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The purpose of this paper is to test a number of hypotheses concerning the differences between senior and non‐senior travelers in the particular context of holiday rentals. A further aim is to provide exploratory evidence for these differences.

A brief review of the extant literature leads into the formulation of some hypotheses. The hypotheses are tested using survey data. Data from the same survey are used to explore further data.

It was possible not only to find some evidence to support the hypotheses, but also to find significant differences between the preferences of seniors and non‐seniors, as well as between pre‐seniors and seniors. Thus, pre‐seniors exhibit a higher willingness to pay for holiday rentals than seniors, whereas seniors have a higher preference for domestic travel. Seniors are less interested in technology than other age groups. Originality/value –This paper reports on survey findings for a segment of the tourism market that has received practically no attention in the literature – the holiday rental market. The results pave the way for further investigations within this segment.

Short-term rentals are mainly of small flats, which are offered to tourists. Currently, the providers of short-term rentals, in particular Airbnb (ABB), are being criticized in several German cities, on the grounds that shares of residential flats are being removed from the housing market, due to illegitimate misuse as tourist accommodation. Thus, the conventional urban housing markets are contending with a decline in housing supply and increasing rents. This paper aims to support these findings empirically.

The paper opted first for a spatial analysis with ArcGIS for ABB in Berlin. Second, different online data requests of periods of up to two months were used to analyze the extent of misuse with regard to the Zweckentfremdungsverbot (misuse prohibition law). Third, analysis of variance was used to analyze rental growth on the ABB markets. The data were collected in different approaches from the website of airbnb.com.

The paper provides evidence that 5,555 residential flats are presently being misused by ABB (0.30 per cent of the total housing stock in Berlin) and that many providers of entire flats have more than one offer simultaneously. Moreover, the paper provides the first entire-market overview of ABB in Berlin. It is evident that the ABB market is mainly located centrally and that only a few neighborhoods have large ABB markets. Rental growth is higher in the ABB markets which have a significant share of misused flats, than in the ABB markets which have insignificant shares of misused flats.

To the authors’ best knowledge, the paper provides the first empirical approach regarding misuse through short-term rentals on a housing market with an innovative design and first-hand data.

This paper aims to explore the phenomenon of online vacation rentals (OVRs) (a new source of e-business travel growth) and how the concept of sense of place is presented by tourists' online reviews.

The initial assumption for this exploratory study is that OVRs bring both material and intangible advantages to the individual consumer and to the community of homeowners. Using a qualitative approach, within the conceptual framework of a sense of place, multidimensional meanings presented by tourists' online reviews of their travel experience and home rentals were explored.

The findings point to a sense of place constructed through affordances of place, home and a functional sense of place. They seem to indicate that these testimonials come from a close-knit virtual community; although the site is open to all, it is primarily used by British-to-British. The data reveal neither any salient expression of social interaction between these tourists and the local community nor any references to the cultural context, thus pointing to the dimensions of security and familiarity and to the absence of any travelling-to-learn motivation.

It remains unclear whether sense of place, as defined here, is the outcome of the limitations induced by the channel and textual genre. Future research on this virtual community, via interviews and questionnaires, could clarify this question.

The analysis of this new form of tourism and the innovative design of this research, based on textual analysis of free elicited data, are the main contributions of this paper.

Scholarly research into community members’ views on the positive and negative impacts of Airbnb on the local community is sparse, especially in regional Australia. The purpose of this paper is to explore the views of key informants in the Byron Shire of Australia about the impacts of Airbnb on the local community, as well as possible solutions to the problems.

A qualitative approach of in-depth interviewing using a semi-structured interview guide was used to capture the views regarding the impacts of Airbnb held by 22 key informants in the Byron Shire community. The interview data were analysed using thematic analysis.

The 22 interviewees identified five main positive impacts of Airbnb on the Byron Shire community and eight main negative impacts of Airbnb. All participants said they wanted more regulation of Airbnb properties to help address the negative impacts of Airbnb in the community. Eight specific recommendations were offered by the interviewees.

The negative impacts of Airbnb felt by local community are more extensive and deleterious than have been accounted for in the literature. Research into community stakeholder perspectives is important, in order to gain a fuller view of the costs and benefits of sharing economy, especially with regard to short-term letting or holiday letting in tourism centres, as well as potential for more sustainable solutions to the issues.

The findings are being used to inform policy makers’ decisions in managing Airbnb in the Shire.

The involvement of key informant community members in this study highlights that there is much common ground between different stakeholders. This type of research may help to provide a sense of enfranchisement and empowerment. This is important in fostering a more balanced public debate, as well as more sustainable approaches to managing the issues.

This paper is the first to explore the views of a range of different key informants in the regional tourist area of Byron Shire in Australia with regard to the positive and negative impacts of Airbnb on the local community, as well as possible solutions to the issues raised by Airbnb.

Purpose – The chapter reviews public bicycle scheme implementation processes and impacts and will assist decision makers and stakeholders considering such schemes.

Approach – The chapter customises the Van de Velde typology for describing public and private interventions in public bicycle scheme implementation processes. The chapter considers schemes worldwide, but has a particular focus on France and Spain where these schemes are considered as a public service.

Findings – The authors draw several conclusions on how to optimise public and private involvement in order to achieve the desired impacts. First, public bicycle schemes have to be integrated within cycling and urban mobility policies. Second, local governments have to ensure that contracts with private sector operators make maximum use of the operator's skill, and by so doing will meet multi-modal travel behaviour objectives.

Research limitations/implication – The chapter highlights the need of further research into organisational and contractual performance, the special economic features of industries based on the supply of a service through a network, and cost–benefit analysis.

Practical implications – Public decision makers benefit from experience which is able to be assimilated and transmitted through international projects undertaken by international experts in the field.

Social implications – Public bicycle schemes enable relatively easy and cheap access to sustainable modes of transport, and they contribute to an overall transport system with cycling as a prime means of movement, and towards cities which are more pleasant to live in.

Originality – By integrating the main relevant data and publications into this worldwide overview, the chapter forms an essential starting point for future work relating to public bicycle schemes.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the attitudes of tourists toward digital marketing applications related to peer-to-peer short-term rental services within the sharing economy in the tourism sector. It aims to identify the factors that make Greek tourists to use these applications and to classify them into groups according to their attitudes toward these websites and to profile each group of tourists according to their personal and demographic characteristics and their preferences regarding their holidays/travel.

A primary survey was conducted in April 2018 for a random selected sample of Greek tourists. Principal component analysis was conducted to identify the main factors that affect tourists in using digital marketing application related to peer-to-peer short-term rental services within the sharing economy in the tourism sector. Cluster analysis was performed to classify tourists into groups according to their attitudes toward the use of these websites while discriminant analysis was conducted to check cluster predictability. Non-parametric tests, including the chi-square test, were performed to profile each strategic group according to their demographic characteristics and their preferences regarding their holidays/travel.

The study classified tourists into three groups, i.e. pioneers, convenience seekers and conscious, according to their attitudes toward the use of such applications.

The choice for the Greek context of the research is justified by the fact that Greece has suffered from recession in the last decade, but it is also a tourism-friendly country. The empirical results of this pioneer study should trigger further investigation. Although tourists’ behavior towards the adoption of digital marketing application related to peer-to-peer rental services within the sharing economy in the tourism sector might be culturally specific and the results are mainly applicable in the Greek market, they could be generalized in other countries with similar characteristics in both Greece and other parts with similar characteristics.

Tourists are extremely important both for developers and policy makers in tourism industry. For developers such information is important because the expectation of viable markets will motivate investments. For policy makers, this type of information will help them to respond more adequately through regulation tools and programs. From a practical perspective, the tourism operators may benefit from focusing on their differentiating features and aligning their marketing communication with their tourists’ aspirations by developing, optimizing and customizing their websites according to the needs of the customers and the extension of touristic activities to other sectors of tourism industry.

Visitors who choose Airbnb accommodations spend more days travelling; consequently, the market size of the tourism industry expands from the increase in the number of visitors.

The originality of the paper derives from the understanding of the tourists’ behavior toward the adoption of digital marketing applications related to peer-to-peer rental services within the sharing economy in the tourism sector. More specifically, it identifies the factors that make Greek tourists to use those applications, classifies them into groups according to their attitudes towards those websites and profiles each group of tourists according to their personal and demographic characteristics and their preferences regarding their holidays/travel.

In the last ten years, businesses taking advantage of market deregulation, call‐centre, intranet and internet technology have broken traditional marketing norms and path‐dependent customer management practices. These businesses offer substantially lower prices and good customer service. In spite of anecdotal evidence of the high level of service complaints in the press, these businesses are expanding rapidly by growing the market and by taking share from traditional suppliers. Service failure recovery and complaint management are two areas which are extensively re‐designed by such businesses. This paper aims to identify and examine such new practices. The authors suggest that the traditional “customer‐centricity” model is being replaced by a “customer‐compliance business model” (CCBM) of service provision. This new model and its propositions defy conventional thinking in the areas of service recovery and complaint management.

Available data and research are reviewed, in an attempt to understand CCBM. Differences with the customer‐centricity model are discussed.

CCBM cannot be explained adequately by current assumptions in marketing. It breaks commonplace marketing expectations about service failure and recovery.

The emphasis is on explaining innovations in service recovery and complaint management.

Companies which operate the CCBM model are of growing importance to developed, service‐oriented economies. The paper builds on evidence to show how CCBM businesses have abandoned or minimised costly customer centricity and have broken past norms and conventional marketing thinking and practice.

The scarcity of research in this area is explained by the recent, rapid evolution of these new model businesses. The study reveals and makes sense of important trends in service provision, distinct from and incompatible with normative arguments in some academic writings that advocate service recovery excellence.

The treatment of rent‐free periods and other inducements is currently an area of debate within the valuation profession. It has been argued that in determining the real rental value from a headline rent, the valuer must devalue the impact of the inducement. While recognizing the problem, there appears to be little agreement within the profession on either the appropriate methodology or the time period for this calculation. A further problem has arisen due to the near impossibility of divorcing over‐rented property valuations from the determination of real rental values. However, the current debate has centred on rental implications and has not attempted to quantify the effect which the capital valuation has on the letting market, even though it is the effect on the freehold capital valuation which may drive the deal on letting incentives to a far greater extent than any trade off of present rental holiday against higher rent in the future. Addresses the capital valuation question after a review of the basis of the valuation and the present state of the debate on rental issues.

Although networked hospitality businesses as Airbnb are a recent phenomenon, a rapid growth has made them a serious competitor for the hospitality industry with important consequences for tourism and for tourist destinations. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the nature of the phenomenon, its potential further development in the next five years and the impact this developments will have on tourism, on hotels and on city destinations.

A literature study, combined with scenario workshops and a Delphi panel, were used to map current trends and uncertainties. With this input, future scenarios were elaborated using the Global Business Network (“scenario cross”) method.

Network platforms as Airbnb are often classified under something called the “Sharing Economy”, a denomination that obscures their true nature. Airbnb is a challenging innovation to which traditional hospitality will have to respond. Its impact has at the same time led to a call for regulatory policies. The definition of these policies and the evolution of tourism are variables that determine future scenarios. Attempts to ban the phenomenon mean a disincentive to innovation and protect oligopolistic markets; more receptive policies may have the desired results if tourism grows moderately but in booming destinations they may lead to a harmful commercialization.

Until now, Airbnb has been described in conceptual studies about the so-called “Sharing economy”, or more recently in empirical studies about isolated effects of holiday rentals. This paper contextualizes the evolution of networked hospitality and seeks to synthesize the sum of its impacts, thus enabling businesses and local governments to define positions and strategies.