The operations layer for Indian holiday-home + serviced-apartment operators. One calendar across Airbnb · Booking.com · MakeMyTrip · Goibibo · direct. GST invoice auto-issued per SAC 996311. Housekeeping orchestrated. C-Form filing ready. Built to sit alongside the OTAs that bring you guests — not against them.
What this page covers: short-stay operations for holiday homes and serviced apartments (1–30 night bookings, 1–40 units). For long-term residential tenancy, per-property P&L + GSTR filing, or 10+ villas across cities, follow the linked solutions.
Airbnb, Booking, MakeMyTrip and Goibibo bring you Indian and international guests. EstateDeck sits underneath as the operations + compliance layer — synchronising your calendar, issuing your GST invoice, orchestrating your housekeeper.
Calendar · GST invoice · Housekeeping · C-Form · §65B audit
Bookings flow IN from any channel. Operations + compliance flow OUT through one system. No double-bookings, one GST invoice trail, one housekeeping schedule, one audit trail.
Short-term rental software is the operations layer for Indian holiday-home and serviced-apartment operators running 1 to 40 units. The core mechanics are channel sync (one calendar across Airbnb · Booking.com · MakeMyTrip · Goibibo · direct), GST invoicing on the spot per SAC 996311 (12% slab below ₹7,500/night, 18% above), DLT-registered guest communication via WhatsApp under TCCCPR 2018, housekeeping orchestration between guest turns, and rule-based dynamic pricing tuned to Indian season patterns. For foreign-passport guests, Form C foreigner-stay declaration pre-populates per Foreigner Act 1946 §3 + Registration of Foreigners Rules 1992. The platform sits ALONGSIDE the OTAs — not replacing them.
A real Friday-night-to-Saturday-morning at a Goa holiday-villa operator, told in the order it actually unfolded.
CS/26-27/0234, SAC 996311, tariff ₹24K/night = below ₹7,500 line? No, ₹24K is per night above the ₹7,500 threshold — 18% GST slab applies. Guest is from Bengaluru (Karnataka), property is in Goa → inter-state, IGST 18%. Total: ₹72,000 + ₹12,960 IGST = ₹84,960. Invoice stored against booking + queued for next GSTR-1 filing.
CS/26-27/0235 issues immediately. 4 channels date-blocked.
Running a holiday villa or serviced apartment in India isn't about hospitality — it's about juggling 5 dashboards while issuing GST invoices that have to be right.
iCal-based sync polls every 30-60 minutes. In peak season, two guests can book the same villa on different OTAs in the same hour. The "I'm so sorry sir, we have to refund" conversation is the worst part of running an STR. Real-time API sync closes the window to seconds.
Airbnb collects the money but does not issue your GST invoice — that is the host's obligation. SAC 996311 + the right 12% / 18% slab + the right CGST/SGST/IGST split based on guest origin state. Get it wrong once and your CA spends a week unwinding it before GSTR-1 filing.
Three villas, two housekeepers, four bookings a week — your WhatsApp turns into a coordination spreadsheet. By villa five you're already missing turns. The housekeeper app with the daily schedule + photo proof is the operational glue once you grow past one property.
Form C filing is a legal obligation when you host a foreign-national guest (Foreigner Act 1946 §3). Most small operators don't know this, or do it once and stop. A surprise FRRO inspection in Goa or Manali isn't theoretical — it happens. Auto-populated Form C means filing takes 6 minutes instead of "not at all."
GST on hospitality, foreigner-stay declaration, state tourism registration, messaging compliance — every surface honours the framework an Indian STR operator actually has to work inside.
Accommodation services come under SAC 996311. 12% GST for room tariff up to ₹7,500/night, 18% GST above ₹7,500. Auto-detected from captured tariff. CGST + SGST split for intra-state guests; IGST for inter-state. Sequential invoice numbering for GSTR-1.
Mandatory filing of Form C with local police FRO/FRRO for any foreign-national guest stay (per Foreigner Act 1946 §3 + Registration of Foreigners Rules 1992). Form pre-populates from booking data; host verifies and files; §65B-admissible copy retained.
Goa Registration of Tourist Trade Act 1982 · Karnataka Tourism (Conducting of Business) Rules · Maharashtra Tourism Policy. Certificate stored against property; renewal alerts surface ahead of expiry. Registration happens on state tourism portal — we hold the certificate + audit trail.
Guest booking confirmations, check-in instructions, and review requests use DLT-registered utility templates under your Entity ID (TM-XXXXXXXXXX). Transactional category. May 2025+ template-category enforcement compliant. No marketing copy in transactional templates.
Direct booking payments route through RBI-authorised payment aggregators (Razorpay, Cashfree) supporting UPI 2.0, NEFT, IMPS, card, wallet. EstateDeck is not the aggregator — we route through licensed PSPs. OTA payments are settled by the OTA per their host payout schedule.
Guest data (name, phone, passport for foreign guests) held under DPDP Act 2023 §6 consent. Withdrawal under §13 honoured within 24 hours. §194-O TCS deducted by Airbnb/MakeMyTrip on host payouts surfaces on the reconciliation dashboard — actual computation lives at Property Accounting.
References: CGST Act 2017 + Notification 11/2017-CT(R) on accommodation services SAC 996311 · Foreigner Act 1946 §3 + Registration of Foreigners Rules 1992 + Bureau of Immigration Form C · Goa Registration of Tourist Trade Act 1982 · Karnataka Tourism (Conducting of Business) Rules · Maharashtra Tourism Policy · TCCCPR 2018 + WhatsApp Business API + Meta BSP framework · RBI Master Direction on Payment Aggregator – Online (PA-O) · Income Tax Act 1961 §194-O (TCS on e-commerce payments) · DPDP Act 2023 §6, §11, §13 · Indian Evidence Act §65B.
We started with one villa in 2018 and reached three by 2022. Year four nearly broke us — peak December in Goa, four channels, all our friends asking us why we looked exhausted. The double-booking on 27 December that year cost us a ₹38,000 refund and a one-star review we never recovered from. Now I get a booking confirmation at 3 AM and the calendar is already locked across every OTA before I wake up. The GST invoice that used to take my accountant two days to issue correctly is on the guest's email before they check in. The Form C for our Swedish and German guests files in six minutes from the laptop. We took on a fourth villa last month — for the first time, without the dread.
Three buyer profiles. All Indian, all running short-stay accommodation (1–30 night stays) in the 1 to 40 unit range.
Above 40 units across multiple cities you also want the portfolio rollup at Multi-Property Portfolio Management — this STR layer remains the daily operations surface for each individual property within that portfolio.
Five operations make an STR week. EstateDeck owns each on the daily surface and coordinates the deeper workflow where it lives elsewhere.
When a guest confirms a booking on any connected channel — Airbnb, Booking.com, MakeMyTrip, Goibibo, or your direct microsite — the channel sends a webhook to EstateDeck within typically 2–4 seconds. EstateDeck holds the master calendar and immediately pushes a date-block to all the other connected channels via their respective real-time APIs. Within typically under a minute, the booked dates are unavailable on every channel for that specific unit.
The technical distinction matters: real-time API sync is fundamentally different from iCal-based sync, which polls every 30–60 minutes and leaves a real double-booking window during peak season. EstateDeck does API for all five channels, not iCal.
Indian short-term accommodation is taxed under SAC code 996311 (Accommodation in hotels, inns, guest houses, clubs, campsites or other commercial places meant for residential or lodging purposes) in the GST regime. The rate depends on the per-night declared tariff:
EstateDeck auto-detects the slab from the captured tariff. It then applies the right split: for a guest from the same state as the property, it's CGST + SGST (half each); for a guest from a different state, it's IGST. Sequential invoice numbering supports GSTR-1 reconciliation. The full GSTR-1 / GSTR-3B filing workflow lives at Property Accounting.
One subtlety worth knowing: when an OTA collects payment from the guest and pays you net of their commission, the OTA also deducts §194-O TCS at 1%. The TCS appears on your Form 26AS and reconciles to your booking record. EstateDeck surfaces the mismatch on the reconciliation dashboard; the TCS computation itself lives at Accounting.
Every new booking automatically creates a turn-around task in the housekeeping schedule for the gap between the previous checkout and the new check-in. The lead housekeeper sees the daily turn list on their housekeeper mobile app with:
The housekeeper marks complete on the app and uploads photos. The booking flips from "turn pending" to "guest-ready." Patricia Fernandes doesn't need to call Maria Coutinho — the schedule is on Maria's phone.
Indian STR dynamic pricing is not a US-style AI black-box. It's a clear set of rules that the host configures and the platform applies. Typical configuration:
The pricing engine pushes the calculated nightly rate to all five connected channels once. The host can override any specific night manually. Every rate change is traceable to the rule that produced it — no AI black-box, no surprise pricing.
Indian law (Foreigner Act 1946 §3 + Registration of Foreigners Rules 1992) requires the host of any premises receiving a foreign-national guest to file Form C with the local police FRO (Foreigners Registration Office) or FRRO (Foreigners Regional Registration Office). When a booking comes in with a foreign passport country code, EstateDeck pre-populates the Form C with:
The host verifies the data and submits to the local FRO/FRRO portal (or hands the form to the local police station for FRO areas without online filing). The platform retains a copy in the audit trail per Indian Evidence Act §65B. Filing typically takes 5–8 minutes per foreign-guest booking.
This page is the short-stay operations layer for holiday homes and serviced apartments. Four sibling solutions own the adjacent layers; one positioning clarification matters.
→ Residential Property Management — long-term tenancy (11-month standard leases, monthly UPI rent, lease renewals). Different tenancy duration, different operations cadence, different tax framework (§24 House Property, not SAC 996311).
→ Property Accounting & Finance — per-property P&L, GSTR-1 + GSTR-3B filing, §194-O TCS reconciliation against Form 26AS, Tally export. The GST invoice generates here; the filing happens there.
→ Multi-Property Portfolio — for 10+ STR units across cities or for an operator running both STR and long-term residential in one portfolio. Cross-property rollup with revenue + occupancy comparison.
→ Maintenance & Facility Operations — housekeeper vendor onboarding, AMC for AC/lift/DG sets, maintenance tickets between cleaning turns. Operates alongside the day-of housekeeping orchestration here.
Important positioning: EstateDeck does NOT replace Airbnb, Booking.com, MakeMyTrip, or Goibibo. The OTAs are where guests find you. EstateDeck is the operations layer underneath. Build your direct-booking flow if you wish — at Property Listings & Showcase microsite + Marketing Automation drips — but in addition to the OTAs, not as a replacement.
| Operational task | Spreadsheet + 5 OTA dashboards | EstateDeck STR |
|---|---|---|
| Calendar sync across channels | iCal poll · 30–60 min lag | Real-time API · < 60 sec |
| Double-booking risk | High in peak season | Effectively zero |
| GST invoice issue | Tally · 2 days · 40% wrong slab | Auto · < 30 sec · SAC 996311 |
| Guest WhatsApp confirmation | Manual · or personal WhatsApp (TCCCPR violation) | DLT-registered utility template |
| Housekeeping coordination | WhatsApp + phone calls | Housekeeper app · daily schedule |
| Form C for foreign guests | Skipped (most operators) | Pre-populated · 6-min filing |
| Dynamic pricing | Manual per night, per channel | Rule-based · pushed to all channels |
| State STR registration tracker | A folder somewhere | Renewal alerts · vault |
| Direct booking payment | "Pay by NEFT, send screenshot" | Razorpay UPI · T+1 settlement |
| Audit trail per booking | Email + WhatsApp scattered | §65B-admissible · timestamped |
Ten direct answers. Each maps 1:1 to the FAQPage schema for AI search.
See a real Goa villa booking flow end-to-end — Airbnb webhook to GST invoice to housekeeping schedule to guest WhatsApp — in a 20-minute walkthrough on your own property data.
EstateDeck by Databus · Chennai · Built for Indian holiday-home + serviced-apartment operators · 1 to 40 unit portfolios