Dr Paul Lynch (Department of Management) was recently invited to attend an Economic and Social Research Council research seminar series held at Imperial College, London, concerned with engaging business elites from the travel and tourism sector. Dr Lynch was invited to contribute to a seminar concerned with 'Understanding Business Engagement and Knowledge Transfer in Tourism'. He spoke on the topic of 'Engaging the Neglected: A Perspective on the Commercial Home Sector'.
Drawing on a paper written in conjunction with Dr Sara Davies, European Policies Research Centre, Dr Lynch argued the case for a 'commercial home sector' as offering a potentially innovative and useful counterpoint to the dominance of the hotel sector as an accommodation benchmark. He suggested that acknowledgement of a commercial home sector would justify accommodation offering a particular type of consumer experience and potentially enable a strengthening of the specific accommodation grouping's position by facilitating a lobbying group for better recognition as a legitimate and distinctive accommodation sector. In turn, the way would be opened for bespoke policies which potentially could influence changes, for example, in the way tourism statistics are collected, giving recognition to the economic and social importance of the sector, changes to quality assurance schemes using the home rather than the hotel as a benchmark.
However, he acknowledged a considerable gap to bridge between the theoretical advantages of recognising a commercial home sector and achieving recognition in practice, which necessitates overcoming certain myths and prejudices concerning small accommodation characteristics.
Nevertheless, examination of drivers of commercial homes, such as the internet, a demand for non-commodified experiences, the rise of the ethical economy, the increasing importance of nostalgia, and greater emphasis upon sustainability, suggest that possibly the era of the commercial home sector may have come.
A way forward for development of a research agenda may be to link research into the commercial home sector with current agendas such as the big society, nostalgia and happiness and effectively re-brand this area of small tourism accommodation.