https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0582-3121
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ABSTRACT
Cities all over the world are experiencing a steady tension that from interlinked processes such as touristification, gentrification and the financialization of housing. This paper shows how short-term rentals (STR) are an accelerator to all these processes which pull in or redirect different forms of capital and short-term users on the one hand and push out long-term residents on the other. Based on fine-grained fieldwork this paper illustrates that a new platform real estate market has emerged which, in the case of Salzburg, is dominated by local, commercial providers. By taking one of the most touristified cities in Europe, I further illustrate how a short-term rent gap is fueling this process. Moreover, this paper reveals the motives of extraction, and actor-relations and analyses the impact of Airbnb on the housing market in general. Finally, it provides an overview and critique of recent policy measures that try to regulate STR.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 The definition of financialization Ben Fine (Citation2013) captures another important aspect of financialization as he stresses “the intensive and extensive accumulation of fictitious capital or, in other words, the increasing scope and prevalence of IBC [interest bearing capital] in the accumulation of capital” (2013, p. 55).
2 In this paper Haila listed three essential research questions related to rent theory: “A. How does (the substance of) rent emerge? B. Who or what are its agents, what are their behavioural patterns and mutual social relations, for example, who receives rent? C. What is the economic role of rent, for example, what is its role in accumulation and coordination?” (Citation1990, p. 276).
3 Recently the Court of Justice of the EU ruled in favor of Airbnb arguing that Airbnb is a simple information society service and not a real estate agent. The Court argued that Airbnb is an intermediation service and, therefore, protected by the EU’s E-Commerce directive from the year 2000 (CURIA, Citation2019).
4 I would like to thank my colleagues Angela Hof and Karolin Kautzschmann who have been part of our common research project(s). I owe many insights to our common discussions and analyses on this topic. Moreover, I would like to thank Roman Seidl who did the web-scraping that enabled us to map and quantify the Airbnb listings.
5 For a detailed methodological discussion concerning data issues, see Smigiel et al. (Citation2019).
6 The selection of the interviewees is based on three steps. First, we calculated an indicator variable that captures the commercialization of short-term renting in Salzburg. Second, we classified the whole city concerning this indicator. Four types of Airbnb hosts and zones emerged. Third, we used a random generator to have the same number of interviewees in each zone.
8 Bookings lead to ratings. The number of ratings is one variable that is needed to calculate the use to capacity of Airbnb apartments. Before doing that, it is necessary to know how many bookings lead to ratings. We calculated that 50% of bookings lead to ratings – a quota which is derived from other projects and sources. The duration of stay is another variable that is needed to calculate the rate of use to capacity. At the end both variables are added and the annual use to capacity comes out. To avoid overestimations the rate of use to capacity is cut at 70%.
9 All translations of original citations have been made by the author.
10 A recent study in Berlin confirms this assumption showing that especially active Airbnb listings lead to an increase in house prices in the neighborhood (Duso et al., Citation2020, p. 41).
11 The district “Gaisberg” (the most Eastern district of Salzburg city) has to be seen as an exception since it is a hilly area with only very few houses.
12 This citation results from a research project that investigated residents’ perception of short-term rentals/touristification in two selected inner-city case study areas in Salzburg.
13 Salzburg has the highest ratio of overnight stays per inhabitant among European cities that host between 2 and 10 million overnight stays and has been categorized as one of only four tourist cities in Europe facing huge problems with mass tourism.