Airbnb in Latin America: A literature review from an urban studies perspective

Abstract

Since its appearance twelve years ago, the digital platform Airbnb has revolutionized the temporaryaccommodation system worldwide, leading to diverse territorial impacts beyond the tourism andhospitality industries. Despite its distinct presence in Latin America, there is no review of the existingacademic literature in the region to date. Against this backdrop, the purpose of the article is to developa literature review of Airbnb in Latin America from the critical perspective of urban studies. To do so,exploratory-descriptive research was carried out based on the review of scientific publications thataddressed the topic of Airbnb, up to and including 2020, in four international academic journaldatabases: Scopus, Dialnet, Scielo and Redalyc. The main results show that the existing literature onAirbnb in urban studies in Latin America is still at an early stage, with little development compared tothat of other world regions, where the tourism and business model approaches seem to occlude otherfacets of the phenomenon. These results made it possible to outline a future research agenda ontemporary accommodation in the region.