It's not about consumer protection. That's just a smoke screen. It's entirely about government revenue. Municipal taxes, sales taxes and government fees. Hotels and taxis and the like have to pay them and AirBnB and private rental models typically don't. By disrupting these models, these new services cut off revenues to cities and make it harder to justify the high taxes they milk the traditional businesses and tourists for. And cities are broke these days. And guess what, local voters also love (whether they realize it or not) the idea of raising taxes on out-of-towners instead of themselves whenever possible.