I agree, most people see this as black and white and not grey. One thing to keep in mind though although making the hotels compete may lower prices for you it a

I agree, most people see this as black and white and not grey. One thing to keep in mind though although making the hotels compete may lower prices for you it always comes at a the expense of someone else. In this case it affects the margins of huge hotel chains (not awful) and in the availability of housing and apartments for people who actually need to live in/near the city you are just visiting (really awful). You obviously can pass laws to swing the equilibrium away from people buying up all the property but at some point it becomes a loss after you factor in AirBNB's cut and you're back to the hotels. Like you said, this is multi-faceted.