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Accommodation sharing, also known as "hospitality exchange", refers to the use of data sharing or online platforms to find or offer accommodation in a home. In this practice, the host offers a place to stay for the guest, in exchange of a monetary value or no money at all.

Traveling communities such as Hospitality Club and Couchsurfing offer free accommodation to travelers. In this exchange, a traveler resides in the home of a host and leaves after a few days with no monetary profit for either party. In payed platforms such as Airbnb, there are fees for both guests and hosts once a reservation has been made.

In the past decades, there has been an expansion in markets for commercial tourism and high cost accommodations. As a result, forms of alternative tourism, different from the comercial ones, have emerged globally.

Alternative tourism
Alternative tourism or Alternative travel is a process which promotes a just form of travel between members of a community. Its main objective is to achieve mutual understanding, solidarity and equality amongst participants. Alternative tourism was first coined in the early 70s, in response to the economic, environmental, and social effects of mass tourism, which were seen as unsustainable, inauthentic and superficial. Mcintyre states that this type of tourism encourages an understanding of the impacts of tourism on the natural, cultural and human environments and it ensures a fair distribution of benefits and costs.

As a way of Alternative tourism, in accommodation sharing platforms the client receives accommodation directly in or at the home of the host with, eventually other services and facilities offered there. Various online platforms serve as the medium to find accommodation, they provide access to a wide range of services, many of them of higher quality and more affordable than their traditional business counterparts.

Online platforms
Online platforms have a crucial role when referring to access of information and the way it connects users. They cover activities such as online advertising platforms, marketplaces, search engines, social media and creative content outlets and application distribution. . These types of platforms are used for collaborative consumption, where users exchange information/resources as part of the sharing economy. Samuel Nadler considers that the sharing economy has widened the overall supply of travel options. The exchange of goods or services is facilitated via online platforms, which are created and managed by private companies, also referred to as peer-to-peer companies or sharing economy companies. In the sharing economy, anyone is able to start a tourism business. Russell Belk argues that there are two aspects in the sharing and collaborative consumption practices: The first one deals with their use of temporary access non-ownership models of utilizing consumer goods and services and the second one, in their reticence on the Internet, especially Web 2.0.

In the Accommodation Sharing process, online platforms serve as a place to share and discover content. They accommodate a variety of multimedia data including: pictures, videos, illustrations, geospatial content and links to internal and external websites.

Examples of Sharing Networks

 * Airbnb


 * Couchsurfing


 * Hospitality Club


 * Night Swapping: Is a community of people that host other members in their guest rooms or entire home, to travel for free.


 * Trampolinn: Is a homestay community based on an night swapping system.
 * Trustedhousesitters: A community of home and pet owners with care-orientated sitters who will look after their home and pets for free, in exchange for a place to stay.