At least not for AirBnB, it's SOP. It's a safeguard for renters to see who they are renting to, if you are a liar on your application, etc..
I have a couple of friends who used AirBnB to rent out their places in the past. One absolute hard and fast rule they have is that they will only rent to travelers, not locals. There is a HUGE risk of someone trying to scam and squat in your place as it is, they only want legitimate visitors and they want to see if your story matches up, ie. you have a job/life/family somewhere else, etc...
One of my best friends was doing it, (renting out his apartment), until fairly recently. He has been in NY for quite a while and has a nice empty place here. He had great luck for a while with a couple of traveling nurses who booked it for 2-3 months at a time, (they are the ideal customer), then got a real psycho dude who would not communicate once in the apartment, acted incredibly strange and turned out to be a serial AirBnB renter who moved from one place to another and claimed that he was just in town visiting.
Why does this matter, I'm sure someone is thinking? I hold the keys for my friend and hand them off to the renters for him, I also help out when he needs someone to stop by the place for any reason, etc. He is one of my best friends and is extremely generous to me, (free digs in NYC for me, as an example). When I give the keys to the problem guy, I accidentally left the mailbox key on the ring and he would not give it back. Under no circumstances do you ever allow a short-term guest to receive mail at your address, it is one important step that a squatter or scammer can use to establish "residency" and not be removed without an arduous court process. It's a living nightmare for the rightful owner. He was of course getting packages and mail everyday and lied repeatedly to us wrt returning the key. I finally had a time set up to go by and collect the key, he texted me that he was stuck in traffic and not home, that he would let me know when he was available. I went over and knocked on the door, of course he was there. He became hysterical and made a scene, threatening my friend's tenancy in his apartment of 30 years. It goes on and on, it was a lot of drama and I came thisclose to throwing the guy out the window, (6 stories down to cement). We got him out but my friend has not rented it since and is eating thousands in monthly rent rather than deal with AirBnB people again.
That is why they want to know who TF you are.
