[Jabanga]

>Airbnb was valued at $31bn after its last round. As of market close today, that's about more than the market caps of Hilton & Intercontinental combined.

The Airbnb industry stands to replace a large chunk of the entire hospitality industry, which is worth substantially more than $31 billion.

The astroturfing is by the powerful hotel lobby, as is almost always the case when you see a push to restrict voluntary economic interactions with licensing requirements that ordinary people can't afford (e.g. hotel licenses which almost all the Airbnb hosts would be unable to afford):

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/16/technology/inside-the-hot...