I'm using my own house right now as a short term/vacation rental, and we're not in a tourist destination by any stretch of the imagination. 

In the beautiful tourist haven of Monterey, STRs are illegal if they're less than 30 days.

Personally, I prefer areas that aren't as reliant on businesses and tourists for the economy. 

I don't know of a STR banned city database.You can search through this forum.If you pick a tourist town then you should be OK as they get a lot of revenue from tourism and will likely not do anything to upset that.

All you have to do is choose the right area, one that tourists will flock to.....I mean...why wouldn't you...?

Every town has it's own type of tourist.

I’m a bit concerned about the saturation of the market as far as tourist rentals go as I’ve read that many Turkish and Russian investors have been buying already.

The way I look at it is if somehow it does become some world wide number 1 currency no matter how unlikely I'd love to gamble 15k to have 1/21millionth of the world's currency but like I said I'm a gambler .

Many of us have clients worldwide and utilize available technology for collaboration.

So, if you don't want a management company, you better have pretty long arms when it comes to unblocking the toilet that some tourist has done a number on, you need to be able to compete with Disney and Universal, you better not expect too much in the way of profit on rentals and you better be ready for some very unexpected surprises.