Propertyless Proprietors: Ownership and Entrepreneurship on Airbnb in Prague

Abstract

In the last fifteen years, hosting on Airbnb has largely shifted from work done by individuals to work done by organizations. While this fact is well established in both academic and popular literature, relatively little is known about the organization of labor in such companies. Although it has been argued that this is a platform-driven phenomenon, using participant observation from a case study of one property-management company operating on Airbnb in Prague called SmartStay, I demonstrate how success is contingent not only upon company leaders’ competence of the platform but also upon their capacity to foster relationships with those in the community. In this way, building residents and property owners become agents in the process by which housing is transformed into short-term rentals. Thus, in this paper, I both critique and expand upon previous work on formalized hosting that centers the platform as the key to an entrepreneur’s success. Accordingly, in this case study from Eastern Europe, I show how platformization is not merely a process in which the global uniformly transforms the local, but rather one which is shaped by certain Airbnb entrepreneurs’ ability to navigate specific local constellations of legal, material, and relational powers to expand their businesses.