About 15 years ago, looking for accommodation meant finding a hotel to suit your budget. The parameters that you would choose for your stay were limited to the service, location and economics. But for some upmarket hotels, the finding experiences beyond service was not common.
Things started changing when the ‘Great Indian Middle Class’ started evolving and prospering in post-liberalized India. More and more people travelled on leisure and were looking for new experiences. It gave way to development of resorts that provided greater array of services within the walls of their property. But over the years when resorts became common in every city and tourist locations, once again they lacked distinction beyond available facilities and service. A resort to suit a traveller’s budget in Delhi would have little difference from the one in Bangalore. They could not deliver a specialized and localized experience and at the same time manage the facilities available and the level of service demanded by bulk of their clientele.
A homestay in Coorg
Sometime between 10 to 15 years ago, a new concept was slowly emerging in accommodating travellers. Discerning travellers, primarily visitors from the west who wanted an intimate experience of the local culture and way of life started looking at the possibility of staying in the houses of local people. For this, they were ready to forgo some conveniences offered by a hotel or a resort, such as an always open restaurant, room service or luxuries like swimming pool and gym. They ate with the hosts and took the same food prepared everyday at the hosts’ family. They spent time talking to hosts, learning their way of life and taking their help to discover the destination better. As the this became a trend, an industry of homestays slowly took ground.
The initial years were more of an accident. As Suresh Chengappa, who owns one of the first homestays in Coorg says, they simply welcomed people who came to stay at their place and did not even ask for a payment in return. They had a few foreign travellers coming in and staying in those days. As the word spread about their beautiful place and the friendly family, the number of travellers arriving increased slowly. When this inflow became continuous, they decided to build small rooms around their house and rent them at a nominal cost. What started this way has now become a major revenue earner for the family, which once depended primarily on their coffee estate for a living.
While Chengappa’s homestay was an accident, there were other people who did start small as an experiment. Badal Singh, a friendly man from a small village near Jaisalmer once worked for a professionally run guesthouse. But he thought it should be possible to give a better experience to tourists instead of merely treating them like clients. He quit his job and threw open his house to tourists. But Badal never had any plans to grow this into a professionally run establishment. So he remained small but his house became the favourite hangout of tourists, resulting in more people trying to emulate his model.
As the initial players started seeing their business grow, it resulted in their neighbours trying to adapt the models and open up their homes to tourists. In a place like Coorg, the concept of homestays were initiated by a handful of people like Suresh Chengappa and their neighbour Apparanda Poovanna. But over the years as the number of visitors from Bangalore increased and the demand went up, Kodavas(people of Coorg) with spacious houses started offering accommodation to visitors. Today, you can see a homestay in nearly every village in Coorg.
A similar trend evolved in neighbouring Kerala too. However, homestays in Kerala focused primarily on the premium market segment, while the ones is Coorg varied from budget to mid-range.
Though homestays sprang up in large numbers, they were scattered and disorganized. It seems to have created some challenges and some opportunities. The main challenge was in reaching out to potential guests, as the homestay owners would not have marketing budgets like a larger hotel or resort. It also meant that people who would like to stay in a homestay would find it hard to get contact and other details of the homestay. Because of this, the homestays would not have been able to maximize their utilization in slack seasons.
The opportunity here was for aggregators. Government and NGOs also stepped in with a motive to support local economy and boost cultural tourism.
Some years ago, Rajasthan Tourism compiled a list of homestays in the state, but the effort was not publicized enough to make it a success. Kerala Tourism has gone a step ahead to certify and grade the homestays and have listed the homes on their website, making it easy for travellers to find a homestay in their destination. Some NGOs like Himalayan Homestays are aggregating homestays in the mountain region and marketing them with a motive to sustain local cultures and environment. In recent past, private operators like Mahindra Homestays have sensed the opportunity in bridging the gap and have become an aggregator for select homestays. Together, they are slowly bringing the concept of homestay as a mainstream option for travellers.
What does the future look like? It is evident that homestays are likely to get more organized in the future. As homestays become more common, they may loose the novelty they have today, but would still have the edge of providing an experience more authentic than a hotel or resort. But as the competition increases and provided that homestays are favoured by travellers, it is also possible that accommodations where the homeowners do not live too get passed off as a homestay. Such examples are already seen in a few places, where owners are passing off their second home or an unused house as a homestay even when they do not live there. A simple solution for such confusion is to provide guidelines and certify the homestays. In one such move, the rules laid out by Government of Karnataka to certify a homestay requires that the owners live in the same premises. However, just like a small establishment with a few simple cottage may try to call themselves as a ‘resort’ today, the name ‘homestay’ is likely to get misused. The onus of verification may mostly fall on the travellers themselves.
