Travellers can now exchange conversation for free food and lodging through a new website called TalkTalkBnb.
A free, collaborative website, TalkTalkBnb puts people wanting to travel in contact with people wanting to learn languages.
Based on the principle of barter, the French start-up TalkTalkBnb offers an entirely free-to-use community website that puts “Hosts” (people wanting to improve their language skills) in contact with “Travellers” (young students, mostly). Hosts offer Travellers food & lodging in return for just one thing: to speak their native language throughout their stay to help their hosts improve.
TalkTalkBnb founder and CEO Hubert Laurent explains that TalkTalkBnb is like Airbnb with a language option.
“Travellers don’t pay for their stay in cash, but by offering their host the opportunity to speak a foreign language with a native speaker, at home, completely free-of-charge. It’s a win-win situation, a mutual cooperation on a totally altruistic basis. In contrast to other forms of free accommodation in private houses, with TalkTalkBnb you don’t feel like you’re disturbing your host. You give as much as you receive. And when you realize how much a conversational course costs, you know that no one’s losing out.”
“What’s more,” says Laurent , “you’ll often find guests offering to prepare a typical national dish or introducing a local art, while hosts give them valuable tips about their destination. Different cultures have so much to share.”
TalkTalkBnb slips subtly into the space between free-but-basic accommodation, like Couchsurfing, and pay-for-comfort Airbnb and so far there are more than 3,000 pre-registrations in the 2 months preceding the official launch and more than 1,600 Likes on Facebook.
The revolution is happening now, and TalkTalkBnb is part of it, without a doubt.
