I find people everywhere preferring an airbnb lodging to a hotel. Money is seldom the issue because it is often cheaper to go to the hotel.
When I talk to these airbnb users I get many reasons and I see a few more. The most common reason given is the desire to be in a real neighborhood. Followed by the desire to entertain friends, cook for themselves and have a sense of personal space.
The other reasons that aren’t expressed are the impersonality of hotels, the lack of personalized comfort spaces in hotels and the long hall ways that are too much like prisons and other cold institutions.
I think hotels are going to have to do much more to meet these challenges. I stayed in a hotel like apartment in Tokyo that had a wonderful kitchen with everything I needed. I stayed a month and it was great. Tiny but only a few footsteps from the elevator and with shopping and every service within a few hundred feet.
Being in residential areas will be a challenge considering the business hatred so deeply ingrained in most Democrat controlled cities. But the necessary battles have to be fought.