It doesn't serve residents. It serves hotel lobby. They don't even hide it too much:
http://reason.com/blog/2016/10/31/hotel-workers-union-gave-1...
http://reason.com/blog/2016/11/04/hotel-exec-celebrates-new-...
It's not about safety or interests of anybody else, it's about who the money goes to.
Why are these mutually exclusive?
(Can we use Airbnb celebrating the other side as evidence that Airbnb's preferred laws don't serve visitors, they serve the VC lobby?)
If aribnb reps would say something like "we're glad this law got passed, now we can charge more and not be afraid of competition" then yes. But I don't remember Airbnb sponsoring any exclusionary laws, it's the hotel lobby that does. And they don't even bother to put a transparent screen of saying "great day for safety!", they just plain go out and say "great day for us charging more!".
The analogy in your case would be GM sponsoring a law that says that if you want to build cars, you have to e.g. include seatbelts or not pump carbon monoxide into the air. That is a perfectly good law for GM to be sponsoring, even if it does inhibit competition.