private room (or entire apartment if you have the budget) while ensuring your host is gay themselves, or at a minimum gay-friendly.

Special offer: New to misterbnb? You can save 20€ on your first booking by signing up with this link.