It can be both, but you can see straight away from the profile they have in CS if they expect you to "socialize" all the time or if the host give you some "freedom" We had both, from only meeting in the evening to full day guided tours around their home town or farm or Outback.

One thing is your profile in CS, this is the first thing a potential host looks at when you send a request. It should be filled, best with some pictures and explaining what you are doing, where you are travelling and how. Most hosts do not even react to empty profiles.

A verified address helps too. Cost you 5USD I think and you get a postcard to your home address with a code and then you are a verified member.

There are some “groups” for Motorcycling or overland travel as well which offer accommodation and sometimes a workshop. In Timor Leste we spend one week in the best Garage there to clean our bike for Australia. In Darwin a guy hosted us while our bike was lost in the AU-Customs system for three weeks. This rescued us, Darwin Cup and Darwin festival, campings, hostels and rooms all booked out, shittiest rooms started 300AUD… So we stayed in a CS house (actually in the garden in our tent) and it was great fun…

In Australia we found out that it works best if you do not try it in big cities, out in the countryside we had a success rate of nearly 100%, in the big cities we gave up. For example in Melbourne it was nearly impossible to CS. If you are a host there you get several hundred requests a week…

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Round the world by bike. www.RTWbyBIKE.com