Alain Decrop is Full Professor of Marketing at the University of Namur, Belgium. He is also a Director of the Center for Research on Consumption and Leisure and a member of Center for research on Consumers and Marketing Strategy. Alain’s research interests include consumer decision making, interpretive consumer research, qualitative methods, and leisure/tourism marketing.

In Lapland Travel Parliament Alain opened the concept of sharing economy and adduced different sides of the phenomenon. One issue he emphasized was sharing economy in figures:

• More 9000 start-ups related to the sharing economy worldwide
• According to PwC, the turnover of the collaborative economy could worldwide increase from 15 billion € in 2013 to 300 billion € by 2025.
• Airbnb accounts for 425 000 clients per night on average, 22% more than Hilton group worldwide
• The market capitalization of Uber in February 2015 represented 41,2 billion dollars, more than capitalization of giant airlines as Delta Airlines, American Airlines
• French champion blablaCar now has 20 million users worldwide
• The total number of jobs directly generated by sharing economy companies does not exceed even 600 jobs in France -> sharing economy does not create jobs!

Based on Alain’s presentation it’s well-grounded to challenge to tourism industry by asking: how could such remarkable phenomenon (sharing economy activities) support job- and employment creation?

Keywords: collaborative economy, sharing economy, tourism, Lapland