A marketplace for stays where the members own it, AI agents run it, and nobody takes a booking fee. This page explains exactly how that works, what it kills, what it costs, and what you get.
roost is a marketplace where guests browse sovereign accommodation hosts and book direct — and where the marketplace itself is owned by the hosts who list on it, operated by AI agents, and takes zero booking fees from anyone.
That's it. Everything else on this page is unpacking that.
Imagine a farmers' market with three differences from a normal one:
You pay a small monthly stall fee (£20) and that's it. Whatever you sell · 100% goes to you.
You're not renting from a landlord. You're a part-owner of the market itself. The other stallholders are your co-owners.
The cleaning, signage, ad campaigns, customer queries · all handled automatically by AI agents. Stallholders vote on the big decisions monthly. Nobody has to "run" the market full-time.
…is that market · for accommodation. Hosts list their cabins, cottages, yurts. Guests browse. Bookings go direct · zero middleman. Members own the marketplace, vote on its direction, get a quarterly financial report, and spend maybe 2 hours a month doing oversight while AI agents do all the operational work.
If you're a small accommodation host (cabins, cottages, B&Bs, glamping, treehouses, whatever) — here's what roost actually does day-to-day:
Your cabins appear in roost's public browser at roost.land · with photos, prices, location, dog-friendly filter, etc. Guests find you by filter or by region.
When a guest clicks "Book direct" they go to YOUR booking page (e.g. wishwood.co.uk/book). They pay you via Stripe. roost never sees the booking, never takes a cut, never asks for the data.
roost's registry is published in machine-readable JSON. Every AI travel agent (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, future "book my trip" bots) reads roost's data instead of scraping Airbnb. You get the agent-era discovery channel for free.
When a guest stays at one roost host, the post-stay email suggests other roost hosts they might like. Hosts cross-recommend in their own copy. Network effect without the platform tax.
For £99 one-time setup, you get the full sovereign operator hub — unified inbox across all your channels, AI-drafted replies, calendar sync, journey emails, direct booking site, accounting integration. Free-standing it'd cost £499.
Most small accommodation hosts pay a stack of SaaS subscriptions every month. roost replaces all of these — either via the marketplace itself, the bundled Wishwood Engine, or by making them unnecessary.
| What it does | Examples · typical fee | Replaced by |
|---|---|---|
| Channel manager | Hospitable / Lodgify · £50-90/mo | roost + Wishwood Engine bundle |
| Booking widget for own site | Beds24 / Lodgify Widget · £15-30/mo | Built into book.html |
| Direct booking site builder | Lodgify / Direct Booking Tools · £30-60/mo | Built into Wishwood Engine bundle |
| Email marketing for guests | Mailchimp / Brevo · £15-30/mo | Guest journey engine in Wishwood |
| Review reply tool | ReviewPro / GuestRevu · £40-80/mo | AI review-reply tab in Wishwood |
| Dynamic pricing | PriceLabs / Wheelhouse · £20-30/mo + 1% | AI pricing tab in Wishwood |
| Social post scheduler | Buffer / Later · £15-30/mo | Media tab in Wishwood (post composer) |
| What it does | Examples · typical fee | Replaced by |
|---|---|---|
| Cloud accounting | Xero / QuickBooks · £15-30/mo | fallaccount tab in Wishwood (auto-logs every booking) |
| Expense capture | Receipt Bank / Dext · £15-25/mo | Photo upload in fallaccount tab |
| VAT submission | FreeAgent / TaxCalc · £15-30/mo | VAT-ready export in fallaccount |
| Payroll (cleaners, maintenance) | Sage / Brightpay · £10-25/mo | fallhr tab in Wishwood |
| Compliance / cert tracking | SafetyCulture · £30-50/user/mo | fallseed-compliance tab in Wishwood |
| Cleaner ops scheduling | Properly / Breezeway · £40-60/mo | Built into Wishwood ops tab |
| CRM (guest profiles) | Mews / Little Hotelier · £30-100/mo | Guest profiles tab in Wishwood |
| Uptime / observability | UptimeRobot / Pingdom · £15-30/mo | fallseed-meta tab in Wishwood |
| What it does | Their take | Roost |
|---|---|---|
| Airbnb · per booking | 15% host fee + 14% guest fee = ~£300 on £1k | £0 |
| Booking.com · per booking | 15-18% commission | £0 |
| Vrbo · per booking | 8% + 3% payment | £0 |
| Hostelworld · per booking | 10-13% commission | £0 |
| Stack | Annual cost | What roost charges |
|---|---|---|
| SaaS subs (channel manager + accounting + payroll + pricing + reviews + email + social + uptime) | £2,400 - £5,400/yr | £0 |
| Airbnb fees on say 60% of £42k revenue | ~£3,780/yr | £0 if booked direct via roost |
| Booking.com fees on say 20% of £42k revenue | ~£1,470/yr | £0 if booked direct via roost |
| roost membership · £20/mo flat (lifetime fee-locked at £20 for first 100 hosts) | − | £240/yr |
| Wishwood Engine setup (optional · once) | − | £99 once |
| Year 1 saving for typical 3-cabin host | £7,300 - £10,000+ | |
Member-owned co-ops have existed for a century · they just never scaled because operations work eats all the members' time. AI changes that.
roost has 8 AI agent groups running the day-to-day, each in a specific lane. Members prompt them when judgment is needed and watch when they execute. You spend maybe 2 hours a month on oversight.
Compare three booking channels for the same £1,000 booking:
£136-156 more per £1,000 booking · stays in the host's pocket.
| Where it goes | Per host / month |
|---|---|
| Cloudflare hosting (free tier covers us to ~500 hosts) | £0 |
| Domain renewal (annualised) | £0.30 |
| Stripe membership fees | £0.50 |
| Claude API for AI agents | £2.30 |
| Coordinator stipend (interim · until Sept 2026) | £8 |
| Build fee · Simon (one-time · paid over 6 months · ends Dec 2026) | £33 |
| Surplus to vote on (lower fees · features · host grants) | −£24 (subsidised by build budget until ~30 members) |
Every line is published monthly. Members audit. External accountant signs off quarterly. Full money breakdown on the governance page →
"Co-op" has been watered down by greenwashing. Here's what user-owned means at roost · written so it can't quietly disappear later:
On every rule, every feature, every pound. The host with one yurt has equal say with the host with twenty cabins.
Every transaction (membership in · costs out · Simon's pay · surplus allocation) is visible monthly. External accountant signs off quarterly.
You can override any AI agent decision affecting your listing within 24 hours · no questions asked.
Leave any time. Your stays.json stays on your domain (it was always yours). Reviews export to JSON. No lock-in possible.
Disagree with direction? Fork the codebase (MIT licensed) and run a competing aggregator. Roost cannot stop you. That's the discipline.
No equity exists. No founder shareholding. Even Simon cannot sell roost. The only "exit" possible is dissolution by 3/4 member vote, with assets split equally.
The full constitution + timeline + AI permission boundary is at governance.html →
Personal AI agents are starting to book travel for people. "Find me a dog-friendly off-grid cabin in Kent, mid-September, under £200/night."
The agent goes shopping. Where does it look?
Airbnb fights agents with CAPTCHAs. Bookings still funnel through their checkout with 15% fee. Platforms keep their tax.
Open protocol · zero fee · agent books direct on host's Stripe. Platforms become irrelevant. roost is the aggregator that makes this discoverable.
This is happening in the next ~6 months. Hosts who publish stays-protocol now are ready. Hosts who don't will keep paying Airbnb 15% out of inertia.
roost solves both sides:
£20/month flat · lifetime fee-lock at £20 for first 100 hosts · 1 host = 1 vote · open books · AI runs ops · no commission ever · structurally unsellable. Apply takes 5 minutes. Reviewed within 7 days.