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Article Excerpt: Tennessee is well-known to tourists. According to the Tennessee Economic and Community Development blog…..

Since 2014, Airbnb has been the poster-child for an impassioned debate over how to best regulate short-term home rentals (STR’s) in New Orleans, Louisiana. As critical perspectives toward on-demand economic practice become increasingly common, it is important to understand how the impacts of STR platforms like Airbnb extend beyond the realm of what is traditionally conceptualized as the economic (i.e., pressure on housing markets). In this thesis, I explore the ways in which Airbnb recalibrates the spatial and temporal rhythms of everyday neighborhood life for people external to the formal trappings of an STR contract. Drawing in particular on theories of authenticity and feminist political economy, I argue that locals’ emotional labor of “playing host” is necessarily enrolled into the creation of value for Airbnb, and is essential to the reproduction of the platform’s business model and marketing rhetoric.

The objective of this paper is to analyze the resiliency of the New Orleans lodging and tourism industry by conducting a SWOT analysis. A SWOT analysis is composed of four key parts: the internal influences that are the strengths (S) and weaknesses (W) and the external influences that are the opportunities (O) and threats (T). New Orleans is characterized by the ability to use its internal strengths to drive growth in its lodging and tourism market. The main internal strengths I identified were the city’s strong cultural identity, and destination attractiveness in both the convention and leisure markets. However, New Orleans also has internal weaknesses that adversely affect the perception of the city: cultural arrogance, crime and cleanliness. Externally, the city is presented with several opportunities to become one of the top tourist destinations both nationally and internationally. The marketing opportunities available to New Orleans are through the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corporation, the healthcare and film industries, and the city’s accessibility. The city’s reach is limited by several key threats, such as short-term rentals, competing markets such as Charleston and Atlanta, and natural disasters that could disrupt New Orleans’ position as one of the top visitor markets in the United States.

In order to better understand the effects of condominium conversions, this study explores the nature and extent of the conversion trend, and its social impacts on the Vieux Carré neighborhood. The increasing number of conversions in the Vieux Carré, also known as the French Quarter, has been the focus of recent controversy and has been perceived by many residents as a threat to the viability of the historic district as a neighborhood. Long-term Vieux Carré residents and neighborhood organizations have expressed fears that the converted rental units are being used as short-term rentals to tourists or second homes, which may be contributing to the decline of the neighborhood's residential base. As a framework for understanding the social impacts of condominium conversions in the Vieux Carré neighborhood, this study includes a review of the literature on neighborhood change, neighborhood health, and neighborhood attachment. Since the issue of condominiums is intertwined with the ongoing research on tourism in this historic district, a review of the literature on condominium conversion, tourism impacts and the Vieux Carré also is included. In addition, this study contains the results of a mail survey of occupants of converted condominium units in the Vieux Carré. While survey respondents report formal and informal participation in the neighborhood, only half of the occupants (53%) of the converted units consider the Vieux Carré as their primary residence or are registered to vote in New Orleans. Although many condominium residents do exhibit a sense of neighborhood attachment, half are not present in the neighborhood on a full-time basis; therefore, they have limited opportunities to participate politically on behalf of the neighborhood. The findings of the survey suggest the social impacts of the condominium conversion in the Vieux Carré are likely to contribute to the decline of the neighborhood.

Under the banner of the ‘sharing economy’, private short-term rental platforms such as Airbnb have witnessed tremendous success, facilitating millions of overnight stays in everyday homes. And while the issue has garnered considerable attention from both popular media and policy makers in cities such as New York, Amsterdam, London and Berlin, little attention has been paid to the topic in Stockholm, Sweden as well as academic literature. With this absence of discussion serving as a point of departure, I analyze both primary and secondary data pertaining to the rise of Airbnb in Stockholm. With a theoretical lens based in critical poststructuralist thought, I argue that Airbnb is embedded within neoliberal urbanism, fueling the social and economic forces behind gentrification. In order to address the problematic implications of Airbnb and similar platforms, I suggest policymakers and applicable actors to review the current taxing scheme, consider temporal restrictions, align short-term rental laws with subletting laws and communicate clearly.

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There are numerous emerging companies creating interesting and often unique projects in the 21st century. These companies frequently operate in a new, rapidly changing sector. These companies may face an insufficient supply of standardized information software, capable of supporting the business. On the contrary, an individual application software (made from scratch) might not be an option for the companies due to lack of finance to fund its development. Moreover, such SW may not be suitable for companies, especially in a situation when the company starts business activities in a new field, where all the business processes, hence the software requirements, emerge after many test runs and trials. In theory, this thesis focuses on possible solutions to this problem and in practice examines one specific software solution using an example of a property management company Property Rentier s.r.o. (hereinafter PR) which offers complex management services for recreational homes and short-term rental properties, especially using an Airbnb platform. PR has currently been confronted with a decision to make, whether or not to restructure its software solution and its architecture or keep its own and merely keep expanding it. The main goal of this thesis is to analyze and summarize the current processes of the selected company, describe how it is being supported by IT/ICT and, based on these findings, evaluate and recommend further measures regarding restructuring of the companys IT systems. The thesis output is meant for the PR company as well as for any start-up companies as a supportive material which should help ease its struggle making decisions about software development or its purchase.

Since the onset of the global financial crisis, urban dwellers face an increasing number of obstacles in establishing themselves on the housing market. Against this backdrop, this paper addresses the variegated dynamics of real estate dispossession in the tourist conurbation Los Cristianos/Las Américas on an intra-urban scale. First, I will present the spatio-temporal patterns of dispossession for the period 2001–2015 using the ATLANTE database (CGPJ). Specifically, I analyze mortgage foreclosures and tenant evictions, both for residential and commercial spaces. Second, I delve deeper into local experiences of dispossession of the resident population and their housing and income conditions by means of questionnaires that I conducted in 2018. The data shows that mortgage foreclosures and dispossessions of residential spaces predominate the initial years after the crisis, albeit with varied spatial incidence. However, the increase in tenant evictions from 2014 onwards points to a reconfiguration of displacement dynamics. Indeed, as stated by the interviewees, staggeringly high rent burdens have become the main driver for displacement from both living and working spaces in recent years. Given the ongoing global pandemic, further and more nuanced research is necessary to grasp how these prevailing housing insecurities are shaped during and beyond the coronavirus crisis.