Formation of a new type of mobile personality lifestyle in transcultural communication

Due to the changes in tourism associated with the development of modern technology new forms of tourist practices and travel ways has emerged. One of such new phenomena is virtual hospitality networks. Advances in online network technology enable the emergence of new social solidarity forms among people in virtual space, creating new horizons and context for social mobility problems research, new perspectives and psychological changes in communicative relations. The international hospitality network Couchsurfing has become an important leader in the alternative tourism world and interesting source for anthropological research. Couchsurfing offers a new model of hybrid online-offline community allowing by emerging as a result of communication of social trust and a sense of belonging overcoming geographical and cultural boundaries. In addition, this phenomenon is interesting because of virtual and real network intersection and cosmopolitan identity construction. In our article we present several works concerning this topic that, in our opinion, worth special attention. Based on the results of these studies we can conclude that the experience of the Couchsurfing project participants is significantly different from the experiences of mass tourists. Participants of the Couchsurfing project are involved themselves in creation of their tourist experience, in this regard, it can be argued that in this case it is possible to obtain authentic tourist experience. The analysis of the Couchsurfing phenomenon is also able to contribute to studies related to the experience exchange and sharing, opening an additional perspective to the emphasis on the ability to share any physical resources, as well as the prospect studies of specific types of experiential capital that can contribute to self-development as a result of such exchange. Couchsurfing has extremely rich cultural diversity that constitutes the research interest from the point of view of how people from different countries and cultures get along and cooperate with each other. A study of the relationship between cultural differences, personal preferences, the process of forming trust and attachment can help to explain and overcome the various psychological obstacles at the level of global and local communities. However, the presented overview shows insufficient knowledge of the authenticity problem of the tourist experience gained by hospitality network participants. To examine the authenticity of the tourist experience of the hospitality network participants, affecting significant changes of a modern person, as a methodological framework, we will describe and offer a communicative and narrative approach, and also describe the perspective for the future research of this phenomenon.

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