Eating like a local: Digital foodscapes, touristification, and gentrification in Paris’s Peer-to-Peer economy

Abstract

Enabled by the spread of digital platforms, the so-called “sharing” economy has been transforming urban tourism by promoting peer-to-peer provision of a growing range of hospitality services, going beyond housing accommodations and transportation to include “experiences,” such as neighborhood walks, guided bike rides, cooking classes, food tours, and bar hopping. Many of these services center food as a conduit for meaningful cultural encounters, appealing to tourists hoping to get “off-the-beaten-track” and “eat like locals.” These commodified experiences and their widely circulated digital narratives may contribute to the transformation of everyday urban places, leading to physical, social, and cultural changes that are often uncritically described as gentrification.

I build upon recent work on touristification and gastrodevelopment to investigate how digital platforms providing touristic food experiences focus on specific neighborhoods and contribute to processes of digital placemaking that may unsettle the everyday life of long-term residents differently. I question the applicability and usefulness of the concept of gentrification to describe such transformations, particularly in sites of mass-tourism and previous gentrification, where typical class-based displacements may not be occurring. Using mixed methods, I analyze the locations and qualitative descriptions of eating and drinking activities promoted by Airbnb Experiences and Viator – the two largest online platforms for booking travel experiences – and distinguish between classic, nostalgic and cosmopolitan digital placemaking narratives, which I map and relate to neighborhood socio-economic characteristics to generate a better understanding of their links to gentrification and other processes of urban change.