Does hosting on Airbnb offer hosts vacation-like benefits? Proposing a reconceptualization of peer-to-peer accommodation

Peer-to-peer accommodation is firmly positioned as a supply-side phenomenon. Hosts are seen as providers of services; they cater to the needs of guests. In contrast to this current understanding, we propose that hosting offers tourism-like benefits, suggesting - for the first time - that suppliers of tourism services may enjoy the benefits typically reserved for consumers of tourism services. As an initial empirical proof of principle of our proposition, we compare benefit patterns of real tourism with those of hosting and other potential travel alternatives. Hosting emerges as enabling residents to harvest some of the benefits of real tourism (which is particularly attractive to residents with limited ability to travel), and offering untapped opportunities for tourism management (accommodation capacity provision) and tourism marketing (word of mouth advertising). These results suggest that considering a reconceptualization of peer-to-peer accommodation as being both a supply- and demand-side phenomenon is warranted. Findings from this study can also help destinations to recruit new hosts, and highlight hosting as a travel alternative for people who are unable to engage in real travel.