[jazzkingrt]

I am an airbnb host, and exclusively rent out my own apartment on the handful of weeks per year that I'm traveling.

If airbnb was banned, my apartment would be vacant during that time. This would push tourists into hotels, driving up the cost of a hotel room, and furthering the affordability crisis since developers would see more upside in hotels rather than residential development.

[oldtownroad]

I assume you’re joking but if you’re serious: hotels must go through extensive planning processes that include considerations for the local economy. Hotels provide jobs. Hotels do not increase the cost of living in an area and assuming local government is operating effectively, hotels should be a positive for the local community.

Residential development and hotel development is very different, both as a business and a practice. You would not choose to build a hotel in place of a residential building. That’s why Airbnb is so problematic: people are taking residential housing and turning it into a business.

There’s certainly some “ethical” Airbnb property owners but they’re a dying breed. If you’ve spent any time on Airbnb in the last few years, you’d see the majority of listings are for property specifically owned/rented to Airbnb it. There are public companies that are entirely focused on Airbnb.

[monsieurbanana]

Out of maybe the couple dozens Airbnb reservations I've made, only 2 that I can remember where for places that had a long term tenant living there and rented through Airbnb ponctually. Everything else was about half obvious disguised hotels (whole floor / building rented that way), or belonging to a particular but rented short term the whole year.

It just feels dirty to me now to use Airbnb, but that's not even why I stopped. It's now not necessarily cheaper than a hotel and with little recourse when you get a dud.

[jjulius]

Sample size: 1

[constantly]

A single counterexample is thankfully enough to disprove a false statement.