You make a good point - the "rent out my couch" type of thing and "rent out a whole separate house" admittedly break my argument a little bit. However there ar

You make a good point - the "rent out my couch" type of thing and "rent out a whole separate house" admittedly break my argument a little bit. However there are still the questions of things like insurance coverage and other safety related topics. Basically if anything goes wrong in a hotel, there is staff who is required to be trained to be able to deal with it. Again, the cost associated with dealing with the 0.05% corner cases is distributed to everyone in the case of a hotel room, but to the specific person to whom it happens in the airbnb case. To be fair, if you really want to rent a whole house, the hotel industry doesn't often provide good options ....