[eszed]

You and GP are talking past each other a bit, because they're speaking to the general case, whilst you're narrowing it to tourist-dependent areas. I grew up in a tourist region, and it's been ruined (from the point of view of those of us who are from there, and might have wanted to stick around) exactly as you say.

The complicating factor (which they miss) for a tourist region is that if your "product" is (in part) Small Town Charm, or Rural Character, then you can't build, baby, build without destroying the economic underpinning of the entire community. I wish my hometown had allowed for more hotels (like, decades ago - they were horribly regulator-captured for ages), and had the wisdom to restrict STR before it became such a thing.

For anywhere with a non-tourism based economy, however, I think they are correct: increasing supply is the only possible solution.

It only occurs to me upon writing this that areas without any existing tourist infrastructure are becoming tourist-dependent on the basis of STR, which might be the worst of both worlds. Those places need to allow hotels and (actual) B&Bs, before they ruin their communities through STR-tourist dependence.