Metamorphosis of Labour in Digital Societies

In a global context of social metamorphosis, it is important to understand how and why the reconfiguration of work experiences comes about in relation to the modifications produced by the digitalisation of society. All areas of people's lives are colonised by the logic of the digital, and the different work experiences are affected. This chapter aims to explore the connections between these two critical dimensions of the social structuration process in Latin America, which have reached a superlative role in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to do that, it considers “digital labor” and particularly the work of deliveries by platforms as a paradigmatic experience that condenses the tendencies mentioned. The selected argumentative strategy proposes to contextualize the expansion of “digital labor” in the region by drawing from the analysis of secondary data, and from primary data generated through virtual ethnography oriented to capture the experiences of workers (deliveries by platforms).

Renting Cars and Trucks

Tourism is a fragmented and information-oriented sector covering tour operators, travel agencies, hotel sales representatives, associations, meeting offices, transportation, car rental, airlines, cruise, souvenirs, restaurants, hotels/motels, and entertainment. The car rental sector, which is an important part of the tourism sector, is growing day by day, and the number of customers is increasing rapidly. The success of the car rental sector, which produces support services within the growing tourism sector, is considered very important for the development of tourism. The COVID-19 pandemic has engulfed the globe and has already had an enormous impact on life as we once knew it. With airplanes grounded, millions of people in quarantine, and hundreds of travel bans in place, COVID-19 has brought the global tourism industry to a grinding halt along with the rental industry. The study determines the current situation of the car rental sector and presents some suggestions.

Regulated Sharing Economy in the New Normal

The sharing economy developed rapidly with the increase in consumption expenditures in a period when low interest rates and access to credit were easy before the 2008 Financial Crisis and entered into serious competition with companies operating in the traditional economy. The use of sharing economy tools has increased as a result of sustainability, environmentalism, desire for new experiences, local tourism, and authentic searches. The sharing economy, whose main motivation is to reintroduce idle products to the market, has changed its priorities over time and turned into a profit-oriented structure, and large companies increased their revenues by increasing the number of users. The criticisms emerging as a result of employment losses, reservation cancellations, reimbursement requests, lack of social security of employees, and therefore not being able to benefit from COVID-19 aids have revealed the missing parts of the sharing economy.

Digital Labour, Pandemic COVID-19, and Emotions

This chapter seeks to outline in a preliminary way the consequences of the pandemic in work in general and especially in digital work in its connection with emotions and the politics of sensibilities. Based on public and private reports and the opinion of experts, some traces are presented here that allow us to reconstruct some changes in the politics of sensibilities that have occurred due to the socio-labour pandemic impact. In this sense, the following argumentative strategy has been developed: 1) the theoretical perspective on the connection between digital and political work of sensibilities is outlined, 2) some of the main consequences of the pandemic at work are synthesized, and 3) brief final openings are given to connect the described scenario and the modifications of the politics of sensibilities.

COVID-19 and the End of Hospitality

The turn of the century has brought many mega threats for the West, such as terrorism, natural disasters, and virus outbreaks including SARS, H1N1, Ebola, and now COVID-19. An invisible micro-organism suddenly paused our progress towards a globally interconnected flat world. We now realize that super-structures driving economic development cannot grow in specific directions without destroying themselves in certain other directions. The precautionary logic suggests the rational planning aided by our technological progress ought to alleviate most of these problems. The manner in which we deal with disasters like COVID-19, however, does not inspire confidence. Application of the precautionary logic did not avert a calamity, and recovery efforts are now guided by some crude forms of post-facto, post-cautionary logical thinking. Tourism as well as hospitality is now in crisis.

Emotions and Digital Delivery Platforms

From the global spread of the infectious disease COVID-19, in Argentina as in other states worldwide, health measures, social emergency, economic and public order measures were taken. One of the main and earliest measures of social order in the face of this disease was the delimitation of a period of population isolation, known as preventive and obligatory social isolation. The compulsory social isolation generated unprecedented growth in the demand for services to the platform economies in Argentina in general and in Buenos Aires in particular, causing the platform delivery activity to be conceived as an essential activity. The purpose of the writing is to explore the configuration of a certain politics of sensibilities that is used as a reproduction transport by digital delivery platforms in the city of Buenos Aires, during the isolation that the COVID-19 pandemic led to. From a process of digital ethnography, the main web pages and applications for smartphones of the firms are registered to problematize the information built from the notions of platform and politics of sensibilities.

Second Home Tourism During COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic, which emerged in Wuhan, China in 2019 and then spread rapidly around the world, has also become a factor affecting the tourism industry in many aspects. Second homes, which meet a significant part of the accommodation within the tourism sector, have also been affected in different levels by this pandemic. This research, which attempts to reveal the extent of the impact, has examined the news that appeared in the media during the COVID-19 process in Turkey. As a result of the research, it has been revealed that 23 news reports have been made on different news sites related to the subject. Based on this news, it has been concluded that the COVID-19 pandemic has influenced the second home tourism in behavioral, environmental, and economic aspects. Some deductions have been made about the matter through these results.

Financial Leasing and Operational Leasing

Leasing emerges as an important practice that meets the needs of companies that do not want to spend their equity on investment goods or whose equity is not sufficient to acquire investment goods. At this point, investors prefer financial leasing and operational leasing methods to provide economic benefits and profits from the use of goods, not ownership. This study discusses the financial leasing and operational leasing practices that are frequently used for financing and assesses the use of these methods in the tourism and hospitality markets and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, the study also makes recommendations by making predictions about changes and innovations that may occur after the pandemic crisis.

The Impact of COVID-19 on the Rent-a-Car Industry

Without any doubt, coronavirus disease slumped global economies in an unparalleled crisis, one of the worst downturns since 2008. COVID-19 not only affected negatively the tourism industry but also other service sectors. To some extent, governments have adopted two different dispositions against the virus. While some nations imposed a strict lockdown, others privilege the consumption and domestic circuits of payment. In its history, the tourism industry has never faced a crisis of this caliber, and its impacts remain unsure even to date. Although the interests and studies evaluating the impact of COVID-19 have captivated the attention of countless scholars, less attention has been given to the rent-a-car industry, which occupies a central position in the tourist system. As substitute competitors of train, bus, and airplanes, the rent-a-car organizations seem to be a quintessential actor of the tourist system. Of course, because we live in a world without tourists, empirical-based studies do not abound these days.

Short-Term Rental Development and Overtourism

The boom of short-term rental (STR) intensifies the debate on overtourism because of some negative effects on destinations. Conversely, the STR was a way out in moments of crisis. Until now, only a few studies extend the analysis outside the limits of individual cities; that's why this case-study research was conducted by the analyses of Airbnb listings and the tourists' spatial distribution in Lisbon Metropolitan Area (LMA). For this purpose, this chapter uses two cartographic tools: 1) Airbnb listing from Inside Airbnb Project of Lisbon and 2) Geotaggers' World Atlas (map of sites that tourists took photos). Also, institutional Lisbon urban planning plans fed this study. Methodologically, combining the selected maps is a way to understand tourism spatial analysis by bringing together data on supply-side (rooms) and demand-side (distribution of tourists). The analysis demonstrates that a time-spatial distribution of visitors and the STR throughout the LMA could contribute to avoiding tourism congestion and proper distribution of economic benefits.