You're correct that the extremely short term rental market (2 weeks and below) didn't really exist before, and AirBnB did streamline the entire process.
What I have done in the past is stay in hostels (when I was younger), hotels or serviced apartments. They exist in all major cities.
Suggestion: any time you find yourself having to lard statements with phrases like "By all accounts" and "attempted" and "essentially" you should strip out these circumlocutions and ask yourself whether the statement that remains is obviously untrue.
I'm starting to suspect that there's an intentional disinformation campaign to obfuscate that point. (Okay, I'm being coy: I'm fairly certain that people who dislike functional capitalism are using the term "free markets" to lead us away from working capitalism and back into serfdom.)
Here's the thing: a lot of people out there bought homes and apartments in countries that had these funny things called 'laws', where they expected that they were going to live in communities, not surrounded by rentiers running random hotels sans staff and regulation. A lot of apartment buildings in Sydney are essentially now completely fucked by this - you buy an apartment and find out you're living in party central and your neighbours are a never-ending collection of randos.
I think it's pretty clear from the extent that these companies go to obfuscate the actual addresses of the houses that they are not working with clean hands here. That aspect of the business model should be flat out illegal. Oh, you're going to operate a hotel, but you're not going to tell anyone where it is?