The Value of Intimacy – Negotiating Commercial Relationships in Lifestyle Entrepreneurship

Abstract

With the aim to reconsider lifestyle values in relation to economic rationality in small tourism and hospitality businesses, we focus on the “commercial home” as a site where boundaries between personal and commercial values are constantly performed in practice. Through an interactionist analysis of the narrative of a B&B and gallery owner, we illustrate the emergence of intimacy as a commercial value in the hospitality industry. By using Georg Simmel´s notion of distance, we analyse the formation of value as a dynamic social process in a context where a traditional market ethos is both rejected and reformulated. In this value creation analysis we show how a tension between intimacy and distance in the interaction between hosts and guests is managed through negotiated boundary work. This is illustrated through three themes: Situated friendship, The in-between space of the private and the public, and The local host as traveller. We argue that an analysis on situated interactions between producers and consumers highlights a tension and interplay between personal and commercial relations, rather than a dichotomic either/or relationship. This personal/commercial nexus points at an emerging hospitality ethos that opens up for new possibilities to analyse the co-creation of value and innovation in the service economy.