A short exploratory essay arguing that during COVID-19 Spanish STR suppliers did not exit but temporarily switched listings to seasonal/residential portals, and that the crisis strengthened professional managers and platforms as infrastructures for flexible switching between housing markets.
Thesis (C1) COVID-19 did not dismantle the STR model: suppliers temporarily switched dwellings to seasonal/residential portals and the crisis strengthened platforms as infrastructures for flexible switching between markets (flexibilization, hyper-commodification). partial
An early, agenda-setting interpretation of the pandemic's effect on Spanish STRs that anticipated later findings in the corpus (mid-term rentals, seasonal contracts). Within the paper, however, the empirical base is two undocumented sets of Madrid counts; claims about professionalisation, contract practices and new demand are asserted without data.
Claims (8)
12311
Issues (3)
21
Numeric checks (3)
111
Summary
After outlining Spain's tourism dependence and a decade of touristification, the authors (members of the LIKEALOCAL project) note that Airbnb bookings collapsed in 2020 and many tourist flats appeared on residential portals: in central Madrid 1,796 listings were recorded, 73.61% estimated to be former tourist apartments; long-term listings in the Central District went from 1,300 (2019) to 4,000 (May 2020) and 4,600 (May 2021), then back to 1,900 (Sept 2021). They argue this was not a return to residential use but a temporary switch via 'seasonal' contracts that border on illegality, that professional managers were strengthened while small ones were expelled, and that platforms consolidated as infrastructures enabling hyper-commodification by blurring tourist and residential markets and by creating new demand (digital nomads, students, expats). They close with a research agenda on tourism-dependent economies.
Research questions
How did COVID-19 shift STR supply and the type of demand in Spain?
What changes might the pandemic bring to the interplay between the 'classical' real estate market and STRs?
Stated contribution
Theoretical reflections grounded in the LIKEALOCAL project's empirical work, proposing flexibilization/hybridisation of housing markets via platforms as the key pandemic legacy.
How the argument is built
Tourism dependence → prior touristification research (project members' studies) → STR model and rent gap → pandemic switch of listings to residential portals → interpretation: temporary, seasonal contracts, professionalisation, infrastructures of flexibility → platforms as market creators → research agenda.
Argument map
Claims (boxes) coloured by how well the paper supports them; concepts as ellipses. Arrows point from premise to what it supports.
Thick black border = thesis; blue border = conclusion/recommendation. Click a node to jump to it. Layout engine: graphviz.
COVID-19 did not dismantle the STR model: suppliers temporarily switched dwellings to seasonal/residential portals and the crisis strengthened platforms as infrastructures for flexible switching between markets (flexibilization, hyper-commodification).
Assessment: The temporary surge and fall of Central District listings (1,300 → 4,600 → 1,900) is consistent with a temporary switch. The broader interpretation about infrastructures and hyper-commodification is theoretically reasonable but rests on a handful of counts and anecdotes.
A significant number of homes previously on Airbnb were advertised on the residential market: 73.61% of 1,796 central Madrid listings were former tourist apartments.
Assessment: No description of how listings were matched to former tourist use, when, or over what area; the 73.61% precision implies a count (~1,322) but method is unknown.
The switch was temporary: long-term listings in the Central District rose from 1,300 to 4,600 and fell back to ~1,900 by September 2021 as tourism recovered.
Assessment: Four data points from Idealista support the rise-and-fall pattern; no series, seasonality control, or link between the specific units and their later use.
Managers used 'seasonal' / month-to-month contracts to avoid 5-7 year residential leases, a practice bordering on illegality.
Assessment: Plausible and later documented in the corpus (Gil et al. 2026 on mid-term rentals), but no data on contract types are presented here; supported only by reference to social organisations' denunciations.
No evidence cited in the paper for this claim. · Issues: I2
C5unsupportedmainempirical causalnon trivialp. 3
The pandemic strengthened professional managers while expelling smaller ones unable to withstand liquidity problems, leaving greater professionalisation.
Assessment: No data on host composition before/after the pandemic are presented.
No evidence cited in the paper for this claim. · Issues: I2
C6weakmainempirical causalnon trivialpp. 2, 4
STR continuity was possible because demand shifted to 'urban roamers' (international students, digital nomads, expats), and platforms actively created this demand — 'as the article has shown'.
Assessment: The article presents no demand-side data; the only evidence is an Airbnb marketing campaign. The later corpus paper on mid-term rentals finds transnational demand not significant as a driver, which tempers this claim.
Converting dwellings to tourist use is driven by higher rents and leads to evictions, reduced rental supply and rising rents (background from prior research).
Assessment: Summarises established literature; not tested here.
Theoretical. Exploratory position paper drawing on the authors' prior studies plus a few descriptive figures from Madrid fieldwork and Idealista.
Scope: Spain (Madrid for data), 2020-2022.
Methods
Narrative synthesis of prior studies
Descriptive counts
Transparency notes
No methods section for the new data: how listings were identified as former tourist apartments, dates of fieldwork, or how the Idealista counts were obtained is not stated. Several claims ('small managers expelled', 'greater professionalisation', demand shift) have no data in the paper.
Limitations acknowledged by the authors
Exploratory paper; reconfigurations may be temporary or permanent; longitudinal tracking needed.
Data sources
ID
Source
Type
Description
Coverage
Loc.
D1
LIKEALOCAL project fieldwork (Madrid)
other
1,796 listings in central Madrid; 73.61% estimated as former tourist apartments (method not described).
p. 3
D2
Idealista long-term listings, Madrid Central District
scraped platform data
Counts at four dates (2019, May 2020, May 2021, Sept 2021).
Airbnb booking collapse (Plaza & Ordaz 2020); Airbnb campaign for longer stays ('change your place for your change of pace'); host quote about moving 15 apartments to the traditional market.
Flexibilization / hybridisation of housing markets
pp. 3-4
Platform and management infrastructures that allow dwellings to switch between tourist, seasonal and residential uses according to rent opportunities.
coined
K2
Hyper-commodification of housing
p. 4
Intensified commodification enabled by multiple market options.
borrowed
Madden & Marcuse (2016)
K3
Urban roamers
pp. 2, 4
Populations neither tourists nor locals (digital nomads, students, expats) who used STR supply during restrictions.
coined
Issues (3)
I1majortransparencyNew data lack any method descriptionp. 3
The 1,796 listings / 73.61% estimate and the Idealista counts are presented without explaining identification of former tourist units, dates, geography or extraction method.
Impact on conclusions: The only empirical anchors of the paper cannot be assessed.
I2majorovergeneralizationKey claims without evidence in the paperpp. 3-4
Professionalisation (small managers expelled), contract practices, and demand shift to urban roamers are stated as findings ('as the article has shown') but no supporting data are shown.
Impact on conclusions: These are hypotheses for future research rather than results.
The abstract says the paper examines shifts in 'the type of demand', but no demand data are analysed; the abstract's claim that hedge funds favoured touristification is also not developed.
Impact on conclusions: Editorial.
Numeric verification checks (3)
Scope internal = numbers printed in the document; cross paper = other corpus documents; external / replication = outside sources or re-analysis of original data (web mode only).
ID
Status
Scope
What was checked
Computation
Result
Loc.
Claims
V1
not checkable
internal
Implied count of former tourist apartments.
1,796 x 0.7361
≈ 1,322 listings; consistent figure but derivation not documented.
Compare with gil_2024_assetization_valencia ('STRs did not return to the residential market') and gil_vidal_2026_midterm_rental ('temporarily redirected to residential or mid-term segments')
This paper documents a temporary rise of STR units on residential portals, mostly under seasonal contracts — reconcilable with both, but the 2023 paper's (gil_2024_assetization_valencia) unqualified statement understates the temporary switch.
Evaluation frame: A short exploratory/perspective article in an urban studies journal. Appropriate standard: plausibility and originality of the interpretive argument and honesty about its evidential status; new empirical claims should still be sourced and described.
Dimension
Score
Rationale
conceptual clarity
3
'Flexibilization' is suggestive but loosely defined.
logical coherence
3
Argument flows, though it moves from a few counts to sweeping claims about platform capitalism.
evidential support
1
Two undocumented figures; most claims unsupported within the paper.
methodological rigor
1
No method for the new data.
transparency
2
Sources for context cited; own data undocumented.
proportionality
2
'As the article has shown' for claims it does not show.
Strengths
Timely hypothesis of temporary switching via seasonal contracts, later corroborated elsewhere in the corpus.
Useful rise-and-fall listing series for central Madrid.
Describe data collection and matching of former tourist units.
Provide host-level panel data to support professionalisation claims.
Include demand-side indicators (search origin, contract lengths).
Links to the rest of the corpus
X1contradictionmoderateDid pandemic STRs return to the residential market?
Gil (2023) states that during the pandemic 'STRs did not return to the residential market (Gil et al., 2023)' and uses this to argue for housing-policy (not tourism-policy) responses. Gil, Vidal & Yrigoy (2026) cite the same source for STR units being 'temporarily redirected to residential or mid-term segments'. Sequera et al. (2022) document central Madrid long-term listings rising from 1,300 to 4,600 and back to 1,900, and Gil (2021) reported hosts 'directly ending the business and renting in the residential market'. The evidence supports a temporary switch, largely under seasonal contracts; the 2023 paper's unqualified statement understates it.
Implication: The policy argument in Gil (2023) should be qualified: switching occurred but was temporary and often outside long-term residential contracts.
X12corroborationpositiveLater data temper earlier demand-side claim
Sequera et al. (2022) asserted that STR continuity rested on a demand shift to digital nomads, students and expats. Gil, Vidal & Yrigoy (2026), with Idealista search data, find foreign demand is not a significant driver in multivariate models (an 'enabler'), while confirming the seasonal-contract mechanism.
Implication: Shows the programme updating claims with better data.
Analyst: Claude (Anthropic), LLM-generated audit · 2026-11-08 · access: document only · text: text/sequera_2022_covid_str_spain.txt · schema v1.1
No external sources were consulted (offline run). Figures are assumed to be correctly reported; claims[].external, citation checks and external/replication checks were not performed.
Two-column layout; classified as research_note given its length (6 pp.) and exploratory framing.