It's raining in the midwest and I was contacted with a hosting request by an interesting rider. Unfortunately, I am out of town and unavailable but I wanted to help. Knowing it's such a pain to send out requests when on the road, I decided to help the rider by sending out a form letter in his name. It took quite a while, one host after the other. Wouldn't it be great to have the opportunity to send one letter with just a click to ten hosts? Sitting in McDonalds on your phone for an hour is no fun. I may set up a central point with all the other hosts in my town if I have the time to figure it out.
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"Wouldn't it be great to have the opportunity to send one letter with just a click to ten hosts?"
No, not really. Not all hosts would want to be contacted about a guest by a third party – I would find it annoying if I got an email from some host in the area (who I don’t even know personally) trying to get me to host someone. Generally in internet hospitality exchange the onus is on the traveler to individually contact hosts and write decently personalized requests.
Hey Christopher: My apologies in annoying your sensitivities.
Yeah, spamming hosts with bulk requests is not something I'd like to see happen here.
Some kind of open request system such as what was implemented on Couchsurfing has been discussed here as a possibility - I'm not really sure how well received it has been there nor do I have much of a strong opinion either way, but it may be something to ponder.