I own a hotel in Rome and operate a vacation rental site in Europe and although I don't if this actually concerns them or not, you are totally right. In France and Italy, for example, if you take the money, you cannot claim to just be a marketplace like craigslist. He who takes the money holds a different kind of a legal responsibility that maybe is avoidable in the US, but is hard (if not impossible) to justify here. I think big companies don't want to get involved in the tax and legal implications. That said, I don't understand why airbnb and their financial supports are not more concerned about this. Either they have a great legal department backing up their model or they are naive to how different the business environment is in Europe than in the US.