Organizing the hosts: flexible strategies of formalized and collaborative labor in Airbnb property management

Hosting on Airbnb, once the purview of part-timers renting out their personal spaces, is increasingly carried out in the context of property management companies that oversee large portfolios of full-time vacation rentals. The dominance of such companies on the Airbnb platform intensifies its negative effects on neighborhoods, namely contributing to rising rents and the removal of housing from the long-term rental market. Nevertheless, relatively little is known about the organization of labor within these companies. While existing literature on the transformation of hosting suggests that this is largely a platform-driven phenomenon in which entrepreneurial actors make use of technological tools to grow their businesses, this dissertation contends that the proliferation of property management companies operating on Airbnb emerges through the convergence of multiple institutions, relationships, and norms to stabilize property management companies as a source of capital accumulation for Airbnb. Using participant observation data from one such company operating in Prague, this dissertation demonstrates how company managers attempt to formalize Airbnb’s algorithmic assessments via company rules and managerial oversight, thus extending the scope of platform labor to include workers with no direct relationship to the platform. At the same time, workers collaborate to come up with ways of working that combat their highly flexible labor. In this way, this dissertation presents a heterogeneous landscape of platform work in which certain actors take advantage of the platform to their benefit while reifying its tendency to foster flexible, intensive work for others.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Sociology

Grantor

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2025

Author dc:creator

• O'Dowd, Quinn

Contributors dc:contributor

• Gille, Zsuzsa
• Bayat, Asef
• Cidell, Julie
• Soener, Matthew

• platform labor
• short-term rentals
• property management
• formalization

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2025 Quinn O'Dowd

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/132448

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/132448