Could Failures in Peer to Peer Accommodation Be a Threat to Public Health and Safety? An Analysis of Users Experiences after the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Peer to Peer (P2P) accommodation has effected a disruptive change in cities and traditional tourist destinations, with considerable growth in the number of customers and hosts offering services worldwide. This growth is not without the problems that arise from service quality failures. Previous research has largely concentrated on positive consumer responses to P2P accommodation, while failures in service have been neglected. Research regarding the impacts of failures on health and safety issues is particularly scarce, especially after the pandemic. Therefore, this research is exploratory in nature and drew on the real experiences of 91 guests worldwide since the beginning the pandemic until 2022. It analyses failures in public health and safety regarding P2P accommodation, classifying them and expanding the categories in order to design recovery strategies to mitigate the negative impacts. The findings provide novel insights that help understand failures in P2P accommodation from a guest’s perspective. Moreover, this research suggests recommendations to platforms and hosts that will help improve the levels of service quality and trustfulness for this type of accommodation.