Fairbnb, toward tourism that enhances the livability of a community

Research question

FairBnB wants to offer a community-centered alternative to Airbnb: part of revenues of the host will go to sustainable, inclusive community projects in the neighborhood of the host. Fairbnb is a community of activist, coders, researchers and designers that aims to address the negative impacts of tourism locally. Most of the people are located in Italy, Spain and the Netherlands. It is a cooperative platform in development and still many issues related to the involvement of the community needs to be resolved. Through a research by design process, the research of students feeds the design process and new insights are obtained by the design process.

Fairbnb also engages in consultancy work for local governments in Europe on sustainable tourism. Their ambition is to create a ‘dashboard of tourism data’, an application that informs local policy-makers to make more informed decisions. Also, in this case, via a research by design process, students explore and reflect upon geoinformation, qualitative and quantitative data that can feed in the dashboard under construction.