A website for your homestay: keep the 15–20% the OTAs take
If you run a homestay or villa, chances are most of your guests come through Booking, Agoda, or Facebook. Every reservation made on those platforms costs you 15–20% in commission. Your own website won’t replace those channels — but it lets you keep that money whenever a guest already wants to book directly. And there are more of those guests than you might think.
Where that 15–20% commission actually goes
Let’s use real numbers. Take a villa in Da Lat that hosts family groups at 3 million dong a night, nearly full every weekend. If 20 nights a month come through an OTA, the commission runs to 9–12 million dong a month. Over a year that’s more than a hundred million — enough to build a website several times over, with money left for ads.
This isn’t an argument for quitting the platforms. Booking and Agoda bring you new guests, foreign guests, people who’ve never heard of you — that commission is worth paying. The problem is a different group: returning guests, guests referred by friends, guests who found you on TikTok. These people already know you. They don’t need a middleman anymore. But if there’s nowhere to book directly, they’ll open Booking again — and you pay a finder’s fee for a guest who was already yours.
When a returning guest still books through an OTA, you're paying a referral fee for someone who was already your customer.
Guests find you on TikTok, then go verify
Watch how people actually behave: someone scrolls past a clip of a sea-view homestay in Quy Nhon, loves it, saves it. But almost nobody transfers a deposit because of one video. The next thing they do is type the name into Google to check whether the place is real.
If all they find is a messy fanpage — pretty photos but no address, no prices — doubt creeps in. Homestay deposit scams are common enough that everyone’s wary. But if they land on a proper website with a clear address, photos of each room, and published rates, most of that worry disappears. At that moment your website works like your homestay’s ID card: it confirms you exist and you run a serious business.
A fanpage can’t do this job. Posts sink down the timeline, and a guest hunting for room photos or prices gives up after a few scrolls.
What a homestay website actually needs
It doesn’t need to be fancy. It needs to answer the four questions every guest asks: what do the rooms look like, how much, where is this place, and is my date still available.
Real photos, organized by room type
Guests don’t book your homestay’s “vibe” — they book one specific room. So each room type needs its own photo set: the bed, the window and its view, and yes, the bathroom. A sea-view double is not the same as a four-person room facing the hills, and the photos should make that obvious without guesswork.
A price table by season and weekend
Homestay pricing almost always splits three ways: weekdays, weekends, and holidays. Lay it out in a plain table. Every guest will compare against what they see on Booking, so if booking direct is about 10% cheaper — which you can afford, since there’s no commission — say so right on the page. That’s the whole reason for them to message you instead of tapping “Reserve” on an OTA.
Directions, and what’s around
Homestays tend to sit in hard-to-find spots: at the end of a slope, inside a fishing village, ten kilometers from the center. Embed a map and write a few lines of directions from the airport or bus station so guests don’t have to message you asking the way. Then add a “what’s nearby” section — a Quy Nhon homestay can list how many minutes it takes to reach Eo Gio or Ky Co, and which seafood place nearby is worth it. This section helps guests picture the whole trip — and once they can picture the trip, the booking is halfway done.
A Zalo button to ask about specific dates
The number-one question from Vietnamese guests is always: “Is that date still available?” Don’t make them fill in a long form and wait for an email — almost nobody will. One tap on a Zalo button that opens a chat with a pre-filled “Hi, I’d like to ask about availability on…” is the fastest way to turn a viewer into a booking. For a Da Lat family villa, guests also need to ask things like “we’re 9 adults and 3 kids, will we fit?” — questions a quick chat settles in seconds and no form ever could.
Two mistakes that quietly drive guests away
First: all Instagram shots, no bathroom photo. Swing chairs and misty courtyards everywhere, but the things a person about to sleep there most wants to see — is the bed clean, is the bathroom decent — are missing. Guests read that the worst way: you must be hiding something. One photo of a clean, bright bathroom builds more trust than ten check-in shots.
Second: “DM for price.” Annoying on a fanpage, nearly self-sabotage on your own website. Guests suspect the price depends on who’s asking, feel awkward messaging, and go back to Booking — where every night’s rate is right there. You hide the price hoping for messages, and end up losing both the message and the booking.