Husain Khatumdi, Managing Director & Co-Founder, EkoStay – a Homestay Venture, discusses the nuances of vacation rentals and emphasises why traditional hotels are losing ground.
There is a moment that every hospitality professional recognises: the moment a guest stops comparing you to the competition and starts comparing you to the best experience they have ever had.
That shift, quiet as it sounds, is one of the most significant things happening in Indian travel right now. And it is happening fastest in the vacation rental space.
I have spent the last several years building EkoStay from a handful of homes into a platform that manages properties across Maharashtra and beyond. What that journey has taught me, more than anything, is that the modern traveller has fundamentally changed what they expect from a stay, and most of the traditional hospitality industry has not caught up yet.
The hotel was built for a different traveller
The hotel model, at its core, was designed for consistency. Same room layout across floors, standardised service protocols, uniform F&B menus, check-in at three and check-out at eleven. For a long time, that consistency was the point. It gave business travellers predictability and leisure travellers the assurance that nothing would go wrong.
But the traveller who is choosing a premium vacation rental in Lonavala or Alibaug today is not looking for predictability. They are looking for something that feels entirely theirs.
A private pool. A kitchen that their personal chef uses to cook a meal designed around their preferences. A living room where their family of twelve can actually sit together. Spaces that photograph beautifully but, more importantly, feel genuinely lived-in and warm.
No hotel room, however well-designed, can offer that. The very architecture of the hotel works against it.
Data tells a clear story
I am, by nature, a numbers person. Before I make any decision at EkoStay, I want to understand what the data is showing. And what the data around Indian leisure travel has been showing consistently is a pattern of demand that traditional hospitality has been slow to acknowledge.
Booking windows for premium villa stays are shortening, with people making decisions faster, often within days of travel, because they are confident the experience will justify the spend.
Repeat bookings are rising. Guests who stay in a well-managed private villa once almost always come back, because the experience creates a personal connection that a hotel simply cannot replicate at scale.
And average spend per booking in the managed vacation rental segment has been climbing steadily, as guests become more comfortable with the idea of paying for genuine privacy and personalisation rather than just square footage.
These are not soft signals. They are structural trends, reshaping what the hospitality market in India will look like over the next decade.
Technology is the part no one talks about
When most people think about what makes a vacation rental exceptional, they think about the property, the infinity pool, the interior design, and the views. What they do not see is the technology layer underneath all of it that makes the experience seamless.
At EkoStay, technology is not a support function. It is a core part of how we operate.
Dynamic pricing systems that respond to demand patterns in real time. Backend infrastructure that coordinates housekeeping, maintenance, chef services, and guest communication across dozens of properties simultaneously. App-based guest interfaces that allow someone to request anything from extra towels to a specific playlist before they arrive. Performance analytics that tell us, at a granular level, what is working and what is not across every property in our portfolio.
This level of operational sophistication is what separates a well-managed vacation rental from a chaotic one. It is also what allows us to maintain consistency of experience across properties without losing the individuality of each home, which is, ultimately, the hardest thing to get right.
What traditional hotels are up against
To be fair, the hotel industry is not standing still. Large chains are experimenting with villa concepts and private residences. Some are doing it well.
But the structural challenge they face is real: they are trying to add intimacy and personalisation onto a model that was fundamentally designed for volume and standardisation. That is genuinely difficult to retrofit.
The vacation rental model starts from the opposite direction. Individuality is the default. Personalisation is the baseline.
And for a growing segment of Indian travellers, particularly the millennial and Gen Z demographic making the most significant leisure travel decisions right now, that starting point matters enormously.
Where this goes next
The premium vacation rental segment in India is still in its early stages. The demand is outpacing quality supply, and the gap between what travellers expect and what most operators can consistently deliver is still significant.
That gap is exactly where the opportunity lies for operators who are serious about building infrastructure, investing in technology, and treating hospitality as a genuine craft rather than a transaction.
The traveller has already changed. The question now is whether the industry will change fast enough to meet them.
#The views expressed in this write-up are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of this platform.
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