Working Within the Collaborative Tourist Economy

This chapter explores from a critical perspective how workers in the collaborative tourism economy craft meaning and identity in work and discusses transformations on the established labor market induced by the collaborative economy. It does so through the perspectives of guides working with Copenhagen Free Walking Tours, a platform offering guided tours and hosts offering short-term rentals on the platform Airbnb. Both guides and hosts practice job crafting. However, guides and hosts approach and navigate the collaborative economy in different ways. Both markets require hosting qualities drawing on personal competencies, when delivering hosting–on-demand. Guides can be characterised as social lifestyle entrepreneurs as they experience guiding as a lifestyle with high social and cultural returns. Contrary the Airbnb hosts interviewed can be perceived as micro-entrepreneurs practising pseudo-sharing manoeuvring in micro-competitive platform capitalism.