Chapter 1 - Fighting Against Discrimination in the Housing and Accommodation Markets

Summary

TYPES OF ONLINE HOUSING AND ACCOMMODATION MARKETPLACES

Online spaces focused on the intermediation of housing and accommodation transactions have evolved in the past 20 years. First, the internet has experienced the expansion of classifi ed advertisement billboards with sections devoted to housing. In these online spaces, internet users can directly publish offers to rent or sell their properties. These publications initially had no professional editorial control and were similar to bulletin boards. The primary popular example was Craigslist, which allowed users to advertise their offers free of charges. Craigslist was followed by successful models of online classifi ed advertising spaces, including eBay and the classifi ed ads of Yahoo!. In these cases, users did not have their profi les published with their photographs and personal information. The main purpose of these ads was to inform about the offer. Several years later, social networking platforms and search engine platforms have expanded their business towards advertising housing and accommodation offers with more sophisticated tools. Roommates, Spareroom, Immoweb, and Daftdeveloped matching mechanisms to connect house owners and house seekers.

After a short period of time, the hospitality industry followed the real estate industry. Online intermediaries focused on the offer of hotel rooms emerged in Europe and in the United States. The startup company now known as Booking. com was founded in Amsterdam in 1996 with the mission to “make it easier for everyone to experience the world.” Booking.com fi rst invested in technology that connects travelers to hotels, and later they expanded to offer transportation options. Booking.com has successful competitors including the American platforms Expedia and Hotel.com. These platforms have become the world's largest travel marketplaces by enabling hotels around the world to reach a global audience. Booking.com is currently available in 43 languages and offers more than 28 million accommodation listings.

In the 2000s, the internet facilitated the global emergence of a new market within the hospitality industry: the offer of private accommodation for shortterm periods to travelers from places all over the world. First, in 2004 the platform Couchsurfi ng was created to connect individuals with a network of people interested in providing their couch or a room in their home for free.