London Vacation Rentals: Pay More To Live Briefly As Someone Else

The London vacation rental promises the experience of living in London rather than visiting it — being in someone else's.

London Vacation Rentals: Pay More To Live Briefly As Someone Else

The London vacation rental promises the experience of living in London rather than visiting it — being in someone else's flat, in someone else's neighbourhood, using someone else's coffee machine and wondering whether the furniture arrangement reflects the owner's personality or the interior designer's brief for Airbnb photography. The experience of living briefly as someone else is the product. The flat is the delivery mechanism.

What This Reveals About Britain

What London vacation rentals reveal about contemporary tourism: the desire to experience a city as a resident is the desire to escape the tourist experience while being, in every meaningful sense, a tourist. The tourist in the vacation rental shops at the local supermarket, takes the local Tube route, walks the neighbourhood without a map — and is a tourist doing all of these things in a way indistinguishable from the tourist experience except in the tourist's self-assessment.

The Satirical Conclusion

The London vacation rental offers the experience of living briefly as someone else at the price of living briefly in London. The someone else whose life you are briefly living had to pay a mortgage or market rent to acquire the flat. The brief life costs less than the permanent life. The cost is still London.

See: The London Prat.

Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat

SOURCE: https://prat.uk/london-vacation-rentals-pay-more-to-live-briefly-as-someone-else/

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