[frostmatthew]

> In theory, the traditional model, which might include a hotel chain in the transaction, would funnel a greater percentage of funds away from the local economy

Do we actually care about the percentage? If you spend $100 on Airbnb and most of that ends up in the local economy that's a lesser local impact than if you spend $250 at a hotel, even if only half of that stays in the local economy.

[codyb]

But at $100 dollars a night a tremendous amount of people more can afford to stay maybe edging out the hotel if there's enough availability on AirBnB.

I'd also say, yes, the percentage is important in general.

[frostmatthew]

> But at $100 dollars a night a tremendous amount of people more can afford to stay

That's irrelevant to the comment I was responding to, which was suggesting a transaction with a hotel chain "would funnel a greater percentage of funds away from the local economy" (despite its lack of relevance to the per-transaction discussion you do bring up a valid point which further shows we don't care about the percentage).

> I'd also say, yes, the percentage is important in general.

Why? If more money spent within an economy is beneficial to the economy then you want to maximize the amount of money spent within that economy.

Imagine a hypothetical economy of one person, you. Would you rather have a million dollars taxed at 50% or $100,000 taxed at 5%? Even though the percent you end up with is less you're still going to choose the million because $500,000 is more than $95,000.