Airbnb-ed Homes and Everyday Life

Roelofsen, Maartje

doi:10.1007/978-3-031-04010-8_4

Maartje Roelofsen²

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Abstract

This chapter explores how short-term rental platforms transform the intimate spatialities, everyday practices, and the social relations at “home”. Drawing on an (auto)ethnographic study of Airbnb within the context of Sofia, the chapter shows that the meaning of home is continuously reshaped by the social and emotional relationships that are established between different hosts and different guests. While being disruptive it also argues that the Airbnb economy represents an opportunity for some hosts to produce and extract new values from their intimate spatialities and their ordinary practices of homemaking. Finally, the chapter illustrates how, in the process, having guests over oftentimes unsettles and rearranges the social relations between those already living in that “home”.

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Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain
Maartje Roelofsen

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Roelofsen, M. (2022). Airbnb-ed Homes and Everyday Life. In: Hospitality, Home and Life in the Platform Economies of Tourism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04010-8_4

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04010-8_4
Published: 21 May 2022
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-04009-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-04010-8
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