User:Valeriesophie/sandbox

Accommodation Sharing

Accommodation sharing, as part of the sharing economy, describes the process of offering your home or parts of your room for short periods of time as an alternative form of accommodation. As part of collaborative consumption, accommodation sharing is a peer-to-peer- based activity of obtaining, giving, or sharing the access to goods and services that are coordinated through community-based online services. Sharing economy organisations, according to Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers, display "a powerful cultural and economic force reinventing not just what we consume, but how we consume, an effective transition from a culture of 'me' to a culture of 'we'". Organisations such as, Airbnb and CouchSurfing, are committed to build and validate trusted relationships between members of their community that include producers, suppliers, customers, and other participants.

History of Accommodation Sharing
CouchSurfing, the pioneer of accommodation sharing, was founded in 2004 as a small passion project by founders Casey Fenton, Daniel Hoffer, Sebastian Le Tuan and Leonardo Bassani da Silveira. An email to a group of students in Iceland gave birth to the idea that people anywhere would want to share their homes with strangers (or, as the founders like to call them, friends you haven't met yet). The idea of CouchSurfing started with the need for free accommodation of young Casey Fenton after he booked an expensive flight from Boston to Iceland in 1999. Fenton emailed around 1,500 students of the University of Iceland asking for a host and he received more than 50 offers which in the end gave birth to his idea of CouchSurfing which he later founded in 2004.

Airbnb and Couchsurfing
Airbnb is one example of an online community marketplace facilitating short-term rentals ranging from shared accommodations to entire homes. Since 2008, it contributed more than ten million worldwide bookings to the so-called sharing economy.

Airbnb defines itself as a social website that connects people who have space to spare with those who are looking for a place to stay and exemplifies a community marketplace. Founded in August 2008 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, the company is privately owned and operated by Airbnb, Inc. In 2016, it includes over 1,500,000 listings in 34,000 cities and 190 countries.

Couchsurfing International Inc. is a hospitality exchange and social networking website which started as a non-profit company and developed into a for-profit privately owned company. The website provides a platform for members to "surf" on couches by staying as a guest at a host's home, host travelers, or join an event. In November 2015 Couchsurfing International Inc. counted 10 million members in 200,000 cities. Moreover with Couchsurfing International Inc. "one can stay with locals in every country on earth, travel like a local, stay in someone's home and experience the world in a way money can't buy".

The Issue of Trust
The sharing economy foremost heavily relies on the will of the users to share. However, in order to make an exchange, users have to be trustworthy. One essential characteristic in the sharing economy and therefore also in the branch of accommodation sharing is trust. "For that matter, if you’re going to go spend some time as the house-guest of a perfect stranger, you also will make some assessment along the lines of, “Do I, or do I not, trust these people?”"

In the sharing economy, trust is for example built through user-generated online reviews. Many platforms that are part of the sharing economy have embraced the use of online reviews. Companies, such as eBay, pioneered in using bidirectional post- transaction reviews in the form of ordinal star ratings. Nowadays, companies encourage users to provide and publish detailed reviews of their experiences subsequent to each transaction. "Judging by the millions of reviews left by guests on the Airbnb platform, this “trusted community marketplace” is fulfilling its mission of matching travelers seeking accommodation with hosts who have room to spare remarkably well".

Controversy on Accommodation Sharing Platforms
In 2016, discussion of the sharing economy has risen to the level of heated debate, along with a rapidly growing level of attention by legal and regulatory bodies. The hotel industry fears the rise of accommodation sharing, because hotel prices have increased nearly 20 percent within the last four years and websites such as Airbnb typically can offer short-term accommodation at a fraction of the price of hotels, are therefore booming. It is argued that a large population of individuals worldwide have indeed benefitted from accommodation sharing: both those that de- rive incremental income by renting properties through platforms such as Airbnb, as well as individuals selecting an Airbnb rental as an alternative to a hotel stay.

Overview Accommodation Sharing Networks

 * BeWelcome – A non-profit organisation based on open-source principles with more than 80,000 members in 150 countries.
 * CouchSurfing – A for-profit network with 10 million members in more than 200 countries
 * Airbnb - A for-profit network that has over 1,500,000 listings in 34,000 cities and 190 countries
 * 9flats
 * HomeAway
 * HouseTrip
 * Roomorama
 * Vive Unique
 * Wimdu