Sustainable Tourism Law

386 SUSTAINABLE TOURISM LAW very well-known platform to rent accommodation, has 2.000.000 houses and its activity is present in 190 countries. Looking at this new reality, we are forced to conclude that a new paradigm has been set. A paradigm that arises from the creativity of the market, first by the idea of a real share and nowadays absorbed by large companies that have created a new form of business and are among the biggest companies in the world. III. CONCEPT OF SHARING ACCOMMODATION AND LIABILITY Communities of people have shared the use of assets for thousands of years, but the advent of the Internet and the use of big data has made it easier for asset owners and those seeking to use those assets to find each other. This sort of dynamic can also be referred to as the sharing economy, collaborative consumption, collaborative economy or peer economy. Some authors 4 highlight that the sharing economy is framed as: (1) an economic opportunity; (2) a more sustainable form of consumption; (3) a pathway to a decentralised, equitable and sustainable economy; (4) creating unregulated marketplaces; (5) reinforcing the neoliberal paradigm; and, (6) an incoherent field of innovation. If the sharing economy follows this pathway of corporate co-option, it appears unlikely to drive a transition to sustainability. “The tourism accommodation sector is already very diverse, from family-run business with just a few beds, to global hotel chains with hundreds of thousands of rooms. Home sharing platforms add further to this complexity, by giving anyone with a spare room the means to rent it out to a guest, and by allowing home swaps between people who have never met” 5 . Sharing accommodation refers to business models in which accommodation is facilitated through collaborative platforms that create an open market for the temporary use of assets or services, usually provided by individuals. This type of business implies three categories of agents: 4 Chris J. Martin, The sharing economy: A pathway to sustainability or a nightmarish form of neoliberal capitalism?, Ecological Economies , Vol 121, 149-159, 2016. 5 Wosskow, Debbie.