I feel like someone first decides on a destination and then decides on where to stay. I don't think a sizable portion of travelers prioritize staying in an apartment or private home over visiting Paris.
When I am traveling alone, I seldom care if I stay in an apartment or a hotel. In fact I often lean towards hotels as a single room is just fine and its conveniences convenient.
But when I am with a family, especially coming from a different time zone (when someone will wake in a middle of the night and wants to read for an hour), an apartment makes a huge difference for me. Visit Paris once -- sure, even if I have to stay in a cramped room. Deciding on where to go for a quick weekend side trip with a family -- availability of Airbnb-style lodging may be a deciding factor. My 2c.
We definitely look at the accommodations while looking at a place to travel to. If it’s too expensive, we won’t go. Airbnb is significantly less expensive than hotels for many places. We couldn’t even get a damn hotel when we tried to visit Rome. (Short of them being $300+/night, way out of our budget)
If the only thing available is extremely expensive hotels (especially if they’re not even giving you anything for that cost) then we skip on the location. We just don’t have the money for it.
Accommodation cost is the primary heuristic I use for travel. I have a personal model for places to go, and I actually prefer going to places with lower prices because the most expensive places are often just tourist traps. The places with lower prices and decent amenities but fewer tourist destinations tend to be the places that I enjoy the most.
We just went to París (in the time before...) and staying in an Airbnb.
We probably wouldn’t have gone if there’d only been hotels available. We have a child who needs her own room and it’s just such a massive pain figuring that out with a hotel.
Airbnb means we can get her in bed and have an evening together sitting in the lounge and making food in the kitchen without worrying about where in the hotel a baby monitor will reach, or whatever weird things come up after the photos from the hotel room turn out to be completely fictitious as usual.
Just like Uber VS minicabs and Amazon VS other online shops - the reason people like the new thing is mostly because the old thing was TERRIBLE.
For a period I was a digital nomad and stayed in a few cities for ~1 month each. Airbnb allowed us to immerse ourselves in the local neighborhoods and get a real feel for the places. If I had to stay in a hotel for that same period I probably would have chosen a different destination.
I feel like someone first decides on a destination and then decides on where to stay.
That's true for me. I do use Airbnb, as I like to cook my own meals when traveling (dietary restrictions), but Airbnb availability has never been a major determinant of where I go. Recent trips have been 60-70% Airbnb, usually mixed within a vacation.
For Paris, I'd be fine either way. We used a hotel in London and Rome. Airbnb in Florence and Reykjavik.
Edit - both Florence and Reykjavik were apartments that very well could have been residential. Heart of downtown and all that. Neither were cheap, both were on par with mid-range hotels. Portree, Scotland was another home that likely was removed from long-term rental (or owner occupied) market.
Other Airbnb stays included St Micheals (MD, USA) in a historic home. Mt Rogers wilderness (VA, USA) in a purpose built tiny cabin. And outside Stornoway, Scotland in a crofter's cottage, where the owner lived in a new build home on the same site (and the rental was the original cottage). I don't feel like any of these would impact the local long-term rental market, but could be wrong.
While true, one thing to consider is that, if renting an apartment that sleeps 4 is cheaper than renting two otherwise similar hotel rooms that sleep 2, that means the travelers have more money to spend while they're there.
Is this significant to matter to the other tourism industries in Paris? That I don't know... Does it outweigh the issues people have with AirBNB? Probably not...
When we plan a trip we pull out the bucket list of places we want to go, then pick the week and finally look at prices.
If 4 nights in a hotel is going to cost twice as much in a certain city compared to somewhere else on the list it probally isn't getting picked that trimester.
As a digital nomad we almost always look at accommodation before deciding to go somewhere and it's mostly always AirBnB, since hotels don't have the facilities we need.
But when I am with a family, especially coming from a different time zone (when someone will wake in a middle of the night and wants to read for an hour), an apartment makes a huge difference for me. Visit Paris once -- sure, even if I have to stay in a cramped room. Deciding on where to go for a quick weekend side trip with a family -- availability of Airbnb-style lodging may be a deciding factor. My 2c.