What is the sharing economy — and how has it evolved over the past decades?
The sharing economy originally emerged from a simple yet radical idea: what if access and sharing became more important than ownership?
At its core, the model allows underutilized resources — apartments, cars, tools, or even time — to be temporarily accessed by others through digital platforms. Instead of a traditional company-to-customer relationship, peer-to-peer interactions are created, coordinated by a technological platform and supported by reputation systems.
In the early 2010s, this looked like a genuine economic revolution. Companies such as Airbnb and Uber did not only introduce new services; they challenged existing industry structures. The narrative was powerful: decentralization, community, sustainability, and democratized access. At the time, the sharing economy was not just a business model — it was also an ideology.
Search trends illustrate this rise clearly. Global interest in the term “sharing economy” peaked between 2015 and 2020. The most frequently associated topics included Airbnb, Uber, car sharing, peer-to-peer models, crowdfunding, blockchain, and platforms like Lyft. During this period, the platform economy and the promise of decentralization merged with the broader technology hype cycle and the boom of venture capital investment. The sharing economy became one of the flagship narratives of the “disruption” era.
The turning point came around 2020. English-language searches for the term began to decline significantly. However, this does not signal the collapse of the model — rather, it reflects its normalization. What once seemed revolutionary has become integrated into everyday economic systems. Platforms like Airbnb and Uber are no longer experimental disruptors; they are institutionalized actors. The hype faded, but the model remained.
At the same time, a geographical shift became visible. Over the past five years, search growth has mainly come from Spanish, Chinese, and Indian language queries. This suggests that the concept and narrative of the sharing economy are now gaining renewed momentum in emerging markets. In many developed economies the debate has largely settled, while in other regions the narrative is still being formed.
In Europe, the sharing economy quickly collided with regulatory realities. Short-term rental platforms, for example, created housing tensions in several major cities. Barcelona and Berlin introduced strict regulations on Airbnb-type services. After an initial period of relatively unregulated innovation, platforms were forced to adapt to urban and national legal frameworks. In Europe, the sharing economy did not disappear — it became institutionalized and partially domesticated.
In Hungary, search trends peaked between 2016 and 2018. The two most frequently searched terms in this context were Airbnb and Uber. Budapest became a particularly visible stage for these dynamics: the boom in short-term apartment rentals and the rapid expansion of Uber reshaped perceptions of urban mobility and tourism within a short period. Regulatory responses followed quickly. Uber exited the market, while Airbnb operations were placed under stricter rules. The initial revolutionary atmosphere was replaced by a more regulated and pragmatic reality.
Perhaps the most important lesson is that the original promise of the sharing economy — that sharing would replace ownership as the dominant model — has only partially materialized. Behind decentralized resource use stand highly centralized platforms. Behind the community narrative often stand capital-intensive global corporations. The model did not disappear, but it lost much of its early idealism.
Today we speak less about the sharing economy and more about the platform economy. Car sharing, micromobility, crowdfunding, and peer-to-peer marketplaces have become part of everyday life. The decline in search trends does not signal declining relevance; it indicates that the concept has moved beyond the hype phase and become a structural element of modern economies.
The key question today is no longer whether the sharing economy exists, but where it is heading next. Can it create genuine community value, or will it remain primarily an efficient intermediary model? Can it build more sustainable systems, or does it simply reshape existing inequalities?
The hype cycle is over. The real test is happening now — more quietly, with fewer searches, but with far greater economic weight.
The hype around the sharing economy faded because the 1.0 model attempted to replace existing systems. The 2.0 model focuses on optimizing them. And this is exactly what happens in the Tourmix model: we integrate what already works within existing logistics systems, while optimizing it through flexibility and distributed capacity.
