PostDoc: The Platform Labor Project

In new urban tourism, jobs and work assignments are often mediated and managed using online platforms. The Platform Labor project at the University of Amsterdam is researching how sharing economy platforms like Uber or Airbnb affect the (re)organization of labor relations, working conditions, and urban policy-making in Amsterdam, Berlin, and New York City.

The interdisciplinary project team is looking for a PostDoc with expertise in comparative policy studies. Interested candidates can apply online until 1 October 2020. Your application should include your academic CV, a motivation letter, a vision statement for your research, and one writing sample.

You can find all information on the vacancy here.

 

 

US-American city tourism and Covid-19

The USA is strongly affected by the global pandemic. This has been apparent in the far-reaching changes in urban tourism, among other things. Bloomberg has collected data for individual cities in the USA and explores the economic effects.

The data, as well as interviews with mayors, budget directors and other government officials, offer another view of what’s at stake as lawmakers in Washington debate whether to provide more aid to coronavirus-battered states and cities.

You can find the full article here.

UNESCO Cities Platform Meeting on transformative urban tourism

On June 25, 2020 the UNESCO hold a Cities Platform online meeting and discussed various cities’ responses to COVID-19. There was also a special panel which focused on the pandemic’s impact on urban tourism:

As the COVID-19 crisis unfolds, it has had an unprecedented impact on travel with the closing of virtually all destinations worldwide. Tourism was a major source of growth, employment and income for many of the world’s developing countries with over 1.5 billion people crossing international borders in 2019. Yet, millions of jobs in the travel and tourism sector are being lost every day and up to 120 million are under immediate threat.

You can find a video of the full online meeting here. The special session on transformative city tourism starts about 2:41:00.

CfP: The impact of COVID-19 on tourism cities

COVID-19 affects new urban tourism all over the world. The International Journal of Tourism Cities is planning a special issue on “The impact of COVID-19 on tourism cities”:

The coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic is likely to have a lasting impact on communities and the world’s economy for months, if not years, to come. However, some of the first sectors of the economy to bear the brunt of this impact are already tourism, hospitality and travel, with key tourism cities around the world being hardest hit, whilst expected to lead the response to this crisis.

The International Journal of Tourism Cities welcomes submissions in the form of viewpoints, research notes, case studies, literature reviews and research articles for a special issue on “The impact of COVID-19 on tourism cities”.

Articles will also be free to download for 3 months upon publication.

Key topics

• Potential perspectives may include, among others:
• Resilience of tourism city brands
• Local impact of pandemic on host-guest relationships in tourism cities
• Changes in travel behaviours and responses from tourism cities
• Innovation-based responses by smart tourism  cities
• Virtual city tourism perspectives as alternative experiences to physical travel

 

You can send a 250-word abstract of your submission until 30 September 2020. The full CfP as well as the direct submission link can be found here.

New additions to literature collection

We have just added the following five articles to our body of literature which collects publications focussing on various aspects of new urban tourism:

Nientied, P., Toto, R. (2020). Learning from overtourism; new tourism policy for the city of Rotterdam, Urban Research & Practice, https://doi.org/10.1080/17535069.2020.1748343.

Nieuwland, S., van Melik, R. (2020). Regulating Airbnb: how cities deal with perceived negative externalities of short-term rentals, Current Issues in Tourism, 23 (7), 811-825, https://doi.org/10.1080/13683500.2018.1504899.

Robertson, D., Oliver, C., Nost, E. (2020). Short-term rentals as digitally-mediated tourism gentrification: impacts on housing in New Orleans, Tourism Geographies, https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2020.1765011.

Stors, N. (2020). Constructing new urban tourism space through Airbnb, Tourism Geographies, https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2020.1750683.

Su, X., Spierings, B., Hooimeijer, P. (2020). Different urban settings affect multi-dimensional tourist-resident interactions, Tourism Geographies, https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2020.1795713.

You can find and browse through our full literature collection here.

Survey: “Urban Life Amidst COVID-19”

Credit: https://picjumbo.com/author/viktorhanacek/

A research team, led by Prof. Dr. Talja Blokland (Georg-Simmel Center for Metropolitan Studies, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) and Dr. Johanna Hoerning (Technische Universität Berlin), is investigating the various impacts of the global pandemic on Berlin’s everyday life. In order to get a valid impression on the social consequences of COVID-19, her team has developed a survey which can be taken by anyone aged 18 and older who lives in Berlin and the surrounding area.

You can find more information on the research project here.
The survey can be taken directly here.