Abstract

AbstractIn recent decades, services on digital platforms have become increasingly important in tourism. What started with concepts of exchange as a non- or less commodified practice of sharing accommodations (e.g., Couchsurfing) became exceedingly commodified in the platform economy on a global scale and turned into successful business models (e.g., Airbnb) with strong effects on traditional provider structures and local labour market. In Austria, the economic relevance of tourism traces back more than 100 years. Today, new forms of overnight stays, such as short-term rentals (STRs), have flooded the traditional tourism industry market with offerings in the accommodation sector and pose particular challenges in the housing market in Austrian cities. The COVID-19 crisis highlights the general volatility in tourism. Therefore, alternative business models seem to be more important than before. Discussing the relevance of hybrid sharing as a business model between market-based services and platform cooperatives in the global platform economy, domestic examples from Austria serve as an incentive for other countries to show new pathways in terms of alternative platform structures and work towards a less volatile economy. In doing so, national insights of regulations of global players and new guidelines of platform-based sharing are debated too.

Highlights

  • This chapter focuses on the area of tourism in Austria, in the short-term accommodation sector

  • It can be assumed that the crisis will lead to bankruptcies and a restructuring of the tourism industry, which in Austria is strongly characterised by the winter season and ski tourism

  • Concluding, it can be said that short-term rental (STR) play an important role in the Austrian tourism sector

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Summary

Introduction

This chapter focuses on the area of tourism in Austria, in the short-term accommodation sector. Markets are monopolised and made inaccessible for other players, as is best exemplified by the business models of Uber and Airbnb (Heiland 2018; Srnicek 2017) These developments have led to sharing (economies) with commons-based platforms to pursue different strategies. Often summarised under the buzzword of ‘platform cooperativism’ (Scholz 2016), these models differ from the classical market-based sharing economy in their governance structure and the participation possibilities for their users. These platforms aim to counteract ‘extractive capitalism’ by returning surpluses to local economic cycles and local communities, as opposed to the business models of Airbnb and Uber, which exploit local resources as a global competitive advantage (Foramitti et al 2020).

The Austrian Sharing Economy
Austrian Tourism Sector and the Rise of Airbnb
Interest in Hybrid Sharing Models in the Austrian Accommodation Sector
Summary
Suggested Readings
Findings
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