[Tiktaalik]

I generally agree with you, though within the particular context of small Canadian towns like the OP is discussion there's an additional issue that there's actually a dearth of investment and housing investment. In contrast to the vibrant cities like Vancouver where developers would love to build but they're blocked, in small towns there's often no developers, no builders, and no investment.

The remoteness and limited market of smaller towns can drive up the costs of creating new things.

In these cases of the lack of it's remarkably easier to simply buy a SFH and rent it out on Airbnb and I think that's how we get to these outcomes where there's seemingly tourist demand, but no one is creating anything new except trading around old SFHs.