"Airbnb is just like Uber. It's Desperation Capitalism"

[stevenleser]

37. It's not quite that simple. The regular Joe or Joanna making that money spends it locally.

A hotel getting the room fee sends those profits back to a corporate center which is probably not located where the hotel is. Compare a hotel that gets $250 a night for the room of which $35-$45 might be local tax. Only the local tax goes into the local economy.

The AirBnB person might charge $125 for the room, but they spend almost all of that locally. The city and its citizens see more money injected into the local economy.

But it's even better than that. If we consider a week long stay, the guest spending $250/night has less disposable income to spend on restaurants, attractions, etc. The guest staying at the AirBnB has saved over $800 in our scenario all of which can be spent on the local economy.

I am not ready to say I support or don't support AirBnB, because I haven't spent a whole lot of time looking into this, but the tax revenue argument isn't as simple as you make it out to be.