Conceptualizing peer-to-peer accommodations as disruptions in the urban tourism system

Abstract

In urban destinations, Peer-to-peer accommodations (P2PAs), e.g., Airbnb, HomeAway, have experienced exponential growth and are shifting the vertices of the residential and tourism landscapes. As the nodes of visitor access appear deeper within backstage places, resident non-hosts face socio-cultural impacts that can influence their attitudes towards P2PAs and subsequent P2PA success in urban destinations. Predicated upon the resident non-host stakeholder’s attitudes towards P2PAs, this paper offers a conceptual model situated within socio-ecological systems and chaos theories to help guide P2PA management and planning within urban tourism destinations. The proposed model posits that P2PA density, location, and the pace of their growth can propel a destination towards its critical social carrying capacity or delay reaching this critical threshold depending on how urban destinations leverage P2PA disruptions.