We found it to greatly reduce conflicts between guests and hosts, and actually get people more engaged in our small community.
With couch surfing, I often had thoughts like "I pay for your room and you can't even put your dirty dishes away". Since we offered the room for free, we kind of expected some sort of autonomy from their side to help us out in the household or maybe cook some dinner for everyone if they stay longer than one night. They often expected that we would go explore the city with them and give them a lot of attention.
On airbnb that problem somehow mostly vanished. If things with the guest aren't great, at least you get paid. Thus you also don't need such a strict screening process anymore. Due to this, there seems to be much more diversity regarding the types of people we get to meet.
Many of them actually just want a quiet room to sleep in, and it's absolutely fine. Some people however really get involved and become good friends. Especially when they stay longer (which almost never happens on couch surfing), the fact that they pay rent just like everyone else seems to make some of them much more open to suggest improvements and be proactive.
We've met a lot of diverse, interesting people through airbnb, some of which ended up staying for a long time, some coming back regularly. On couch surfing we've mostly met the traveling couple, group of friends coming here to party and young backpacker stereotypes.
What killed couch surfing for me personally though, was that no matter how many people I've hosted, I could never find anyone who would host me when I was traveling somewhere. That really destroyed the magical vision for me.
So much this. I've probably hosted easily 30-40 different groups or individuals (which is perhaps not a lot by CS standard, but fine, I've done my dues, no?), and I have only been able to surf 3 times, of which 2 were arranged by the attractive young lady I was travelling with (I am not 100% serious, that is sexist, but I suspect this dynamic does play a role). On the other hand, I have frequently sent out 20-50 reasonably personalized surfing requests, depending on popularity of destination, etc. Of course you'll have to take my word that I didn't just copy and paste a one-liner like "Hey I'll be in your city from x to y July, can I stay at your place?", but still, CS is dead to me, I don't even try to surf any more.
Another telling thing is that in many popular destinations (New York most recently for me) the first two pages of search results include predominantly photos of muscular males posing without t-shirts. Somehow I didn't feel drawn to that. :(
Great idea, tragedy of the commons?
Though, actually, back in 2010 I did find a CS host in Brooklyn, NY within maybe 5-10 requests, so YMMV.
Israel, I've been told by my guests, is very easy.
This part really does suck. They say to write a personalized message to someone available to host and who has things in common with you. Try as one may, this is hit or miss (more of a hit if you're a young, attractive female). I've tried countless times over the years, despite having all positive references and a full, friendly profile, but to no avail. People don't even respond, 95% of the time.
This means people are in general more open, especially other women, and especially those in cultures with more pronounced differences between the genders. Other women will be much more open to helping, in hitchhiking, in couchsuring and elsewhere. Guys will also be more open, but often enough in an unwanted way, which thus always has to be considered (Schroedinger's rapist). Not all offers should be accepted. Thus, it's easier and harder.
Is that true? I'd think screening would be more for keeping out the nutters than anything else... and I suspect most people wouldn't want to host nutters even if they got paid.
If you pay for it and want to spend two weeks alone in your room and never talk to us, that's more or less fine. If you live in my apartment for free and you're not getting involved in at least some way, I'll be angry and disappointed.
So that way, screening on CS needs to be much more thorough and the chance that you get disappointed is much higher.
[0] the "family" was very broadly defined - e.g it explicitly included unmarried S/O and their family, and implicitly close friends. but it wouldn't have included "someone I never met and who found me on couchsurfing.org".
May have small setups too..
some group unlock codes: couchsurfing airbnbhosts