Is Staying At Your Friends’ House A Good Option When You Travel?

5 Reasons Why Staying At Your Friends’ House When You Travel Can Become A Nightmare

The hardest truth to accept when it comes to traveling is that staying at your friends’ house when you travel is not always the best thing to do.

When you have a friend who lives in a tourist town that you want to visit, you find a way to kill two birds with one stone. You want to travel to where they live so you can visit them, while finding an opportunity to explore where they live without having to pay for accommodation.

This can sound fun and ok at first, but what should be a good travel experience can sometimes turn into a nightmare for you.

I am for sure speaking for myself and basing this lesson on my past travel experiences. Most of the times I got to stay at friends’ houses when I traveled, my experiences turned out to be a little more negative than positive. So, this is why I decided to write about this. I learned this year that staying at your friends’ house can be very uncomfortable, and it can even cost your friendship depending on whose house you’re staying at.

There are a few reasons why I think you should avoid staying at their house when you travel, so allow me to share them all with you.

1-Remember that you are the one who is the traveler. They are just locals.

Local people, most of the time don’t get to see the place where they live from a tourist’s perspective. This can be an extremely negative experience for you if you visit someone who doesn’t get to experience where they live like a tourist because they will tend to make you feel bad or uncomfortable about visiting some attractions just because they already saw everything.

Local people tend to avoid tourist areas as much as possible. To make this clear, I’m going to put it in this way for you: A New Yorker will most likely avoid going to Times Square because they don’t think it is fun to go there. They will always say the same thing. “It’s too crowded, too many tourists, super estimated, not fun to see”. However, someone who is visiting New York for the first time will most likely want to visit Times Square for the obvious reason: It’s freaking Times Square. One of the most famous attractions in the whole world. A first-timer will want to make it there.

I remember when I stayed at one of my friends’ houses in Manhattan, she wanted to avoid so many attractions there, and she would always say something negative about them. That discouraged me so much and made me feel so unexcited about some of New York’s most famous attractions just because a local wouldn’t look at it from a traveler’s perspective. She did not want to go with me to a lot of them, and the ones that she went to when she was there, she’d want to leave as fast as possible when I just wanted to stay a bit longer to seize the moment and the place.

Locals are very boring people. Trust me. That applies to you as well. I’m sure you are not as passionate and excited about where you live as a tourist would be if they visited your town.

2-When you pay for accommodation, you get what you are paying for. If you’re staying for free, you get whatever they give to you

I don’t want to sound rude or ungrateful to the friends and family that hosted me, but this is just the truth. If you pay for a room, even if you’re staying at a hostel, you will get what you are paying for. You will get at least a bed. You agreed to whatever you booked, and if they don’t give you what you paid for, or if you don’t really like something about where you are staying, you have the right to complain and to request something better.

When you stay at someone’s house, I feel like you do not have the right to complain about anything. They can host you in the guest room of their house, or if they don’t have a guest room, they can just give you an inflatable mattress to sleep in the middle of the living room.

Then again, I don’t want to sound offensive or ungrateful, but once I stayed at a friend’s house, and they hosted me in their kitchen. It was the only place where the inflatable mattress could fit because she lived in a super tiny apartment, so I had to sleep every night in the middle of the kitchen. Whenever she woke up in the middle of the night to get something in the kitchen, I’d feel super uncomfortable and out of place. I felt like I was always disturbing her. Plus, it was also a bother for me. She also bothered me when I tried to sleep when she would be making herself a sandwich in the middle of the night.

This wouldn’t happen in a hotel. So, sometimes what doesn’t cost money, will cost your nights of sleep and your travel experiences.

3-Remember that you’re the one who is on vacation. They still have to go to work, school, etc.

This is very uncomfortable. This makes us feel like we are disturbing their plans or something.

This year, I stayed at a friend’s house who took some days off of work when I was visiting her. But she wasn’t 100% free. She still had a doctor’s appointment, she had to see a dentist, she had to do the grocery, and so much more. The time she had off of work was the only time she could use to run some errands. And I happened to be there. I felt so much like a fish out of water, and I counted the days to end so I could leave.

We made plans to see some of the attractions together, but I noticed that she had so much to do. She’d do some stuff with me, but she would always rush so she could do what she needed to do. That made me feel like I was being a burden for her, and I hated it. It was as if I was in the middle of a hurricane. Her life could not be paused just because I was visiting. So, that sucked.

4-You won’t feel as free and comfortable about doing certain things as you would if you stayed at a hotel

As a tourist, you don’t have a schedule. You can arrive from a party at 3 in the morning, decide to take a long shower, order some food, watch TV, and sleep in as much as possible to start your day at any time you wish.

However, the truth is that you would not feel very comfortable about doing these things if you were staying at a friend’s house. You always have to fit into their schedule, and to me, that takes away a lot of the freedom that traveling is supposed to have.

Because you’re staying at their house, you have to follow their rules. And as a traveler, the last thing I want is to follow rules. I want to be able to leave my room as many times as I wish, take a shower that is as long as I want it to be, I want to sleep in the next day, and I want to just be free. And though you don’t want to admit it, if you stay at friends’ house when you travel, you will not feel comfortable about doing these things.

5-Not everybody knows how to host people

Last but not least, the last reason why staying at your friends’ house when you travel can be a bad thing is because not everybody is used to hosting people, and not everybody enjoys hosting them. Sometimes they just said yes to hosting you because they would feel bad to say no to you.

Being a good or decent host is not easy for some people. That does not mean that they are bad people or that they are being bad friends to you. That just means that they don’t know how to be hosts. And if they don’t know how to be good hosts, then your experience is screwed.

Additionally, some people get a lot of things confused. This year I stayed at a friend’s house, and she did not understand that even though we are friends, I was just a guest and a tourist. She expected that I’d clean the entire kitchen all the time, I’d have to take the trash out multiple times of the week, and I’d have to buy the groceries. I was like: “Am I a guest or her roommate?” She expect so much from me that we even got into a fight one of the nights. She’d be really mad if I did not clean up what everybody got dirty. She did not know how to host someone. She had never done it before, and though I’m extremely grateful that she hosted me and that I did not have to pay for accommodation, I have to say that my experience was a little negative because she was not a good host and she expected me to do some of the housework that a guest wouldn’t have to do. I was only there for a week. She wanted me to sweep the floor, vacuum, do the dishes all the days I was there. If I had my best friend over at my house when they were on vacation, I would be pleased to do everything, and I mean everything for them to make them feel as welcome as possible. At the end of the day, they are more than my friends, they are my guests. Not my roommates. I would not expect them to clean up the house just because they are staying for free. If I don’t know how to host, or if I’m not ready to host, I will simply say no to hosting somebody.

Certain house duties are not meant for guests. A guest is just a guest and if you agreed to hosting them, it’s up to you to deal with the fact that there is an extra person in the house now.

Once I wanted to visit a friend who lived in London, and she was very clear to me about not being ok to host me. She said her apartment was too small, and it was always a mess, and that she wouldn’t feel comfortable about hosting me there because she knew I would not have a positive experience. She also mentioned she still had to work some of the days I’d be visiting and she had to wake up early, and that having somebody over would not only be a burden for her as a host but for the guest as well. However, she was the sweetest. She helped me find a really good hostel at a very reasonable price, and she even paid for the first 2 nights for me as a gift. We went out together a few times, and I was able to have a really good time with her. On one of the nights we went out together, she mentioned that the last person she hosted ended up having a negative experience because the place she lived and her lifestyle was not very appropriate to host someone. This was very sweet of her and considerate of her.

So, now before you go on that trip and before considering staying at a friend’s house, remember that there are so many things that could make your travel experiences a little too negative.

What about you? Have you ever had any negative experience while staying at friends’ house?

I’d love to hear from you!

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