Learning to host: formalized platform engagement in Airbnb property management

What the paper says

Purpose This study has two aims. First, to understand how workers learn to engage with the platform in a property management company operating on Airbnb. Second, to demonstrate how intermediary organizations can simultaneously mitigate and intensify ethical concerns of platform-mediated labor. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses a case study of a property management company operating on Airbnb in Prague, Czechia, referred to by the pseudonym SmartStay. It is based on around 400 h of participant observation. Findings This research finds that SmartStay’s managers structured workers’ engagement with the Airbnb platform through a formal organizational structure that entailed official rules, company trainings and direct managerial oversight, to ensure that workers’ labor contributed to the company’s platform-derived Superhost status. While most of the workers’ platform learning emerged from seemingly informal collective practice, these exchanges predominantly took place in a WhatsApp group created and monitored by managers. This paper demonstrates how intermediary organizations in platform-mediated work can simultaneously insulate workers from the harms of algorithmic management, while also placing them under the double surveillance of human management and platform. Originality/value The author takes a unique methodological approach by embedding herself within a property management company, resulting in a complex picture of how platform power is borne out in practice.