Last Updated on June 28, 2025
A homestay provides an opportunity to do exactly what the name suggests: stay in someone’s home rather than a hotel or hostel. And staying in them comes with many unique benefits!
In most homestays, you sleep in your host’s home, eat with them, spend time in their community, and learn from them.
Others are less involved. You live alongside your host, with the chance to observe their daily life. This gives you insight into how the locals where you’re traveling live.
Read on to learn the main differences between homestays and hotels, and 6 benefits of staying in homestays.
Homestays Versus Hotels: What’s the Difference?
Hotels and homestays are similar in that both are types of accommodation. But, they offer very different types of experiences.
A homestay provides an opportunity to stay with a local family, for a fee. In a typical homestay, your lodging is a room within a person, or family’s home. Since homestays are part of a person or family’s home, they typically host only a few guests at a time. This makes the experience much more personal than what a hotel provides.
Hotels are purpose-built lodging that are typically bigger buildings, and have a model of service focused on prioritizing a larger quantity of guests. Service in hotels is typically really great, but it is guest-centered and service-oriented. It has more of a transactional feel than what you’ll experience in a homestay.
In most homestays, the expectation is that guests participate (at least a little bit) in the daily life of the homestay host. For example, rather than being served breakfast, like you would in a hotel, in a homestay you may be invited to help prepare breakfast and then eat together with your host(s).
6 Benefits of Staying in Homestays
Let’s dive into the key benefits of staying in homestays while traveling abroad.
1. Homestays are Meaningful Travel Experiences
Homestays offer you the chance to have meaningful travel experiences by connecting directly with people local to the place you are visiting.
Homestays are often framed as an “authentic” experience. This is because in a homestay, you can observe and participate in local life in a way that is typically not possible on the tourist trail.
I think it is true that homestays are “authentic” in the sense that you will witness and participate in the daily life of a family. But, remember that authenticity is hard to define and will vary from community to community.
2. Homestays Build Relationships
Another benefit of staying in homestays is the chance to build relationships with your host family. By spending quality time with them you can get to know them on a personal level – I’ve found that often, homestay hosts become friends.
For example, when I stayed in a homestay in Bhalil, Morocco, I spent lots of quality time with the hosts, Kamal and Jalila. There was plenty of time to ask questions, share ideas, and chat. I arrived as a guest, but by the time I left, Kamal and Jalila were new friends. I’m still in touch with them!
3. Homestays Provide Learning Opportunities
There are many opportunities to learn in homestays. You may learn practical things like how to cook local cuisine, by helping out with daily meal preparation. Or, you might learn new ideas or new knowledge through conversation.
The best part of this is that the learning opportunities can be an exchange. While you as a guest will learn from your host, your host will likely learn from you too.
For example, many homestay hosts have questions about what life is like in the places their guests are from. We’ve found that the hosts of the homestays we’ve visited are often curious to learn about life in Canada.
4. Homestays Support Learning Languages
A wonderful benefit of staying in homestays is the opportunity to exchange language. When staying in homestays outside your home country, your hosts may speak a different language from yours.
There may sometimes be a bit of a language barrier – but thanks to Google translate, this isn’t a huge issue. In fact, a language barrier is a great segway to practice words and phrases in another language.
Immersion in another language is a great way to learn, and the learning can go both ways. You can learn your hosts language, and they can learn yours.
5. Homestays Bring You To Less Touristy Locations
Often, homestays are located in communities that are beyond the well-traveled tourist trail. For example, while in Nepal, I visited Barang Village Community Homestay. This homestay is about an hour from the city of Pokhara, in a small village.
Had I not booked to spend a few days at this homestay, I wouldn’t have known to visit the village of Barang. The village isn’t a tourist ‘destination’ – it doesn’t have hotels or tourist infrastructure. It’s really only by booking into the homestay that you can visit Barang.
Staying in Bhalil, Morocco was a similar situation. The town of Bhalil is close to the major city of Fes, but I would have never known to visit it if it weren’t for the homestay I booked there.
6. Homestays Leverage Tourism Dollars For Community Building
You can feel good about staying in homestays (and small guesthouses) because your tourism dollars are going directly into the hands of local people, rather than corporately owned (and often foreign owned) hotels.
This helps to avoid economic leakage in tourism, and promotes responsible tourism. Tourism dollars can be leveraged by your host and their community to do good.
Experience a Homestay on Your Next Trip
If you’re interested in having meaningful travel experiences (some also call it deep travel), start researching homestays to see if you can add them to your travel plans. To learn how to find them, read my guide, What is a Homestay? (+ Tips for Finding Homestays Abroad).
While homestays might not be suitable as accommodation for an entire trip, it’s worth spending a few nights in one whenever you travel, for the experience. Because as you’ve just learned, there’s many benefits of staying in homestays.
One important thing to remember when you stay in a homestay, however, is that it’s not all about you. When you stay in a homestay, you are more than just a guest in someone’s actual home – you are a guest in their country, and culture. Remember that your homestay hosts are not there to serve you.
While staying in homestays, be respectful. Check your privilege, come to the homestay with an open mind, stick with cultural appropriation and not cultural appropriation, and be willing to listen and learn.
For detailed tips on how to be a responsible tourist while traveling (in homestays and beyond), read my blog, How To Be a Responsible Tourist.
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