ABSTRACT
Airbnb, the peer-to-peer platform for short-term accommodation rental, enables urban residents to become hosts and to promote their private home on the internet. Taking the case of Berlin, Germany, the article aims to identify the various motivations and lifestyle backgrounds that drive people to share their apartment with strangers. Applying a grounded theory approach, the results of twenty-five qualitative, semi-structured interviews illustrate the multifaceted reasoning and the—at least partially—difficult underlying conditions that motivate Airbnb hosts to share their apartments with guests. By renting out private space on a regular basis, tourism becomes a central element of mundane, everyday life and an important source of revenue, even for semi- or non-professional hosts. This chapter ultimately reaches the conclusion that hosts’ subletting activities via Airbnb are applied as a strategy to cope with the challenges of an increasingly mobile society.
