Corporate hosts: The rise of professional management in the short-term rental industry

This paper explores the rise of short-term rental (STR) management companies and reveals the transition from a sharing economy activity to the consolidation of a professional industry hinging on what we call ‘corporate hosts’. By relying on interviews with companies operating in Lisbon and Porto, Portugal, we found: first, that a phenomenon of market concentration occurred in which individual hosts have outsourced the management of their...