The emergence of sharing platforms in travel and tourism is an important transformation over the past two decades. An understanding of why some sharing economy platforms grow while others fail is an important area for travel and tourism research. Using transaction cost economics (TCE), we argue successful sharing platforms achieve both effective governance and monetization of transactions. This requires a shift from enthusiastic and committed bartering of passionate users towards a more
systematic, integrated sharing platform, managed by a scaled travel or tourism corporation. The paper develops a framework explaining platform growth and offers recommendations on how transaction cost economizing and monetization can play complementary roles and can both improve platform growth and viability.
