A lot of this issue seems to be people operating in bad faith. Airbnb wants the narrative to be that most of their business is regular people renting out a spare room to make some extra money. Certainly that's a component of their business and one I think, and think most people would agree should be encouraged. Airbnb unfairly plays up this angle while ignoring the fact that many hosts are larger businesses that are taking up housing stock to run an unregulated hotel. There are also plenty of people holding multiple leases (especially in NYC) to rent one place out on Airbnb where you can easily make more than the rent per month. This has some socialized costs in that it reduces the housing supply which drives up rent for everyone else which cities may want to avoid.

Hotels and some city people want to focus on the fact that there is unfair competition going on but also seem to recognize that the model is a threat to their bottom line. They seem to want defensive regulation to block all of it rather than just the part that is truly unfair to them some of which is fixed now that Airbnb collects and pays taxes. Not sure if they're at full parity with the hotels in terms of taxes and feels like they should be. Of course a city always has the option of removing these fees for everyone if they think it's unfair.

There's plenty of hypocrisy to go around here.