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Paper short abstract:

The sharing economy is having increasing importance in the mediterranean sea area. Palermo, with its peculiar position, has in Airbnb the main actor of this new era based on platform capitalism. This work aims to present how this player is concentrating income in specific parts of the city.

Paper long abstract:

In the last ten years, the platform economy player AirBnB became the most important platform for accommodation in the tourism sector. As already analyzed from different scholars and researchers (Allen, 2015; Stabrowski, 2017)⁠, the role of this key actor in the sharing economy landscape is not anymore just a mediator between tenants and tourists, but it can be considered a sort of international real estate agent, which is able to bargain with local institutions, national governments and international organizations.

The main goal of the paper is to show that Palermo is not different from any other touristic location in the world, and Airbnb presence in the city is growing every year in terms of generated income and number of new hosts. At first sight, this could be considered as a positive factor for the touristic sector, thanks to the image of sharing economy and the idea of wellness redistribution linked with it. But thanks to a deeper analysis of Airbnb hosts in the city, and in particular about property type, host owners organization, and hosts’ position in the city, the paper shows how the platform capitalism declination through tourism is creating a monopoly both in term of actors and parts of the city, with these lasts that have to face touristification or marginalization processes in relation to their position (del Romero Renau, 2018; Gurran & Phibbs, 2017; LADEST, 2018; Wachsmuth & Weisler, 2018)⁠.