Urban tourism and Airbnb: Tourist-resident encounters and feeling at home in Amsterdam residential neighbourhoods.

Abstract

Collaborative consumption is reinventing what, where and how we consume. The rising popularity of peer-to-peer accommodation platforms, like Airbnb, and the drive for authenticity has meant a shift from frequenting officially designated tourist attractions to regular but diverse others’ lively neighbourhoods, café culture, nightlife and markets. This creates and brings shifting tourist preferences to light and consequences for cities and their residents. Resultant tourist-resident encounters stimulate positive and negative impacts; tensions and synergies are present, but a clearer understanding of what these are and how it impacts feeling at home is needed. Hence this research investigates how, in the context of the proliferation of peer-to-peer accommodation, tourist-resident encounters impact residents’ and tourists’ experience of feeling at home in the neighbourhood. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted in Amsterdam, the case study, a city where striking a balance between a liveable city while maintaining tourism development is a pertinent issue. Both residents’ and tourists’ perspectives were sought to understand their spatial practices, the contact zones of encounters, their experience of feeling at home and the consequences for their experience of the neighbourhood.