This seems to be the case in NYC[1]. Despite growth of AirBnB visitors, visitor spending and even hotel occupancy are up. And it's possible these stats may miss many AirBnB visitors - not sure hot they are collected but likely based of hotel occupancy.
Visitors (international and domestic) to New York City in 2009: 45.8 million Visitors (international and domestic) to New York City in 2008: 47.1 million
Guess when AirBnb became Airbnb.com and popular in NYC? 2009.
I realize correlation != cause but you are claiming a similar argument. Now, you could blame the recession...except it was 2008 when it was at its worst.
Visitors (int'l & domestics)
2013: 54.3 million
2012: 52.7 million
2011: 50.9 million
2010: 48.8 million
2009: 45.8 million
2008: 47.1 million
More interesting is that visitor spending and hotel prices and occupancy also did well. I agree that while none of this is definitive proof on anything. However it is not consistent with AirBnB seriously harming either hotels or visitors. Appears to be a win-win.
Hmm. Now you can blame the great recession but growth did slow.
So lets take 2011 to 2013 [after the Great Recession]: 54.3-50.9 = 3.4 And 2003 to 2005: 42.7-37.8 = 4.9
Notice the difference?
You can't claim this supports your position without cherry picking the data. Its completely worthless.
It's classic economics: price reductions increase volume.
I'm pretty sure if its "break even" [in terms of tax revenues] it isn't "break even" [in terms of tax expenditures].
If you raise the cost of real estate, you are raising the cost on 175,000+ apartments NYC pays for & 29,000 property owners that take Section 8.
You are also probably one of those people that complain "welfare" is too expensive. Well, if you keep creating economic conditions that raise the cost of welfare and keep campaigning to lower taxes...guess what happens?
In my recent case, I went to a tech conference in LA, and shared an AIRBNB with 3 others. Normally, combined we would have paid $750 a night in hotels ($250 each), but instead we spent $500 total a night.
However, we didnt use this extra money to go out. Instead, since we now had a kitchen, we didn't go out as much (and spent) way less that we would have had we stayed in a hotel.
Overall, I would say we spent about $2500 less total in LA by staying in an AIRBNB, as opposed to if we would have stayed in a hotel.
Now, for the larger economy this is good, as I now have money to spend elsewhere, but, I think you could argue that at least in this case, the LA economy lost money.