Suggestion
Keep hiking with the friend of yours. It may be that you were not chosen as the host due to him.
Reasoning
There are active and passive host finding strategies when it comes to ticks. While active ticks run to you, the passive ones will cling on vegetation and wait for contact. In theory it may sound plausible that for the passive ones body hair would provide more to grab on but there's no scientific evidence on whether human body hair is easier for a tick to grab on or if the tick would find it easier to grab onto the skin directly. For active species, body hair probably won't make any difference.
A more significant factor is the body odour
Odours are undoubtedly the most important and best studied stimuli.
Host-originated odours provide specific information and, when carried
on wind currents, also provide directional information.
Among the most important host-originated odourants are carbon dioxide,
a component of animal breath and ammonia, common in urine and other
animal wastes. CO2 and NH3 attraction bring hungry ticks into close
proximity to potential hosts, whereupon other, shorter range stimuli
become effective. At shorter ranges, butyric acid and lactic acid
become effective.
Tick Feeding - Host Seeking
When a tick has chosen its host, it often locates its feeding area by the smell. This also depends on the species.
Attractive and repellent host odours guide ticks to their respective feeding sites
Host gender and age
Women 40 years or older had a 48% higher risk than men 40 years or
older and 42% higher risk than women younger than 40 years of
attracting tick bites (0.0188 versus 0.0127 and 0.0188 versus 0.0132
tick bites respectively per hour). Additionally they had a 96% higher
risk than men younger than 40 years of attracting tick bites (0.0188
versus 0.0096). The annual incidence rate of EM in women was 506 and
in men 423 cases per 100,000 inhabitants (p<0.001). Significant
differences in incidence rates occurred in those 40 years or older.
Effect of gender on clinical and epidemiologic features of Lyme borreliosis
Conclusion
The difference between the amount of ticks found on one person over another is likely due to ticks simply preferring the smell of one over another.
Other blood-feeding species -research support the odour-theory