Boost the number of homestays & serviced villas in Kerala

Kerala has hundreds of homestays and serviced villas, many of them doing well. There is room for thousands more.

Policy that make it easier for a homeowner or investor to enter hospitality would ripple well beyond tourism — into construction, local employment, transport and real estate. And a large body of hosts, each offering something particular, draws the kind of visitor who comes for an intimate experience of a place rather than a hotel room.

The prize is bigger than new building. Kerala has a great many houses standing empty — families abroad, children moved away — held as illiquid investments nobody is using. Reform that turned those into working assets would also give NRI families a reason to send money home for something productive.

Kerala's existing rules compare well with most states. The point is not to fix a broken framework but to take a working one into its next phase.

Several current restrictions look ripe for revisiting: limits on changing the type of a building, the requirement that the owner be personally resident, the six-room cap, the absence of any provision to convert an outhouse or cottage or a tree house into a guest room etc.

The mandatory wheelchair ramp is one such point worth a discussion. What matters is that a guest who uses a wheelchair knows before booking exactly what a property offers. Every listing declaring its access honestly serves that better than a rule requiring every property to build — particularly in old houses on narrow lanes where a ramp is not possible, and where the present requirement simply keeps the host outside the system altogether. Transparency over mandate.

More broadly: as long as C-form filings — the mandatory reporting of foreign guests — are kept strict, much of the rest could work as guidance rather than permits.

There is a compliance argument too. It is highly likely that fewer than half the Kerala listings on Booking.com, MakeMyTrip and Airbnb hold the homestay or serviced villa licence required by the Tourism department or the local body. When the licensed route is hard enough, people skip it. Easier rules, honestly followed, would give the state a truer picture of its own hospitality sector than strict rules widely ignored.

What the new framework should actually say is worth drafting properly — as a proposal under this petition, by people who have been through the process and those who would like to consider the opportunity but find it not welcoming enough.