Airbnb, New Tourism and the Impact of Sharing Services

You may have noticed a string of Airbnb ads promoting their new marketing campaign, “Live There,” which was released last month and urges travelers not to visit a new destination, but rather live there for a more local feel. Wake up and make your bed, then walk down to the coffee shop and check out hole-in-the-wall neighborhood haunts, as opposed to standing in line with the masses at all the tourist traps and hot spots.

The company is now leveraging hosts’ local knowledge in a more tangible way, building guidebooks to help travelers get the most out of a neighborhood and have an authentic local experience. The process begins with a curated conversation about your ideal trip and yields unique results based on your preferences.

This campaign is the latest extension in a seemingly natural progression of the sharing service, and could help revolutionize the way we travel. However, a recent MarketWatch article draws attention to a potential downside of this new tourism wave. On the one hand, you have new tourism money coming into neighborhoods and bringing revitalization, but on the other hand, this influx of tourists and tourism revenue can lead to higher rents and higher retail prices, which could then potentially displace real locals who can no longer afford to live there.

As the tourism economy begins to shift and take different shapes, it will be interesting to see how neighborhoods evolve to better accommodate this influx, and how destinations and tourism entities will react and retain management and organization over a sprawling and ever-changing tourism environment.