Eh. I think it's quite hyperbolic to cite that hotel regulations are written in blood, when talking about rental cottages. Hotels are heavily regulated primarily due to their scale. A single hotel burning down could kills hundreds of people. If the cottage catches on fire, you just walk out the door or break a window. A poorly managed hotel can also turn into a source of substantial blight to a community. You can end up with drug dealers using hotel rooms as storefronts, sex traffickers using them for involuntary sex work, etc. But a cottage? There's only so much blight that can fit into a tiny cottage. A cottage intrinsically needs far less regulation than a hotel.

Is it possible an owner will neglect maintenance of a cottage and let it go to hell? Sure. But we're talking about cottages rented on vacation sites where people can leave reviews. And it's not like anyone is going to get stuck in a year lease living in one of these things. If it's a rat-infested hellhole, you're only there a short time. Short-term rental owners have a lot more incentive to keep their properties in decent maintenance than regular landlords do.

Protections aside the hotel industry simply can't offer this type of experience. I don't mind it at all.

Guessing its the extra inspections/requirements for these rentals to meet codes that he's grumbling about - a likely sign his septic is undersized, or there's a safety concern that would be expensive to fix.

Depends - the area you see as vacation property is an area that people live in, unless its on seasonal roads only, or water access only.

I live in an area where vacationers from a big city come out and cottage here. Often its a family cottage they've been coming to for decades, so I don't really have a problems with them renting.

But through covid tons of people from the city bought cottages and drove homeowning out of the grasp of any locals. These are full, four season structures on roads serviced by the township. The average housing price ~doubled, and most locals can't buy.

If people aren't using the cottage so often that they can rent it out regularly, then I don't have a problem with them having to give it up or be more heavily regulated.