Spatial issues of sharing economy development in Polish accommodation market

Abstract

The enormous growth of sharing economy in the second decade of the twenty-first century undoubtedly revolutionized the tourism and accommodation market around the world. The current research focuses on the sharing economy development, and it is mostly limited to popular cities and metropolis while its development and impact on other areas are neglected. The main aim of this article is to examine a relationship between the current size of sharing economy and population density, urbanization, development of professional hospitality base and tourism attractiveness. The research was based on the data from Statistics Poland and AirDNA. The results show that the number of sharing economy active rentals is not correlated with population and population density, but it is correlated with the number of traditional accommodation establishments and tourism attractiveness index. Moreover, the number of active rentals per capita is five times higher in urban than in other counties. The spatial distribution of
sharing economy rentals is much more concentrated than a traditional hospitality market.