Julie Le Gallo (p)

The talk focuses on short-term rentals (STR), their evolving spatial distributions and their economics impacts on the housing market. The increase of tourism in the last decade has been accompanied by a strong development of peer to peer platforms and short term rentals. As an illustration, in 2019, Airbnb, the world's largest peer to peer STR provider, had more than 7 million listings in over 1000,000 cities and 191 countries. However, the COVID-19 pandemic suddenly caused a collapse in tourism with a severe drop in bookings and revenues. This affected not only the number of STR listings but also their spatial distributions. While STR are typically located in districts rich in point of interest, coastal areas and cities centers, they are also located in areas that are less or not typically covered by hotels and their locations might also to react to modifications in travel demand and consumer's preferences for STR observed during the pandemic and expected in a context of climate change. This has strong consequences on the spatial structure of the regional and urban economies. Many studies also point to the mixed economic impacts of STR. While the increasing demand for STR might increase revenues of owners and generate tax revenues, they might also lead to a decrease in the supply of long-term rental housing, drive up rental prices and make it difficult for locals to find affordable housing. These impacts are highly spatially heterogeneous given the structure of the local economies. The talk will consider all these questions and illustrate them with a series of empirical analyses carried for the case of France, analyzing the determinants of the supply of STR rentals and the impact of the pandemic crise, assessing the evolving spatial distributions of STR in Paris and examining their impact and the rental and the housing market.