An income
property abroad.
Without the flight.
Akontec builds short-stay rental businesses in the USA and UK for owners who live somewhere else. We form the company, secure and furnish the property, build the listings and the technology, then run the guest desk around the clock from India.
You do not need to buy a building to be in this business. One of the three routes needs no property at all.
One needs no property
United States & United Kingdom
Feasibility to first guest
In your market's time zone
A market that keeps coming back.
Short-stay accommodation is a permanent part of how people travel, relocate and work. Supply is fragmented, largely amateur, and no single operator holds the inventory in any city.
Demand a hotel cannot serve
Families needing separate bedrooms, people relocating for work, contractors, medical travellers, visiting relatives. Stays measured in weeks rather than nights, with a kitchen and a door that locks. That is a category, not a trend.
Fragmented, and largely amateur
Most listings in any city belong to individuals running one or two properties. They price statically, answer slowly, and let review scores decay. A professional operation does not have to beat a giant. It has to beat that.
The work is remote by nature
Enquiries, bookings, pricing, reviews and coordination all happen on a screen. Of the four ventures Akontec builds, this is the one that genuinely suits an owner who will never be in the building.
Earned in dollars and pounds
Guests pay in the market's currency while a meaningful share of your management cost sits in rupees. A real margin advantage — though a currency spread is not a business case on its own, and we will not pretend it is.
Only one of these needs you to buy a building.
They differ in capital, in who carries the loss when a month goes quiet, and in how much of the upside you keep. We tell you which fits before quoting anything.
Co-hosting & management
You run short-stay properties belonging to other people — listings, pricing, guest communication, cleaning, reviews — and take a share of what they earn. The owner keeps the asset and the empty months. You supply the operation.
Consented rental arbitrage
You lease a property long-term with the landlord's written consent to let it short, furnish it, and keep the difference between rent and revenue. No purchase, no mortgage, and the highest return per unit of the three.
Owned short-stay property
You buy the property and operate it. The largest commitment, and the only route where you hold an appreciating asset alongside the operating income.
Most people who try this stop because of the messaging, not the returns.
Running one property remotely is manageable. Running three, across time zones, while holding down a job, is where it breaks — and it breaks quietly. Slow replies. A cleaner who did not confirm. A review score drifting down over six months until the bookings stop.
That is what Akontec is actually built for. Setting the business up is a project with an end date. Answering it at 3am, every night, for years, is an operation. We already run operations for a living.
When guests message about a lock that will not open — which falls inside our working day, not yours.
Lines of work the desk covers, from pricing and turnovers to reviews, compliance and reporting.
Of the business is yours. Company, lease or title, furnishings, listings, reviews and every document.
Twelve stages, then we run it.
The same delivery spine runs through every Akontec venture. Four of the twelve are shown here; the rest sit on the delivery page.
Feasibility & city selection
Where your model is lawful, where demand holds through the quiet season, and where reliable cleaning and maintenance can actually be contracted at sensible cost.
Company & registrations
LLC or limited company, registered agent or office, tax identifiers, lodging tax registration, and a written annual filing calendar handed to you.
Property, consent & fit-out
Sourcing, the four checks described below, written consent where the model needs it, then furnishing to a costed specification and professional photography.
Listings, technology & partners
Multi-platform listings, channel manager, dynamic pricing, smart access, and cleaning, linen and maintenance partners contracted locally with backups for each.
Eight lines of work, every night.
Scope is set per venture in a service schedule. This is the full menu; your agreement names which of it applies to you.
Guest communication
Enquiries, check-in instructions, in-stay problems and follow-up, across every platform, around the clock.
Booking & calendar
Multi-platform synchronisation, minimum-stay rules, gap nights and cancellations, so a night is never sold twice.
Pricing
Rates moved against demand, seasonality and events. The largest single lever on revenue, and the one most hosts ignore.
Cleaning & turnover
Scheduled against the live calendar, confirmed with photo evidence, escalated when a check-in is at risk.
Reviews & ranking
Every review answered, complaint patterns fed back into the property, listing quality maintained over time.
Maintenance
Faults logged, contractors dispatched, access arranged, work verified and invoices checked before payment.
Compliance calendar
Registrations, safety certificates, tax filings and insurance dates tracked, with escalation before deadlines rather than after.
Reporting
Monthly pack on occupancy, rate, revenue per available night and costs against plan, plus a quarterly review call.
We earn when
you earn.
Three components, and you will know all three before we send you a proposal.
- Setup fee — a percentage of establishment cost, quoted once city and model are fixed. Property and furnishing are excluded from the base.
- Management fee — a flat monthly amount covering the guest desk and back office.
- Profit share — a percentage of net operating profit above an agreed threshold, on a defined expense schedule.
A fee on what you spend would point us the wrong way.
Paid purely as a percentage of your outlay, we would earn more by steering you toward the most expensive version of this — buy the property, furnish it lavishly, add units early. That is the incentive we designed out.
Taking a share of operating profit puts us on the same side of the table. When we recommend co-hosting over a purchase, it is because we think it will make you money.
The profit share is a contractual right under a management agreement. It is not equity. We take no interest in your company or your property, appear on no title or register, and have no claim on a sale. Fixed term, with exit rights both ways.
Four checks before you commit a rupee.
Short-stay is a regulated sector and it is tightening. That is entirely manageable if you check properly, and expensive if you do not. All four happen before your money goes into any property.
The city or council
Registration, licensing, permit caps, night limits and any primary-residence condition. Public and checkable, and where most people correctly begin.
The lease or title
Most tenancies and many leasehold titles restrict sub-letting and short-term letting. Where consent is needed, we obtain it in writing before you commit.
The building
Homeowner associations, freeholders and managing agents set their own rules, independently of local law. Many now prohibit short lets specifically.
The lender and the insurer
Residential mortgage terms and standard policies generally exclude short-stay commercial use. Getting this wrong voids cover exactly when you need it.
If any of the four fails, we say so and the property is dropped — and you have spent nothing beyond the engagement fee. We will not build a venture on a verbal assurance or a landlord who will "probably be fine with it". If a city has closed to your model, better you hear it in week two than after your capital is in the ground.
The four that come up every time.
The full list runs to twenty-five, grouped by topic.
Do I have to buy a property?
No, and we would usually advise against buying first. Co-hosting means managing properties owned by other people for a share of revenue, with no property and no void risk. Consented arbitrage means leasing long and letting short with the landlord's written permission. Both let you learn the business before committing capital to a specific building.
Can I really run this from India?
Yes, and better than most ventures of this type. Guest messaging, bookings, pricing, reviews and coordination are screen work. Cleaning, laundry and maintenance are contracted locally per job rather than employed. The time difference actually helps: the overnight window in both markets falls inside our working day.
Does owning property abroad give me a visa?
No. Ownership confers no immigration status of any kind in either country. It does not entitle you to a visa, residence or the right to work there. If relocation is your real objective, this is the wrong product and we will say so on the first call rather than take your fee.
What does it cost to start?
It depends entirely on model and city, which is why we publish no single number. Co-hosting is the lightest by a wide margin. Arbitrage needs a deposit, furnishing and a cash buffer. Purchase is a different order of magnitude. We build an itemised budget for your plan, separating our fee from the capital you deploy.
Find out which model fits you
Forty-five minutes on city, model, capital and the regulatory position where you want to operate. No obligation, and no sales script.