AirBnb wouldn’t become successful if people didn’t actually spend money on the platform. If people didn’t spend, then the whol Airbnb cottage industry wouldn’t have risen up - armies of cleaners, property managers, platforms like AirDNA, not to mention the macroeconomic impact of the growth in the real estate market. A lot of people who bought houses over the last few years factored in the ability to Airbnb their extra rooms. Whether it was a good investment or not, is beside the point.

The point is that for an ecosystem to grow and develop network effects, people have to transact.

Otherwise, Airbnb would just be a catalog of people’s unused real estate.