BeWelcome News

Yesterday BeWelcome was able to welcome its 100.000th member!

This is great news!
Although BeWelcome does not focus on numbers having more than 100.000 members now is good news for our community because it means that travellers have better chances to find hosts in more places and that our white spots on the global map are getting scarcer.

 

A slow and steady growth of member numbers is the perfect proof that our chosen path to not actively market our community anywhere works well. Word of mouth…

For the 6th time our local community from Toulouse (Southern France) organizes a weekend full of discoveries and activities.Come and join "Seek the Duck" from June 2nd to 4th!

 

Here you find the program they put together:

http://www.bewelcome.org/activities/1757

 

All activities are free. Only for the wine tasting you are asked to pay 3 Euro per person to be able to buy good wines. And life is too short to drink bad wines!

 

Please sign in each of the activity to make it easier for the…

We want to warn you about a specific threat which we have just become aware of. 
A person claiming to be a 23 year old lawyer from Lithuania and living in Norway has been reported to police in Austria for stealing money from a host in Vienna while at his home alone. He had claimed in last minute hosting groups and accommodation requests to hosts using the name "Karlivas" that he had been robbed and urgently needed a place to stay until he could take his flight. The same story he had also used…

Scammer reported for theft in Austria   We want to warn you about a specific threat which we have just become aware of.
A person claiming to be a 23 year old lawyer from Lithuania and living in Norway has been reported to police in Austria for stealing money from a host in Vienna while at his home alone. He had claimed in last minute hosting groups and accommodation requests to hosts using the name "Karlivas" that he had been robbed and urgently needed a place to stay until he could take his…

The countdown is on for the first BIG event to celebrate BeWelcomes 10th anniversary:

Come to Berlin from April 28th to May 1st and join a loooong weekend full of activities, meet the city with its touristy and off the beaten track sights, and most of all: Meet other BeWelcome members and have a good time together!

Here is the program that the local BeWelcomers put together for you:
http://www.bewelcome.org/activities/1762

Please have a look at the different activities and join them separarely to…

Some days ago active BeWelcome volunteers found a little surprise parcel in their mailbox. Not a virtual messge but a real envelope containing a designed mouse pad. Isn't this beautiful?

 

 

 

One of those members is JJ_T who volunteers in the Translation Team:

"Getting a present from BeWelcome was an unexpected and pleasant surprise. Most volunteers organize their task over the BeWelcome forum and rarely see each other in person. Now I have a 'real object' right next to my notebook that serves…

In 80 days around the world – that was my first thought when I noticed that we reached the target of 2000 Euros for the donation campaign 2016/2017 within 80 days. A BIG THANK YOU to each single of the donors!

 

Here are some statistics:

The donation campaign started on December 10th 2016 and finished February 28th 2017

68 donations added up to reach our goal. On the average this means that we received almost every day a donation.

The average donation was approximately 30 Euro.

Biggest…

February 2007: BeWelcomes website went online
February 2017: The Communication Team sent out a press release to almost 450 journalists and bloggers

Many of those journalists and bloggers who are interested in our way of living, sharing and traveling are already members of our community. One of them is osamabayoumi - a fairly new member from Egypt.
This was the first message he received from BeWelcome. He was so happy about it that he immediately posted it in his social media accounts. He sent a…

I send a thank you message to another member who donated more than the average. BeWelcome member harvski gave 100 Euros. I asked him why he decided to donate - and here is his very insightful answer:

"I really hope that BeWelcome becomes more popular as it's such a lovely thing to host and be hosted by people just for the joy of it. I've been participating in these sorts of communities for many years and have made many amazing friends. As an IT professional I know how much it costs to host…

It happened again: One member donated one tenth of the money we need for a whole year. We are VERY grateful for this! Thank you!

Matchi1981 - a German living in China - donated 200 Euros. This one donation enables BeWelcome to run for  about 5 to 6 weeks.

I asked Matchi1981 why he donated such a big sum. Here is his answer:

"After I became a BeWelcome member and got used to this website, I was looking for an opportunity to support this community as back in 2013 I was very interested in…