Short-term rentals’ supply-side structure and the struggle for rent appropriation: Insights from Andalusia,Spain

Abstract

Platform capitalism is a growing reality with a widening social and economic impact. The rapid expansion of Short-Term Rental (STR) platforms has led to new challenges for policy regulation. The main objective of this paper is to shed some light on current conflicts surrounding the regulation of STR. The body of literature on this topic mainly focuses on the increasing substitution of sharing economy by commercial hosts. By contrast, we explain that the ideological notion of host hinders the understanding of the supply-side structure. A critical approach (as critique of ideology and ideological categories) should entail a class perspective based on rent theory and engage with critical works on platform capitalism. In this article, we propose an innovative analytical approach to STR supply-side supported by rent theory, which focuses on the relationship of agents with land and technology ownership and specialised management services, as these are forms of rent appropriation. From this point of view, these supply-side agents are not hosts, but class factions with common and competing economic interests in rent appropriation. Therefore, they can employ a variety of strategies to influence the political regulation of STRs. Based on in-depth interviews with landlords, individual managers, and corporate agencies in Andalusia (Southern Spain), we show the conflicting internal structure behind the ideological notion of host and even professionalisation.

Keywords

Short-term rentals rent appropriation platform capitalism regulation Andalusia

Introduction

Platform capitalism is a growing reality with an increasingly broad social and economic impact. Early accounts of phenomena focused on the collaborative and democratising qualities of digital platforms (Oram, 2001; Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004; Ritzer and Jurgenson, 2010). However, other critical accounts have pointed to platforms as a business model embedded in capitalist logic, introducing the neologism ‘platform capitalism’ and placing the platform at the centre of critical analysis of the digital economy (Langley and Leyshon, 2017; Srnicek, 2018). These platforms are primarily a business model premised on providing a digital infrastructure that serves as a market intermediary, improving or incentivising economic circulation, digitalising pre-existing economic activities, reducing transaction costs, and automating market exchanges (Langley and Leyshon, 2017; Sadowski, 2020; Schwarz, 2017; Srnicek, 2017). Their rapid expansion has led to new challenges for policy regulation (Edward, 2020; Ferreri and Sanyal, 2018; Seidl, 2022; Smigiel, 2020). This is particularly evident for platforms involved in short-term rentals (STRs). STR platforms provide a digital infrastructure that connects (short-term) tenants and landlords, which often allows circumventing existing state regulations (Cocola-Gant, 2020; Marques Pereira, 2022; Yeon et al., 2020; Yrigoy et al., 2022). Therefore, political lobbying on rent regulation of platform economy companies (Ferreri and Sanyal, 2018; Pollman and Barry, 2016) or renter coalitions (Aguilera et al., 2021; Müller et al., 2021; Yates, 2021) is a key problem for current studies on STR.

In this context, critical urban scholars have an important responsibility to understand these processes beyond the ideology of actors and legitimising discourses on the collaborative economy (Langley and Leyshon, 2017 or Liang et al., 2022). This requires identifying the social, economic, and political relations that extend beyond the immediate appearance of the market. The main objective of this paper is to shed some light on the current conflicts around STR regulation and rent appropriation by critically addressing the current literature on the structure of STR supply side. The current critical literature on STR deals with the internal structure of the supply side and its changes through two main and related topics: the internal diversity of agents using STR platforms and their tendency towards professionalisation. Furthermore, this issue engages with the problem of how STRs have increasingly moved away from the notion of the collaborative economy, considered as an exchange of underutilised goods or services between individuals (peers) facilitated by these platforms (Schor and Fitzmaurice, 2015; Shaw, 2020).

Yrigoy (2019) and Wachsmuth and Weisler (2018) have explained how STRs generate a large rent gap in benefits, that has been fuelled by the accessibility of these properties to global finance of various types. It allows properties to easily change hands and new players to enter. This has led to what has been termed a growing professionalisation of online platforms and a concentration of the sector in so-called commercial operators (Arias-Sans and Quaglieri-Dominguez, 2016; Bosma and van Doorn, 2022; Chamusca et al., 2019; Cocola-Gant and Gago, 2021; Gil and Sequera, 2022; Kadi et al., 2022). Landlords who make STR profitable become rentier capitalists using new forms of technology, which have become an essential part of this regime of accumulation. Through such a ‘platform logic’ (Fields and Rogers, 2021), STRs have generated new business opportunities for real estate companies and funds (Cocola-Gant and Gago, 2021). In turn, corporate investors have increased the demand for expert managers as intermediaries and accelerated a trend towards concentration in the sector (Cocola-Gant et al., 2021).

Recent academic literature also seeks to unravel the amalgam of agents behind the platforms. On the one hand, some works have focused on local agents and smallholders, most of them impoverished after the 2008 crisis, who mobilised their property to continue reproducing their middle-class lifestyle (Alexandri and Janoschka, 2018; Katsinas, 2021; Mermet, 2022; Ronald and Lennartz, 2018; Semi and Tonetta, 2021; Yrigoy et al., 2022). On the other hand, other scholars give prominence to big players: management and software corporations, service providers, and real estate agencies, which act as intermediaries and business facilitators to wealthy elites and transnational investors (Cocola-Gant and Gago, 2021; Montezuma and McGarrigle, 2019). Cocola-Gant et al. (2021), working in Lisbon and Porto on ‘corporate hosts’, state that the STR market is led by corporative and professional hosts, largely international, and not by ordinary people, amateurs or microentrepreneurs, while Semi and Tonetta (2021), on the case of Turin and the ‘marginal hosts’, argue that the existing literature is missing the heterogeneity and internal logic of the STR market. One way or another, the weight of small landlords and big corporations can fluctuate enormously in different cities and territories (see Katsinas, 2021, in Thessaloniki or Arias-Sans and Quaglieri-Dominguez, 2016, in Barcelona).

We agree on the need to investigate the supply-side structure in STR. However, we explain below some objections to the way in which these works generally address the problem of supply-side structure in the STR market. Most academics agree that the majority of STRs are falsely represented as sharing economy. Furthermore, most papers explain the process of professionalisation as a shift from an earlier state of a true sharing economy to the market economy. To analyse this trend, they take up some of the terminology and ideological discourse generated around the platforms. We find the use of the term host as a key analytical term in most research papers, as well as the opposition between private rooms and complete dwellings (Gil and Sequera, 2022) or studies based on the time they are available on Airbnb (Gil and Sequera, 2022; Ioannides et al., 2019) and the number of listings (Li et al., 2016; Cocola-Gant et al., 2021; Deboosere et al., 2019; Gibbs et al., 2018). All of this is valuable as part of an exploratory analysis of how platforms work, but we should consider these terms as an emic taxonomy (Harris, 1976).¹ We should be very cautious when opposing commercial and non-commercial hosts (Kadi et al., 2022) or professional and nonprofessional hosts (Cocola-Gant and Gago, 2021; Katsinas, 2021), as we risk failing to critically understand these realities.

We propose that a critical approach (as a critique of ideology and ideological categories) should involve a class perspective based on rent theory (Harvey, 1973; Jaramillo, 2009; Topalov, 1984) and regulation theory (Brenner, 2004; Jager, 2003; Jessop, 2007), engaging with critical work on platform capitalism, and considering platform intermediaries as rentiers (Langley and Leyshon, 2017; Sadowski, 2020; Srnicek, 2017). A critical analysis of the supply side should focus on the actor’s relationship to land and technology ownership, and specialised management work, as these are forms of rent appropriation. From this point of view, supply-side agents are not hosts, but factions of the rentier class with common and opposing economic interests in rent appropriation, so they can develop various class strategies (Lefebvre, 1968) to influence the political regulation of the STRs.

Therefore, the purpose of our study is to answer the following research questions: (i) What types of actor and class faction interest arise in the STR market?, (ii) What are their main conflicts around rent appropriation? and (iii) What class strategies do these agents develop around the political regulation of the STR? To answer these questions, we propose a methodological approach supported by rent and regulation theories through the cases of Andalusia’s major cities. We develop a qualitative examination of the strategies of STR providers during the second half of 2020 and early 2021, in Cordoba, Cadiz, Malaga, Granada and Seville.

In what follows, we first discuss the analytical framework for the study of the supply-side structure. We evaluate the current characterisation of STR agents by connecting platform capitalism with the tradition of urban land rent critical theory and regulation theory. After a brief contextualisation of the Andalusian case study, we describe the qualitative methodology developed. Thirdly, we present the results of our fieldwork. On the one hand, we describe the heterogeneity of agents based on our methodological approach. On the other hand, we analyse their interests and conflict around rent appropriation and their strategies around political regulation. Fourthly, we discuss the potentialities of rent theory to shed light on current economic and political processes related to platform capitalism and specifically STR platforms. The main contribution of this paper is to show the internal conflictual structure that is being obscured by the ideological notion of host and by the reductionist idea of a transformation of the STR sector from a ‘non-commercial’, ‘non-professional’ activity to a capitalist one. Throughout an innovative analytical approach based on rent theory, we expose the competing interests that clash around the appropriation of rent, developing a typology of key actors and potential conflicts.

Class strategies and rent appropriation

The collaborative economy as a class strategy

Platforms supposedly inscribe participants not as consumers or producers but as users who co-create value, a community of equals (Fields and Rogers, 2021). However, there is some academic consensus on the shared economy as an ideological discourse that legitimises what is a capitalist business (Langley and Leyshon, 2017; Liang et al., 2022; Srnicek, 2018). This discourse leads to a moralistic representation of economic activities, obscuring their chrematistic motivations. Considering the whole discourse of sharing economy as an ideology, and part of a rentier’s class strategy (Lefebvre, 1968, 2013), may help to better distinguish the interests involved in this apparent exchange between equals.

We consider host or even professionalisation as an emic terminology (Harris, 1976) as well as part of the ideological discourse that legitimises platform capitalism. When Kadi et al. (2022), Li et al. (2016), Gil and Sequera (2022), Wachsmuth and Weisler (2018), Mermet (2022) or Cocola-Gant et al. (2021) take the different types of hosts as their own categories, they risk using ideological representations of platform capitalism. Cocola-Gant et al. (2021) point out that the identification of a single-listing host with an individual landlord could face a methodological challenge because it does not take into account professional and corporate managers. Bosma (2022), in the same direction, states that the separation of landlord and listing host is becoming increasingly common. We propose a step forward and argue that the term host hinders rather than helps the analysis. These works assume the definition of host provided by the platform, as well as other categories such as superhost, co-host, etc. (Bosma, 2022; Deboosere et al., 2019). Semi and Tonetta’s (2021) notion of ‘marginal hosts’ contains the same problem as Cocola-Gant et al. (2021) speaking of ‘commercial’ (and non-commercial) operators.

These works on STRs point to professionalisation as a result of the platform logic, which creates and maintains unequal power relations between hosts and between platform owners and hosts (Bosma, 2022; Bosma and van Doorn, 2022). However, these works keep the ideological coating of the host, and implicitly accept the existence of commercial and non-commercial operators in the sector. The discourse about recent professionalisation of the sector itself is a concept widespread between STR investors and managers nowadays, using a narrative of a transition from a non-commercial, amateur, collaborative activity towards a capitalist business. To discover what is behind this emic terminology, we need to use an external point of view, the lens of class conflict around rent appropriation.

Our criticism questions two relevant considerations. On the one hand, renting a property to keep a middle-class way of life is far older than Airbnb (see e.g. the old works on rent theory of Topalov, 1979 or 1984). We would never consider them, no matter how small, as non-commercial operators. Local landlords and part-time rentiers are better defined as simple market agents, as they take part in rent markets conditioned by the logic of market competition (see Jaramillo, 2008). From this framework, it is not less commercial renting a room than renting a complete apartment, or two of them. On the other hand, professionalisation should not be confused with the introduction of bigger players but with the increasing relevance of specialised management, as technical work required by the sector rise with competition (Andersson Schwarz, 2017; Bosma, 2022; Cocola-Gant et al., 2021). We propose that to understand the internal structure of STR supply side and its implications for regulation policies, we must understand these as class factions competing to appropriate a larger share of the land rent.

Rent and supply-side structure of STR

As Ward and Aalbers (2016) point out, rent theory has been largely neglected by critical urban scholars for at least the last three decades. However, in recent years there has been some revival of interest in the role of rent in current capital accumulation, as a form of profit acquisition from the general circulation of capital (Andreucci et al., 2017; Christophers, 2020; Lapavitsas, 2013; Standing, 2017 or Harvey, 2014). Traditional rent theory understands land rent as a payment made to landlords for the right to use the land (Harvey, 1982). However, later work by Harvey (2001) extended monopoly rent beyond land to cultural goods in general. In this trend, some authors, in addressing the activities of digital platforms, have also called for the need to expand rent theory beyond land rent (Sadowski, 2020; Ward and Aalbers, 2016).

Early critical work on platform capitalism pointed to the revenues received by the platform business model as an extraction of rent from general circulation, considering platforms shareholders as rentiers (Langley and Leyshon, 2017; Srnicek, 2017). Similarly to land rents, rent is based on the control of a scarce commodity in platform capitalism. Srnicek (2022), following Christophers (2020), distinguishes three rent appropriation mechanisms in the digital economy: intellectual property rents, advertising rents and infrastructure rents. Control over platform technology produces a ‘digital enclosure’ that makes it possible to exercise monopoly control of a necessary resource (infrastructure) and the extraction of rent from their ownership (Sadowski, 2020: 13).

The monopoly of a STR platform allows it to subtract a share of the revenue of landlords who extract rent from their land property. Platforms have become necessary intermediaries for the STR market because they have the potential to swell the rent channelled through land property. Airbnb, Homeaway and others are socio-technical tools (Mermet, 2022) or operational platforms (Fields, 2022; Fields and Rogers, 2021) that increase revenues of land property throughout technology management, accelerating the circulation of rooms with the implementation of technology (Cocola-Gant, 2020). These increasing revenues encourage the implementation of innovative technology and the accumulation of additional properties to acquire rents (Ferreri and Sanyal, 2018).

Both the STR platforms shareholders and the landlords are part of a rentier class fed by land rent. However, due to financialisation, there is a growing range of agents linked to rent appropriation. A large number of the landlords involved are mortgaged and, therefore, this capital flows into the financial sector. However, this does not substantially change the role they play in these processes or their rent appropriation interests. All landlords seek to maximise their rents, either to accumulate this income or to pay off the mortgage as quickly as possible (Yrigoy et al., 2022). Furthermore, as Cocola-Gant (2020) points out, STR platforms have made this type of land rent a good option for investors. As a result, there is a whole new class of intermediary managers in the STR market (Cocola-Gant et al., 2021; Grisdale, 2021). Intermediaries optimise the STR management and engross appropriated land rent through property management systems (PMSs), a technology originally developed by the hotel industry (Cocola-Gant et al., 2021; Fields, 2022; Mermet, 2022).

Christophers (2021) has shown how nowadays most of the appropriated rents are derived from the assets of companies (not individuals). Moreover, there is a growing stratum of professional workers whose privileged position in the hierarchical structure of the workforce is due to their ability to appropriate a share of these rents, which they help to create, expand, and/or maintain. This fits with the idea of a growing land rent, because of growing specialisation and technological development, appropriated by various agents based on property rights but also on professional and technical labour with the capacity to expand the rent.

Besides, to get a complete picture of the supply side, we still need to consider other agents competing for the same residential land rent as STR. We can consider here that the existence of a monopoly rent is the result of the exclusive control of a scarce but valued type of land, due to its strategic location (Harvey, 2001). Dense tourist sites generate particularly high (tourist) monopoly land rent. Thus, regarding accommodation, the same monopoly rent can be appropriated by the traditional accommodation sector (hotels) or by the STR sector.

Rent regulation and conflict

Rentiers factions mobilise strategically to grab their share of the rent. State regulation can modify the rules of the market game in this respect. The State is the arena where the struggles between competing interests over rent appropriation take place. The State is both the setting and the outcome of the political and economic strategies of social groups interacting under specific historical and geographical conditions (Jessop, 2016; Poulantzas, 1974 or Brenner, 2004). Therefore, the institutional context plays a key role in the distribution of urban land rent in favour and to the detriment of different capitalist and rentiers factions with competing interests (Jager, 2003). With regard to the regulation of STRs, several papers have shown how different economic and political agents develop strategies to further influence regulation and the diversity of possible outcomes in different regulatory contexts (Aguilera et al., 2021; Christensen, 2022; Pollman and Barry, 2016). Specifically, we are interested in how rent appropriation is the basis of diverse types of conflicts between rentiers factions that must be solved politically, in the arena of state regulation.

To begin with, there is the classic conflict between landed and financial capital. This is because the class power of landlords can be an obstacle to the integration of land markets into the financial capital circuits. In any case, this antagonism has historically been resolved in favour of financial capital. In today’s capitalism, the distinction between capitalist and landlord is dissipating because of the tendency of property to function as a financial asset (Aalbers, 2016; Harvey, 1985: 65). Actually, STR platforms are today one of the main incentives and facilitators for financialisation of the rental business (Fields and Rogers, 2021; Cocola-Gant et al., 2021). In fact, the platforms themselves are backed by a huge percentage of venture capital, which also explains its high presence of political and lobbying activity (Aguilera et al., 2021; Grisdale, 2021).

Another traditional conflict on rent appropriation is that resulting from the antagonism between rentiers, productive capital, and tenants. A landlord class controlling a scarce commodity allows high rates of exploitation of tenants (Harvey, 1985). Here it is necessary to consider the impact of STRs on the increasing demand for the accommodation industry in certain areas and cities and higher housing market inflation (Cocola-Gant and Gago, 2021). As we know by rent theory, this inflation is transmitted to some extent to the workforce, potentially impacting the whole economy. If housing is expensive, labour should also become expensive. If the rentiers get a share of the worker’s salary, this is a benefit that is not appropriated by industrial capital in the form of surplus value (Topalov, 1984). The regulation of urban rents in the past has supported the interest of productive economy over rentier (Jager, 2003).

Two other specifically potential conflicts would be the logical outcome of the development of an STR market. Firstly, expansion of STR means that a growing share of the visitor expenditure will be appropriated by the rentiers (traditional landlords, specialised managers and financial investors) as monopoly (tourist) rent, at the expense of other tourism-dependent sectors, as has been already noticed (Yeon et al., 2020). Secondly, – within the STR market – growing competition and subsequent specialisation of supply-side agents (Cocola-Gant et al., 2021) generates another potential antagonism between landlords, specialised managers and corporate investors, as they have to share the aforementioned rents.

Methodology and case studies

Andalusia had been breaking tourism records year after year until the pandemic, reaching 32.5 million visitors in 2019, 6% more than in the previous year (Mateo, 2020). The service and construction sectors, including tourism, are the main activities in the urban areas of this traditionally farming region. We focus on five Andalusian cities: Seville, Malaga, Cordoba, Granada and Cadiz. Seville and Malaga are the most populated cities, and those with the largest number of STRs. The STR supply is also distributed along the coastline in Cadiz and Malaga. The sectors with the highest concentrations also include the UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Cordoba, Seville and Granada.

Like other cases, the regulation of STRs in Andalusia has a ‘trans-sectorial dimension’ (Aguilera et al., 2021) at the crossroads between different administrations and political sectors (tourism, planning, housing and economy). The Spanish Urban Rental Law (LAU, in its Spanish acronym) delegated in 2013 its competences to regional legislation on the tourist sector. Andalusian tourism policy assumes the concept of STR as a type of tourist housing and demands minimum standards of habitability and the obligatory incorporation in the Andalusian Tourism Registry. Since then, Cadiz (in 2021) and Seville (in 2022) have implemented additional restrictions to STR through the modification of their Master Plans. In this regard, there are also modification projects for the Master Plan of Malaga and the Historic District Special Plan of Cordoba. The lack of legal certainty and the enormous supply of STRs have led to the creation of lobbies that represent the interests of professional companies, such as AVVA (see www.avva.es); and other more informal ones of small landlords, who still clearly defend their idea of shared economy (VEAN, CONVIVIR and ASATUA; see Table 1).

Table 1.

Table of participants.

		Property relationship
		Intermediary	Landlord	Tenant
Technical work relationship	Management company	SE3_260_AVVA CA2_75_AVVA CA4_70 MA6_43_AVVA MA3_33 SE8_30_AVVA GR1_30 CO2_20 MA4_16 SE10_22 MA2_10 GR2_9_ASATUA SE2_2
	Individual specialised manager	MA5_35_AVVA SE5_23 MA1_8	CO3_2 CO4_1
	Non specialised manager		GR6_2 CA3_1 CO1_1/2_CONVIVIR SE6_1SE4_1 SE11_1/2_VEAN MA7_1	GR3_0CA5_0
	No management work		CA1_2 GR4_1 SE12_1

Our qualitative methodology is based on responses from 30 in-depth and semi-structured interviews (30 minutes to 2 hours) that we conducted with STRs agents between July 2020 and February 2021. At first, we chose a group of profiles in each city: individual STR managers, professionals working for STR management companies and real estate agencies and landlords. Managers were randomly contacted after a search of professional websites on the internet (with a 15% positive answer rate) and the landlords were contacted following the snowball effect. After the first sample analysis based on our theoretical approach (n = 10 in Seville), we reorganised the profiles as shown in Table 1. The search for new informants stopped when saturation was reached at which no new signs of conflict appeared in the interviewees’ accounts. Overall, interviews focused on ownership (origin, rent, motivations), management (relationship with the platform, work organisation, technology) and political position on regulation. With the companies we delved into their idea of STR as an asset and the notion of professionalisation, and with the individual landlords we were interested in their discourse regarding collaborative economy. Finally, we also asked about strategies and adaptations in the face of the pandemic. The interviews were conducted by video calls in most cases due to the pandemic, and names are not mentioned to preserve anonymity. We found a majority of men among the CEOs of intermediary companies and a majority of women among individual landlords.

The code of each respondent in Table 1 is interpreted as follows. The first two letters indicate the city (SE, Seville, CA, Cádiz, MA, Malaga, CO, Cordoba, GR, Granada) followed by an identification number; the following digits indicate the number of dwellings (in some cases it is a room, which is indicated by 1/2); the last letters indicate the acronym of the association to which, if any, they belong. The underlined codes correspond to informants who are against any form of regulation, the bold codes to informants who are in favour or open to some kind of regulation, the rest have not taken a position or are hesitant.

New and old actors of platform capitalism and their conflicts

What lies behind the host

All our interviewees can be seen as hosts if we consider how they are represented on the platforms. Differently, we classify our participants in two ways (see Table 1). Firstly, we propose three types of actors based on the relationship with the property: landlords, intermediaries and tenants. Landlords receive an income (rent) from renting their housing properties as tourist accommodation, which can be one, two or a large number. International corporations, wealthy elites or local landlords are rentiers who have found in short-term rents a greater benefit than investing in any other asset. Some of them hire intermediaries who facilitate the investment of corporate landlords (see Note 1) (we found investment funds and hotel chains in our fieldwork) and individual foreign investors. Intermediaries are somewhat similar to the figure of the caretaker, but much more technologically developed. As explained above, the relationship between them is socio-technically mediated by the platform (Bosma, 2022). Cocola-Gant et al. (2021) argue that their behaviour can come to resemble that of a disintegrated hotel, as they offer cleaning, laundry, check-in, transfer and customer care services. But an intermediary can also be an individual manager who has found his or her job in the management of STRs. All of them are responsible for extracting the maximum profit from the asset in exchange for a commission, which can be fixed or variable depending on the agreement. A final group found in the interviews are tenants who, unable to afford the rental price, choose to sublet one of the rooms in their house to tourists (GR3_0 and CA5_0 in Table 1).

The second form of classification is based on who carries out the specialised and technical work. This is due to the increasing specialisation required to compete, leading to the compartmentalisation of platform labour (Bosma, 2022). Here we would be focusing on Fields and Rogers (2021) second way of classifying platform work, associated with the shift of labour markets to internet. We have established four types of actors: management company, individual specialised manager, non-specialised manager and landlord. The first one is a clear intermediary. Professional management services are also offered by traditional real estate agencies, and they are also intermediaries in our first classification. However, a specialised individual manager does not always necessarily fit with the image of the intermediary. For example, a landlord may have oriented their work towards the management of their property or properties (see Yrigoy et al., 2022). They work as self-employed and derive some services to other professionals or companies (especially cleaning and laundry). Some specialised individual managers oversee other people’s properties. This profile can manage 20–30 listings if they are assisted by other ‘self-employed’ workers (false self-employed). Still, their portfolio would never reach the size of large companies, which can manage hundreds of properties and be benefitted from economies of scale (Bosma, 2022). Non-specialised managers, finally, are those who have a separate job but spend some time on the necessary management of their family’s property.

Conflicts between STR supply side agents

Within the STR sector, we can differentiate between proprietors (including corporate investors) and intermediaries with different levels of specialisation. The latter, being essential for competitiveness, can demand a growing share of the landlords’ rent. Thus, the more rent intermediaries get, the less rent is left for landlords. The conflict of interest between these factions may trigger differentiated strategies aimed at increasing or decreasing their shares in land rents.

Firstly, the intermediaries’ strategy is clear. As specialised software for platform visibility and optimisation become more necessary for competitiveness, they can demand bigger shares of rent. As we are told in interviews, specialised individual managers and corporate managers using PMS technology reach close to 100% occupancy. The technology optimises occupancy and prices, as well as the organisation of the different departmental tasks (cleaning, laundry, check-in, check-out). Besides, control of STR platforms algorithms is essential for visibility. All this makes intermediation increasingly necessary for landlords.

Secondly, the growing difficulty for landlords who do not hire intermediaries to compete in the STR market is often mentioned:

The problem we have seen is that private owners - after a year and a half - find it very difficult to continue managing their properties by themselves. I have many apartments that are already part of a business network of investors, people who have invested in a building with the clear idea to let it be managed by a company. That is becoming more and more common. (GR1_30)

However, small and medium (around 5–10 properties) landlords can choose to manage their STRs by themselves to avoid sharing rent. This structural restraint is explained by a landlord in Granada who, after renting with a management company for a while, decided to rent again on his own:

the percentage of fixed profit that companies give you is low, obviously, because they don’t want to lose. So, I said to myself: if they are granting me the same amount I get from a long-term rental, then I’d rather get rid of them and manage it myself (GR4_1).

This landlord switched to long-term in 2019 but seeks ‘lifestyle migrants’ whose rent is the same as tourist rentals but needs less management work, avoiding losing the intermediary’s part. Yet, we know from interviews that it is very difficult to compete with the services offered by a specialised manager or a corporate manager (CA1_2, GR4_1, GR6_2).

In addition, we find another potential conflict insofar as the rent is shared between the technological intermediation of the managers and the platforms. The bigger the platform’s share, the lower the share of individual or corporate managers could be. On the one hand, small and medium sized landlords can find support on the platform to avoid mediators. They explain how platform’s technologies have improved to help them compete:

We set a price more or less based on our expectations, but that has also evolved and now the platform even recommends with artificial intelligence the price according to the city, season and neighbourhood (CA1_2).

On the other hand, managers complain about the percentage of profit that the platform captures in exchange for the visibility of the accommodation. In this trend, all the corporate managers we interviewed have their own website and online rental system, although most of the bookings are currently dependent on the platforms.

In terms of explicit conflicts, we primarily identified the one between low specialised landlords or professionals managing few STR units and highly specialised corporate managers. In a context of growing competition, due to the introduction of competitors or a reduction in demand (in our case by COVID-19), small landlords managing their own accommodation or independent professionals managing few accommodations may find themselves displaced from the market. A real estate agent and middleman explains this as follows: ‘there are many professional suppliers and companies. It can sink you if you manage it yourself as an activity, as a self-employed person’ (SE10_22). There is clearly a question of scale, as an independent professional manager pointed out:

They [corporate managers and corporate owners] may have 50, 60 or even 70 listings. Even if they have to pay salaries, they can bring prices down. Thus, they are very, very strong competitors (CO4_1).

Moreover, in the context of COVID-19, with little demand and much more supply, well-positioned listings in the platforms are those that have held up best. It has contributed to the expulsion/loss of properties not managed in a specialised way from the market, so that medium and large management companies have benefitted in the medium and long term: ‘The first to fall (to abandon the tourist rental) are obviously individuals (. . .), those are going to switch to traditional rental or they are going to hand it over to a company’ (SE8_30). Therefore, informants agree that the COVID-19 pandemic has helped to accelerate the concentration of STR in specialised agents.

Competition between small, non-specialised and corporate agents translates into different discourses that seek to influence the policy debate on STR regulation. Less specialised agents are more likely to employ the ideological discourse of the sharing economy to legitimise their activity. Small landlords use it to defend their economic interests, instrumentalising a romantic idea of home sharing. Low specialised agents blame corporations for perverting the initial idea of collaborative economy, and they are more prone to put an end to the activity of intermediaries. In fact, representatives of associations of small landlords (see Table 1), CONVIVIR, and VEAN (promoted and financed directly by Airbnb), comment on how they have tried to strategically negotiate with Airbnb to distinguish between private hosts and companies, and to stop benefitting the latter.

In relation to STR regulation, small landlords and less specialised managers are more open to discussing some forms of regulation. For example, in Cadiz, a city without the possibility of physical growth and an extremely tense housing market, a small landlord says:

I would put a limited number, and when an STR leaves his license, that license is given to another. This has already exceeded a limit and I would like the city to recover a bit, for the sake of the people of Cadiz, since many people are going to live abroad (CA3_1).

It is particularly common to find arguments in favour of restricting competence among small landlords, forbidding new STR in saturated central areas (CA3_1, GR6_2, CO1_1, GR2_9) or limiting the activity of corporate managers and corporate landlords (GR4_1, CA3_1, MA2_10).

At the other extreme, we have the specialised professionals who manage a large number of STRs. They tend to have a more cynical position on sharing economy and openly adopt a free-market, neoliberal discourse. They often refer to the effects of competition as ‘natural’ and reject political regulation as the market ‘self-regulates’ (CA4_70, MA3_33, SE8_30_AVVA). Occasionally, some corporate managers point out that ‘digital economy’ is impossible to regulate (MA6_43_AVVA). Moreover, they believe that, in the long term, the market itself will solve any problem of STR saturation:

There will come a time when if there is a lot of supply, prices will drop and if prices drop, it is no longer profitable for some landlords, and they will decide to switch to long-term renting. (SE5_23)

Conflicts on tourist rent appropriation

Tourist attractions (mostly heritage buildings) are concentrated in historic districts, as are hotels and STRs (Table 2), in the five Andalusian cities included in the fieldwork. Thus, the land property in these massively visited and demanded enclaves generates a particular type of monopoly rent (Harvey, 2001) that we call here tourist rent. The current development of the STR market meant the introduction of new strong competitors to appropriate the tourist rent. Besides, Andalusian historic districts are commonly extended and populated, usually concentrating most of the conventional (long-term) rentals in their cities. In this way, STRs are competing with the conventional tourist accommodation sector and with long-term rentals at the same time.

Table 2.

STR volume and location in large Andalusian cities.

	Total STRs	% STRs in the historic district	% Conventional tourist accommodation in the historic district
Seville	6737	79.10	81.50
Malaga	5805	60.22	57.98
Cordoba	1570	63.69	75
Granada	2.313	77.01	74.56
Cadiz	1121	67.60	81.36

Source: Andalusian Tourism Registry, Andalusian Government. January 2022.

The current soft regulation of STRs in Andalusia and Spain supports the activity of STRs, as this kind of accommodation eludes the restrictions and requirements for both hotels and long-term rentals. STRs circumvents the Urban Rental Law (LAU) restrictions for landlords, incentivising transformation of long-term rentals into STR. This is a fact that is often mentioned in interviews. Landlords and STR managers point to the long duration of rental contracts in the current LAU (5 years for individual landlords and 7 years for corporate landlords) as an incentive to move away from long-term rentals. STR supply agents blame the LAU for supporting tenants’ rights over those of landlords (SE5_23). This is complemented by other alleged fears: ‘Many landlords have completely ruled out long term rentals and have already contacted us for fear of the Moors or squatters’ (GR1_30). Landlords seek for ‘more legal certainty in tourism’ (MA2_15). Another advantage is the availability of the properties, as the listing on the platform is blocked when the landlord wants to use it. This would explain why there has not been a significant shift from STR to long-term rentals during the pandemic. Of those interviewed, only two small landlords switched to long-term rental during the pandemic.

STRs are currently allowing much higher rents, which increases the profit expectations of landlords, especially in historic districts. This has been a key political issue in Andalusian cities, and a main argument for local STR regulation. STRs have been blamed for subtracting housing units from the conventional rental market, reducing housing supply and increasing prices. Many small landlords and managers recognise the difficulty for tenants to access affordable rental housing in city districts:

Whoever can earn more, even with a manager, earns more than renting by the month, but they limit the supply of rental housing. It is reduced. There is no long-term housing available (SE4_1).

Some of the small landlords and individual managers assume displacement in historic districts due to the growth of STRs (CA3_1, MA1_8). Nevertheless, most landlords and managers deny the existence of displacement as well as any link between STRs and rising rent prices. Many of them also naturalise displacement. As historic districts are in high demand, interviewees assume that these enclaves are naturally for those who pay higher rents (SE5_23, CA1_2, MA6_43). For example, the CEO of a luxury management company in Seville (SE3_260_AVVA) states:

I have a flat in Plaza del Duque (centre of Seville) which I rent to tourists and I get 1500 euros a month from it. (. . .) If a Sevillian paid me 1500 euros to live there, I would rent it. The problem is not the tourist, it is that people do not pay what it costs.

Antagonistically, on the one hand, there are tenants’ associations and neighbourhood platforms against tourist saturation pushing for stricter STR regulation (Jover et al., 2018). On the other hand, we find STR supply-side agents and all the highly specialised managers defending their right to do business with private property. We also find pro-gentrification arguments. It is a widely held view among landlords and managers that many of these historic districts were degraded and dangerous before their arrival. Also, that STR is contributing to the renovation and beautification of housing (CO4_1, CA1_2, SE5_23). Another usual comment is that most of the current STRs were empty dwellings (SE5_23, SE2_2, SE3_260_AVVA, MA3_33, MA6_43_AVVA, SE8_30_AVVA). These discourses are widespread among landlords and managers and have been publicly defended by associations such as AVVA.

In terms of the competition between STRs and conventional tourist accommodation, hotels have become a key lobby for STR regulation. Hotel industry took part in the working groups created by local governments to study the problem of STR saturation and it had been very present in local newspapers denouncing STR as unfair competition. Interviewees pointed out how hotel industry has tried to blame STRs for tourist saturation in some cities (CO3_1). Specialised managers consider that the hotel industry is trying to influence future regulation, specifically to displace corporate managers and corporate landlords (SE3_260_AVVA).

In turn, STR agents countered the unfair competition accusations in different ways. Some corporate managers represented their work as a modernisation of the hotel industry.

We work as a kind of hotel (. . .) We have high standards of quality, in the checking, in the cleaning and everything is very standardised. We are very similar to hotel chains as Meliá or Barceló, but on a smaller scale, obviously (SE3_260_AVVA).

Other corporate CEOs throw the accusation back at hotels for subtracting housing units from the conventional rental market (SE3_260_AVVA, CA1_2, CO4_1). As a landlord explained:

The competition is very fierce. The number of hotels that continue to open even during COVID-19 is brutal. (. . .) Before, competition was with another small agency or with individuals, but now many hotel groups have appeared that buy the building directly, make apartments and manage it with the minimum staff and with their external reservation portal (CA1_2).

The AVVA representative in Cadiz explained:

Hotels, which are big investors and large multinational chains, want to keep the apartment business as well. In other words, it is not that they are competition, it’s that it is another market niche, and they also want to appropriate it (CA4_70_AVVA).

This could explain why local regulations in Seville or Cadiz potentially benefits hotel groups: only buildings that are dedicated exclusively to tourist accommodation could easily satisfy the requirements to be legal (e.g. they need an economic activity licence and differentiated access).

The hotel industry seems to be the main winner in the dispute over regulation, as recent local regulations in Cadiz and Seville coincide with their interests. The Andalusian government is also considering a modification of the regional regulations and the first draft law, released in 2022, which supports the measures adopted by the city councils of Cadiz and Seville. In some measure, this also benefits tenants and neighbours of the city’s districts. However, all supply-side agents in the accommodation sector share a consensus on the benefits of tourism growth: ‘(. . .) Tourism is an issue that we Spaniards must exploit because we have no industry (. . .), if we don’t catch this boat, we can miss it’ (CO2_20).

Discussion and conclusions

Rent is not a payment to land, this is the typical ideological representation of the market (Harvey, 1982; Topalov, 1984). Nor is it a payment to the host or the platform, but a payment to specific people. Nowadays, in the STR sector, these people are not just individual landlords, but also a set of investors, professional managers, and shareholders. In this article we have shown how the ideological categories provided by the platform (namely host and professionalisation) can in some cases hide the internal conflict structure of the supply side. The recent development of the STR sector has been accompanied by the introduction of bigger investors and more specialised workers. However, this does not mean a radical distinction between a commercial and a non-commercial sector in STRs. Every STR landlord, whether mortgaged or not, plays in the same capitalist market, under market and competition logics. Moreover, as we have seen in the interviews, they are all conditioned by competition, technological development and managerial innovation.

We do not deny here that there can be a community of interests among the agents sharing the STR and the tourist rent, as has been shown in other works (Aguilera et al., 2021; Müller et al., 2021). However, in this article we have proven how different interests clash over rent appropriation and how this implies some contradictions that have been overlooked in other literature (Bosma, 2022; Christensen, 2022; Cocola-Gant et al., 2021; Mermet, 2022). To this end, it has been essential to develop our own categories, in this case, following the theoretical corpus of rent and regulation theories. There is an objective economic antagonism since these agents must share the same rent. Firstly, due to a continuous process of specialisation and concentration (Bosma, 2022; Bosma and van Doorn, 2022; Cocola-Gant, 2020; Cocola-Gant et al., 2021; Katsinas, 2021), current research has detected an ongoing conflict of interests between small holders, professional intermediaries and STR platforms. Under current conditions, we observe the typical trend of increasing competition leading to growing innovation and the expulsion of weaker competitors from the market (Harvey, 1982). Secondly, there is an ongoing conflict in the tourist sector between the conventional hosting industry and the STR sector, as they share the tourist rent generated by the tourist enclaves.

From our approach to the STR supply side, departing from the dispute over rent appropriation and the critique of ideological representations of the market, a number of implications for policy regulation emerge. Collaborative economy is a legitimising discourse of the interest of economic agents in appropriating rent. Moreover, not only for small landlords, but for the entire STR sector, including the platforms (and their shareholders) that actively promote it throughout STR landlords’ associations. Small landlords are the ideological support of the whole market, even if they have a small and progressively shrinking market share. This is why the discourse of professionalisation is so important for investors and managers today: it implies the presence of a non-commercial and non-specialised sector that justifies the ultra-liberalisation of the STR market (Cocola-Gant et al., 2021). Our perspective based on rent theory shows how the treatment of STRs as a mere touristic business by regulation is another ideological representation, benefitting supply side agents in prejudice of long-term tenants. We must understand collaborative economy, as well as free market speeches and discourses in defence of traditional accommodation sector, as discourses mobilised in an ongoing struggle around rent appropriation.

The main outcome of this struggle is rent regulation. In the case of Andalusia, current regulations clearly support capital invested in the hotel industry, as well as established small agents against new potential competitors. Although the hotel industry represents itself as a victim of unfair competition, we have shown how this rentier faction is the strongest politically and economically in Andalusia. Indeed, the traditional accommodation capital has developed a strategy to enter the STR sector, taking advantage of the lack of regulation. At the same time, the hotel industry has proven to be influential enough to bend Andalusian and local regulations in favour of its interests, limiting the introduction of new competitors. However, we need to be aware that this will not always benefit long-term tenants as hotel chains can keep subtracting housing units from conventional market, buying whole building to create new hotels, as they are actually doing.

Moreover, the whole issue of STR regulation is not a tourist policy problem but an urban land rent policy problem, as there is no doubt that that STRs are affecting conventional rental markets. If this approach to regulation based on tourism policy is not being challenged in Andalusia, it is because the interests of tenants are not being considered.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Julio J. Parralejo for his help during fieldwork. We would also like to thank the three anonymous referees for their insightful comments.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by Consejería de Economía, Innovación, Ciencia y Empleo, Government of Andalusia (grant number P18-RT-2427); Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Government of Spain (grant number PID2021-122482OB-I00).

ORCID iD

María Barrero-Rescalvo

Notes

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