Urban Zoning for Sustainable Tourism: A Continuum of Accommodation to Enhance City Resilience

Chung-Yim Yiu,Ka-Shing Cheung

doi:10.3390/su13137317

Abstract

While governments around the world are embarking on the path to recovery from the COVID-19 crisis, sustainable tourism planning is crucial, in particular in the hospitality sector, which enhances the resilience of destinations. However, many destination management models overlook the role of urban zoning. Little is known about the impacts of land-use zoning on the hospitality and property industries, especially with the current disruption of short-term peer-to-peer accommodation like Airbnb. Euclidean zoning, also known as effects-based planning, has long been criticised in destination management for its exclusionary nature and lack of flexibility. With exclusionary zoning, property owners may only be able to use their land sub-optimally, and cities will be less efficient in responding to market changes in short-term and long-term accommodation demands, but planning intentions can be better controlled, and the property supply can be more stable. Taking Hong Kong as a noteworthy case, this study puts forward a conceptual framework that enables comparison of a novel zoning approach with the traditional zoning approach. This novel zoning approach encompasses both the short- and long-term rental sectors as a continuum of accommodation, ranging from hotels and serviced apartments to Airbnb and rental housing units under a unified regulatory and planning regime to enhance the switching options value. This novel zoning system can gear up the tourism sector with the rapid growth of the sharing economy and aligns with sustainable tourism to ensure long-term socioeconomic benefits to related stakeholders. We extract the data of Airbnb listings to construct the first Airbnb ADR Index (ADRI) by Repeat-sales method, and the results support our Switching Option Hypothesis.

Highlights

The peer-to-peer market, collectively known as the collaborative economy, has emerged as an alternative supply of accommodation that blurs the boundaries between the traditional hotel industry and residential rental housing [1]
Hotels are traditionally considered to have commercial purposes, and are governed by different sets of regulations and tax policies compared to residential rental housing
While hotels are designed for short-term accommodation, residential rental housing is for the long-term [2]

Summary

Introduction

The peer-to-peer market, collectively known as the collaborative economy, has emerged as an alternative supply of accommodation that blurs the boundaries between the traditional hotel industry and residential rental housing [1]. Hotels are traditionally considered to have commercial purposes, and are governed by different sets of regulations and tax policies compared to residential rental housing. The emergence of peerto-peer markets such as Airbnb has made the difference unclear. Even owner-occupied housing units can earn rental income by subletting either bedrooms or the whole unit for short periods to visitors. While hotels are designed for short-term accommodation, residential rental housing is for the long-term [2]. The difference between short- and long-term accommodation becomes ambiguous, and their definitions can be arbitrary.

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Conclusion