The power of visual representations and the growing aestheticization of food. An interdisciplinary analysis of Airbnb visual content in Siena

The paper aims at exploring the role played by visual content in the processes of place touristification and commodification that are initiated and accelerated by online platforms. The analysis addresses the photographs through which Airbnb hosts illustrate and promote their accommodations, focusing on food images as the most fertile terrain for the inquiry, by virtue of the density of its aesthetic, social, geographical, and cultural meanings, constantly evoked by the photos. The analysis is based on a corpus of 250 listings located in the Municipality of Siena (Tuscany, Italy) present on Airbnb between November 2020 and February 2022, and 3960 photographs of the interiors uploaded by hosts. To this end, the authors develop an interdisciplinary method of investigation that synergistically integrates the geographical approach with interpretative models applied in the fields of semiotics and visual studies. The city of Siena is itself an excellent case study. Thanks to its small size, it was possible to map the entire set of accommodations present in the territory during the indicated period, which makes the corpus homogeneous and exhaustive; as a major tourist attraction in Tuscany and nationwide, the link between food, tourism and local identity is particularly strong and therefore worthy of study. Based on the outcomes, the conclusions show the effects and dynamics of a process of image normalization that differs profoundly from the promise of authentic and unique tourist experiences summed up in the platform's slogan “living like a local”.