Stayfarer's job is making sure the answer is your property, and that the booking lands direct with you instead of on an OTA. AI-findability and direct-booking retainers for homestays, guesthouses and independent hotels. Built in Malaysia, working anywhere.
For twenty years the contest was your Google ranking and your OTA position. That contest has moved.
An AI assistant doesn't return a results page with two hundred options. It names a few. Either your stay is in that answer, or the guest never learns you exist — there is no page two to be found on. Malay Mail put the industry's mood plainly on 24 May 2026: "Hotels are scrambling to impress AI."
say a trusted AI recommendation would make them more likely to book a property. TakeUp, The Rise of AI-Planned Travel in 2026, 14 Jan 2026 — 300 US leisure travellers.
of the travellers who use AI have booked primarily on what it recommended. Same survey.
Running George Town's discovery queries (Jul 2026), one independent property surfaced via its own site. The rest appeared only inside OTA pages. The full finding.
The same survey found 55% of travellers haven't used an AI tool for trip planning at all. This is early days. Early is also when the work is cheapest: the properties an engine can already verify are the ones it keeps naming later.
Independent properties take 63.4% of their bookings through OTAs (Cloudbeds, The 2026 State of Independent Hotels, built on 90 million bookings across 180 countries). The all-in cost runs 18–30% on Booking.com once visibility programmes are counted, 17–23% on Expedia. Airbnb has been moving hosts to a single 15.5% host-side fee — cleaning fees included — since December 2025, and the last hosts outside the EU move on 15 September 2026. Current numbers, sources and the method for computing your own leak: what the OTAs actually take.
| Rooms × average rate × occupancy (20 × RM 250 × 60%) | ≈ RM 90,000 / month |
|---|---|
| Booked through OTAs (70% of revenue) | ≈ RM 63,000 |
| Paid out in commission at ~20% | ≈ RM 12,600 / month |
| Shift fifteen points of that share to direct bookings and roughly RM 2,700 a month stays with the property — every month, for as long as the channel holds. That recovered commission is the number Stayfarer prices against. | |
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Both instruments are genuinely free — no email wall, no "book a call" ambush. If what they show you stings usefully, you know where we are.
How findable you are, who takes your bookings, what the machines can read about you, whether your review engine runs. Each question tells you exactly how to check it — you'll learn more from the looking than the score. Answers never leave your browser; our security policy makes that a technical fact, not a promise.
Run the Position CheckThe full protocol for checking what ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI say about your property — twelve queries, our audit's own 0–3 rubric, a printable scoresheet. The method was never the secret; the hours are.
We run the questions travellers actually ask — "boutique hotel George Town near the jetty", "family homestay Penang, 6 pax" — across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI, and record where you appear, where you don't, and who is being named instead. Then we put your own booking data against it and price the gap in ringgit.
RM 1,200 at the founding rate, down from RM 3,000. The report is yours whatever you decide next. All rates.
Two to three weeks closing what the audit found. Your site rebuilt to be worth citing, structured data (the machine-readable labels AI engines check) done properly, Google Business Profile and reviews put in order, and a booking path that stops sending your own guests back to the OTAs.
RM 3,600 at the founding rate, down from RM 9,000. Fixed scope, agreed upfront. All rates.
The monthly engine, and the reason Stayfarer exists. AI-citation tracking against your market's real queries, a content and review cadence, and a monthly report built on the two numbers an owner actually cares about: where the engines cite you, and what share of your bookings came direct.
From RM 600 a month at the founding rate, priced by property size against the commission you already pay — never against a "marketing budget". All rates and what is included.
For nine years I co-ran Sweet Hut Homestay in Penang. I did the check-ins, answered the 2am messages, and every month I read the OTA statement and watched a cut of my rooms leave with it. Sweet Hut has since closed. What stayed with me is knowing exactly how that statement feels.
Stayfarer is the service I wish someone had sold me in year two. I won't pretend there's a long client list to show you yet. There isn't; you'd be early. What you get in exchange is the version of us with the most to prove.
The longer story, and how we work: about Stayfarer. From the studio behind Upcial — Penang, Malaysia.
One 15.5% host-side fee, cleaning fees included. Most hosts were moved across during 2025; 15 September 2026 is the final wave outside the EU. If you are in it and Airbnb is your main channel, your take-home changes that week — a good moment to know what your direct channel could carry instead. The numbers.
The Visit Malaysia campaign was extended through 2027 on 27 April 2026, keeping its targets of 47 million international visitors and RM 329 billion in tourism receipts. More arrivals is not the same as more bookings for you, though. A guest who lands in Penang still has to find your property and choose where to book it — and right now, for most independents, that somewhere is an OTA.
AI-written listings are flooding travel search, and the engines are responding by trusting less, verifying more. Work that makes your property one of the verifiable few compounds — done this year, it keeps answering for you next year.
When a traveller asks ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity where to stay in your area, the engine names a handful of properties it can verify and trust. AI-findability — the industry calls it GEO, generative engine optimisation — is the work of becoming one of the properties those engines cite: a technically clean site, structured data engines can read, consistent reviews and listings, and content worth quoting. It sits on top of classic SEO, and Stayfarer does both. The full guide.
No, and Stayfarer will never advise delisting. OTAs are your busiest channel, and delisting is a fast way to empty rooms. The job is dependency reduction: growing the share of guests who find you and book you directly, so the commission line shrinks as a proportion of your revenue.
The self-check tools and guides are free, with no email wall. Retainers start at RM 600 a month and the audit at RM 1,200 — both at the founding rate, 60% below standard, held for as long as you stay. Everything is priced against the commission you already pay the OTAs each month, not against a marketing budget: if Stayfarer can't credibly cost less than the leak it fixes, you'll be told so. The full rate card is public, and founding rates close 31 December 2026.
Yes. The work is research, engineering and content on your digital presence, delivered remotely by design. Malaysia is home and the first market; the method travels.
About an hour of your time, your booking mix (what share of bookings comes from which channel), and your listings. For the audit that's genuinely all — Stayfarer does the rest and hands you the report.
Koay Shi Chian, who co-ran Sweet Hut Homestay in Penang for nine years before it closed, and who runs Upcial, a Penang web studio serving Malaysian insurance and financial-services firms. Stayfarer is the same craft, pointed at the industry he came from. More on the about page.
One email finds out. Send your property's name and where it is. We'll reply with what the engines currently say about you, and an honest read on whether a full audit is worth your money — if it isn't, we'll tell you that too.
It's the founder who replies, on both. Not ready to talk to anyone? The Position Check asks nothing and tells you plenty.