About us

A travel platform born in Timor-Leste.

Stays of Timor is a locally-run booking platform that connects travelers with hand-picked stays, tours and transport across the country — while giving small hosts and guides the tools they need to run a real business.

Our mission

We want every traveler who comes to Timor-Leste to find a real bed, a real guide and a real ride — without leaking value to overseas booking giants. Every dollar booked here circulates inside Timor-Leste: it pays the host, the cleaner, the driver, the cook, and the family who built the guesthouse.

On the supply side, we give guesthouses, tour operators and transport providers a free, mobile-first toolkit — bookings, payments, customer history and cash-receipt confirmations — so they can run like a modern business without paying for software they can't afford.

Our story

Stays of Timor started as a single Dili-based guesthouse trying to take online bookings during the pandemic — and discovering that none of the global platforms understood cash payment, multi-language hosts, or the realities of doing business in a small island nation.

We built the missing software for ourselves, then opened it up to other hosts. Today the platform lists stays, tours, restaurants, points of interest and transport across all 13 municipalities, with a working app for guests, hosts and drivers.

What we believe

Five rules that shape every product decision.

Local first

Every host on the platform is based in Timor-Leste. Every dollar we collect stays in-country — there is no offshore broker skimming the booking.

Cash is real

Most travelers in Timor-Leste still pay cash on arrival. Our software treats cash as a first-class payment method, with proper receipts, host confirmation, and a clear reconciliation flow.

Four languages

The country lives in Tetum, Portuguese, Bahasa Indonesia and English. The platform speaks all four, side-by-side, with the user choosing — not us guessing from their IP address.

Mobile-first hosts

Most of our hosts manage everything from a phone. The host app is built to work on a $80 Android over a 2G connection — no desktop required, no app-store subscriptions.

Fair on both sides

Travelers see the same price the host published — no inflated rates, no hidden booking fees. Hosts see exactly how much each booking will deposit into their bank account.

Open by default

Public listings, public reviews, public POI data. The richer the public corpus of information about Timor-Leste, the better every guest's trip — even if they never book through us.

What we do

Run a public marketplace for stays, tours, restaurants and transport across Timor-Leste.
Build free host software — bookings, calendar, payments, guests, receipts.
Take both online card payments and cash-on-arrival bookings, with confirmation flows for each.
Translate every page, listing field and notification into Tetum, Portuguese, Bahasa Indonesia and English.
Curate a public POI database of beaches, peaks, dive sites, churches and viewpoints.
Run a ride-hailing dispatch for our partner drivers so guests can move between municipalities.

What we don't do

We don't resell global hotel inventory or import listings from third-party feeds.
We don't hide commission inside the listing price — hosts publish, we display.
We don't silently switch a traveler's language based on country detection.
We don't sell personal data to advertisers or third-party analytics resellers.
We don't lock hosts into long contracts — onboarding is one form, leaving is one button.
We don't pretend to be a global brand — we are a Timor-Leste company, headquartered in Dili.

13 Municipalities covered

4 Languages supported

100% Locally based hosts

$0 Cost for hosts to join

Travel here. Work with us. Tell a friend.

Whether you're planning a trip, running a guesthouse, driving a taxi or leading a tour — there's a place for you on Stays of Timor.

Find a stay List your property Talk to the team