Couch surfing sounds like a weird kind of water sport. In fact, it is an internet craze, guaranteed to please the adventurous, the hospitable and the financially mean.

To catch the wave, you register free at www.couchsurfing.com and then you are ready to wave goodbye to holiday hotel bills by sleeping around with other site members as much as you like. The website details how it works: "CouchSurfing.com helps you make connections worldwide. You can use the network to meet people and then go and surf other members' couches! When you surf a couch, you are a guest at someone's house."

Pong Yat-ming, a drama tutor who lives in Yuen Long, is a devoted low-budget traveller who has signed up with CouchSurfing.com and a similar firm, www.hospitalityclub.org . The 32-year-old described CouchSurfing.com as "a nice club". "I joined the club and have been very active because, whenever I travel, I want to meet local people and experience local culture," he said. "So far, I have had an unforgettable experience, and that's why when I am home I try to offer as much as I can for those who are interested in Hong Kong and me.

"Actually, members from both clubs in Hong Kong are very active, especially hospitality club members - whenever one of us has a guest, we'll meet up. "Like this week, we took a Polish, an Austrian and a French girl to visit a Chinese doctor and in fact I just returned from meeting a French member. Together with three other local members, we went to see a Mexican movie at the Fringe Club, and then we went for dinner and had a drink."

Mr Pong described his mission as "to host as many people from different countries as possible". He claimed to have put up more than 20 since joining in June. Po Yee-ho, 25, a financial planning manager from Tuen Mun, joined the website in 2003 and this year hosted a Swede named Paul, who stayed at his home for three nights. "We had a great time at my home," Mr Po said.

"We shared lots of our culture - he loves Hong Kong very much." He said that if his home were more accommodating, he would host more people because couch surfing gave an insight into how people from overseas thought. CouchSurfing.com claims to have a client base of more than 30,000 surfers and to have enabled thousands of friendships across 157 countries and 7,000 cities. Hong Kong has 50 members. The website is the brainchild of self-taught computer programmer Casey Fenton.

The product of flower-power New Hampshire parents, Mr Fenton left school at 17 to explore. "Initially, travelling was a means to distract my mind and heart, but as I grew and learned, travel became a way for me to discover the gigantic world around me, and the even bigger world within me," he said in his bio. Among the countries he visited was Egypt in the aftermath of the 1997 massacre of American tourists at Luxor.
Short on company and cash, he roughed it, sleeping in a sarcophagus and a dirt hut, which perhaps whetted his appetite for free accommodation.

His inspiration for his business came one April when he snapped up a cheap ticket to Iceland for a long weekend, then realised he had nowhere to stay. Reluctant to book a hostel, he dreamed up the idea of harvesting 1,500 names and e-mail addresses from the University of Iceland's student directory, then wrote each student a letter explaining that he needed a crash pad.

He dispatched an individualised message to each of them, and within 24 hours he had received at least 50 responses. He wound up having a ball, and decided he would never book a hostel or hotel again.

CouchSurfing developed, and debuted at the start of last year. The site offers safeguards for surfers fearful of meeting oddballs and axe murderers. For example, each member's profile contains space for others to vouch for their character. Users who do this must also be sanctioned.

The next time you think about splashing out on a hotel, consider a web-enabled alternative. You might just have what Mr Fenton described as "the adventure of a lifetime" - without a credit card aftershock.