If you host a vacation rental, you already know the dirty secret of this industry.
You built a real business. You designed the space. You stocked it, photographed it, wrote the listing, answered the 2 a.m. messages, fixed the things that broke, and turned over the property after every guest. You absorbed the bad reviews from guests who didn't read the listing, and you celebrated the good ones that made it all worth it.
And then you handed most of the marketing power over to a platform that doesn't know your name. The same platform that giveth your bookings can taketh them away, or so they say.
That's the deal hosts have been making for a decade. It worked. It got the bookings in the door. But it came with strings that have only tightened over time: algorithm dependency, commoditized listings, an inability to build a guest relationship that lives beyond a single stay, and the constant background fear that one policy change from a major online travel agency (OTA) like Airbnb or Vrbo could undo years of momentum.
Stays exists because that deal is overdue for an update.
The problem isn't booking. It's everything around the booking.
OTAs are good at many things but really amazing at one thing: closing the transaction. They've spent fifteen years making the moment of payment seamless. Hosts have benefited from that, no question.
But hosts have also paid a real price for it. The OTA owns the discovery layer, the brand layer, the guest relationship, the review history, and the search rank. If your listing ranks well today, you're winning. If a competitor outspends you on Airbnb Plus, or the algorithm shifts the weighting on a metric you can't see, you're not.
Where do you even start? And is it worth the time and costs? At the very least, maybe have social media accounts. But then where should hosts send their followers? Right to the OTA booking site that charges fees? A direct booking site that seems untrustworthy at first glance? A Linktree landing page that strips out everything that makes the property special?
Hosts have been handed the full responsibility of running a business, yet they've never had a meaningful channel to really grow one outside of the OTA. Stays aims to change that.
What Stays actually gives hosts
The Stays platform was designed from day one to solve the host side of the equation, not just the traveler side. Here's what that looks like in practice.
A real brand presence.
Every Stays listing is its own page. Not a row in a search result. A page. With your photography, your story, your voice, your booking links, and your offers. Something you'd be proud to put on a business card, a flyer, or the bio link of your stay's Instagram account.
A marketing hub that travels with you.
The single biggest pain point for hosts who try to market themselves is that they have nowhere to send the traffic. Stays solves that. Drive your social followers, your past guests, your QR codes, and your paid ads to your Stays page. Then track exactly which channel is sending bookings (and where they end up booking).
Booking analytics you've never had access to.
OTAs hand hosts a black box. Stays shows you how many travelers viewed your stay, how many clicked through to book, and which booking partner (Airbnb, Vrbo, direct) they chose. Real data on your funnel, not just final-booking confirmations.
A way to compete on more than price.
OTA algorithms reward conversion. That punishes hosts whose properties are differentiated, design-forward, or seasonal. On Stays, you're competing on the merits of the property and the experience. Curation evens the playing field for the hosts who deserve to be found but weren't built to win an algorithm war.
An audience that wants what you're offering.
Stays travelers aren't looking for the cheapest place that sleeps four. They're looking for somewhere worth talking about. The waitlist is already over 2,000 deep with travelers who self-selected into a curated platform. That's a different audience than the one searching by zip code and price filter.
What Stays doesn't change
Just as important as what Stays adds is what it doesn't ask you to give up.
Keep your Airbnb listing. Keep your Vrbo listing. Keep your direct booking site, your property management software (PMS), your channel manager, your existing review history, your operational stack. Stays sits above your booking ecosystem, not in front of it. We're additive, not adversarial.
When a traveler discovers your property on Stays, they can choose where to book based on the options you as a host choose to provide. Direct, if you offer it (and you should, because it's almost always cheaper for them and better for you). Airbnb if that's what they're comfortable with. Vrbo if that's where they have a loyalty balance. Your existing channels keep operating exactly the way they do today.
And the part hosts always ask about first: Stays does not take a cut of your bookings. Ever. We don't process the transaction, so there's nothing to take. Your revenue per booking goes up the moment you shift any portion of your demand from a high-commission channel to a direct one.
Who gets to be on Stays
Stays is selective and curated, by design. Every property on the platform is reviewed and approved by a human. We're looking for vacation rental properties that earn their place through excellence. Through custom architecture, quality design, desirable location, compelling story, or providing a unique experience.
This is part of what makes Stays valuable to travelers, and in turn, what makes inclusion meaningful for hosts. A spot on Stays is a quality signal, not a participation trophy.
If you've spent real thought on your property and your guest experience, you probably already meet the standard. If you're not sure, apply anyway. We'd rather see your stay and tell you than have you self-select out.
And if your property gets declined? Don't take it personally. It's really not you; it's us. We're picky. And that's okay.
Stays is new in 2026. So what do early hosts get?
We're starting to onboard the first round of hosts now. The hosts who join during this introductory period get more than just a listing. They get an opportunity to grow and scale with a brand that's only mission is to serve them.
"The first batch of host on Stays get a direct line access to our team that's shaping what gets built next. They can literally help guide production of a tool that they want to use. A tool that works for them and provides them value and utility. That's an awesome opportunity"
- Jeff Cremonte, Co-Founder of Stays
That kind of attention that's only possible while the platform is new, small, and flexible. So now is the perfect time.
Many other niche OTAs, guides, and rental marketplaces talk about being "for hosts." Stays is at the stage where we can prove it. The hosts in this cohort are going to shape what Stays becomes. That's a real opportunity, and it doesn't repeat once we're scaled.
You'll get first access to our innovative tools and features while being able to have influence over what comes next.
TL;DR: The short version
The vacation rental industry built incredible booking infrastructure. But in order for transactions to be captured and profits to be made, OTAs kept all marketing and discoverability tools internal to their own platforms.
Hosts who want to grow a real business, own their audience, and stop renting their visibility from an OTA algorithm need somewhere to do that.
Stays is that somewhere. We're not asking you to leave the channels that work. We're giving you a new one that works differently yet symbiotically with your existing booking and management tools.
If you've been waiting for the discovery layer to catch up to the rest of your business, it's here.
Apply to be among the first stays on Stays.