Tourism Work and Workers in the Short-term Rental Platform Economy

This research project explores how short-term rental (STR) platforms are transforming the organization and conditions of tourism and hospitality work across different cities in the Netherlands. By comparing STR work in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, The Hague, Nijmegen and Maastricht, the project will investigate in depth the similarities and the potential differences in the impact of platforms in their respective contexts. The research first explores who make up these STR platforms’ workforce, tracing the (employment) relations between actors and their role in the organisation and valuation of STR work. It examines how factors such as gender, age, class, race, nationality, and migration status intersect with another, allowing the project to map out inequality issues that STR workers potentially face. Secondly, it analyses the different types and conditions of work that STR workers carry out and how these compare to existing standards and guidelines regarding fair work and labour protection in the tourism and hospitality sector. Thirdly, it examines how the workforce, types and conditions of STR work in these cities compare and what can be learned from these cases. Methodologically, the project employs an approach combining quantitative and qualitative methods to study the scope and scale as well as the subjective and lived experiences of STR labour in the respective cities. In terms of application, the project intends to contribute to the realization of fair working conditions for workers in the platform economies of tourism, focussing in particular on the labour that underpins short-term rental platforms.