I think it would be a good exercise to make an exhaustive list of those who benefit and those who suffer from AirBnb's continued growth. Benefit: - AirBnb and it's investors - Future stockholders after an IPO - Short-term renters (travellers, business types) - Medium- to Long-term renters (who want to rent furnished places for a premium) Harm: - Hotels - People looking to rent long-term, as housing providers are tempted to AirBnb their places short-term for a higher-rate, constricting the supply of apartments (effectively: poor people) - Potentially the AirBnb consumers, as they aren't as protected by AirBnb's patchwork insurance coverage Who else? I feel like there have got to be more people affected.
There is a lot of community harm from Air B&B. Hotel renters don't use the same resources and services residents do so if residents are here for just a week it might for instance not make sense to build a grocery store in that area a daycare or an auto repair shop. There are seasonal problems with having a lot of hotel rentals. Places that are popular in the summer will fill up nicely but sit mostly empty in the winter. Really undesirable for business owners who need a steady flow of customers to make ends meet. Its hard to scale up and down capacity seasonally so they can be at full capacity in the summer and then have too much overhead in the winter making business non viable. There is also the tax issue. Cities love to charge out of towners for overpriced things like stadiums, and convention centers. Hotel taxes can be 10-20% in some areas. If those are gone then residents will have to pay for these things. I would say there are issues with community stability but Americans don't really talk to or interact with their neighbors anyway so that's not really an issue IMO.