Converting hotels to apartment buildings would also lower costs for renters. Staying in a hotel has exactly the same effect (the hotel would not exist and might be an apartment building if there was no demand for hotels, just like airbnbs might be rented traditionally if there was no demand for airbnb)

Except hotels don't drain the existing supply like AirBnB does. Hotels are built to be hotels, not to be rented to locals. AirBnBs were built to be homes for residences of the area...and instead are being rented to locals, thus draining the existing supply that's already there, which hotels don't do.

Seconding the last reply: hotels are a single, vertical property (ergo: does not take up a ton of real estate), dedicated to travelers in cities who need accommodations. They are built into the city planning for the most part to allow people to visit the town. It also supports the local economy by providing transient business to local businesses.

I don't think you thought your reply through before typing it out.

Clearly Airbnb is, even with the best of intentions, harming local economies by making housing unaffordable and/or unavailable to locals and has been documented over the past decade[0]. It's only recently (last few years) that cities have even caught up to tech like Abnb so for years they were and active drain on the local economy by dodging taxes and regulations[1]. It does NOT support the local economy in the same way as hotels and its benefits don't seem to out weigh its costs to the local economy[2].

[0] https://hbr.org/2019/04/research-when-airbnb-listings-in-a-c...

[1] https://curs.unc.edu/2015/03/26/a-roadmap-to-regulating-airb...

[2] https://www.epi.org/publication/the-economic-costs-and-benef...