Managing hearts and minds: romanticizing Airbnb experiences

ABSTRACT

In peer-to-peer (P2P) accommodation settings such as Airbnb, social interactions and commercial motives blur the exchange experience between hosts and guests. This study focuses on the blurred experiences and how these are managed in the confines of the shared Airbnb home. Drawing upon the ideology of modern Romanticism, this study seeks to understand the dynamics through which the dualities of Home Sharing (HS) experiences take place. This work is based on an ethnographic study of Airbnb in New Zealand. Data involved in-depth interviews, participant observation, brief informal discussions on-site and archival data. This study explains how hosts and guests construct a shared romantic fantasy to re-engage with the natural world, human nature and create a new paradigm of HS in a simulated sharing experience to help them cope with tensions between social and commercial motives. This research sheds light on the management of conflicting ethics behind sharing and exchange, providing theoretical and practical implications for the P2P accommodation experience.

KEYWORDS:

• Airbnb
• Romanticism
• peer-to-peer accommodation
• desire
• motivation
• host–guest relations

Disclosure statement

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. There is no potential conflict of interest reported by the authors.