Airbnb is my favorite way to travel to rural areas and tier 2/3 cities. The people renting are doing what was intended - rent a place out where the only other o

Airbnb is my favorite way to travel to rural areas and tier 2/3 cities. The people renting are doing what was intended - rent a place out where the only other options are crappy motels, driving more economic activity to their communities and monetizing an unused asset. However the last times I used Airbnb in major cities it did not go well. In SF I had to do this weird “pretend I’m not an Airbnb traveler” to get past the front desk, which I had to do even though I didn’t want to because I had made no other plans. They didn’t tell me that scheme until I got close. In NYC some guy rented his condo but clearly that wasn’t allowed, he said I had to get luggage into the room ASAP. It’s obvious that a huge amount of Airbnb is just regulatory arbitrage. People don’t want their buildings turning into hotels, which is what Airbnb enables, and the political wind is blowing against them now. I don’t see them having much success in major cities anymore, unless they sell to small time hotel operators as a booking and management platform.