Me and DH absolutely love Airbnb and have used them for quite a few years now, in the UK and abroad.
We visit family at least once a month and always stay in Airbnb's. We choose the entire place and have never had a problem.
I totally disagree that they are not cheaper. We have had 3 bed houses (once a 4 bed detached) all cheaper than a Travelodge or Premium Inn room.
Why would anyone choose to stay in a hotel room unless it was an expensive hotel? Even then I would not want to.
You get a room usually, if you are lucky, with 1 chair. You have to sit or lay on the bed to watch tv which I hate doing. You can't cook for yourself if you want to, you can't have endless cups of tea or coffee unless you take your own supplies. You often can't stay in the room all day because they want to get in to clean it. You have to have breakfast at the times they state (never usually early enough for us) and eat what they provide. Even in Travelodge the breakfast is a ridiculous price.
Stay in an Airbnb and you can have breakfast when you want 5am if you want it or 12pm if you want it. You can eat whatever you want or you can choose to go out and eat and a cooked breakfast will almost always be cheaper than the breakfasts in hotels.
We like having a kitchen, a living room, at least 1 separate bedroom although we usually have 2 or 3, a decent size bathroom (often more than 1 bathroom), a comfortable settee to sit on and a decent size tv and one that works properly. Don't know if we are unlucky but so often in hotels they never did.
Also it seemed whenever we stayed in a hotel there was a lot of noise. Guests coming back at 1am, 2am or later and banging doors, stomping down the corridors sounding like elephants, talking at the tops of their voices, have loud arguments, having loud sex. I never slept very well in an hotel. Never had that problem with an Airbnb even when we have stayed in apartments.
I guess we have stayed in around 40 different places and not one problem and so much cheaper and nicer than hotels