Social Networks in Tourism: The CouchSurfing Project in Czechia

The master thesis focuses on the virtual social network sites which are concern to be exceptionally actual issue. Moreover the thesis deals with social networks in tourism. The number of various social networks about travelling is high. However, only the community of CouchSurfing (hospitality exchange network) was chosen for the research purposes of the thesis. The research included in the thesis focuses on CouchSurfing because is the greatest hospitality exchange site in these days. It includes user from all over the world and community of Czech users as well. The focal point of the research was also on Czech community only. With the aim of approaching the theme gradually the thesis begins with the theoretical framework. The framework is structured into several chapters which include insight to the social networks and alternative tourism from different perspectives. The social theory, the sociological paradigms, the changes in value-system in the society and the technological development of web 2.0 are discussed in the theoretical part. The aim of the thesis research was to compare two different groups of participants of tourism (mainly young people) - the tourists who are not joining the CouchSurfing community and the tourists who are registered. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were..