‘Not Financially Viable’: Local Homestay Business to Close After 8 Years

Holiday accommodation booking platform Aussie Holiday Stays—a competitor to foreign platforms such as AirBnB and Booking.com—is closing down, the company has announced in an Instagram post.

The platform began eight years ago as WA HomeStay, a Western Australia-only booking service founded by Amanda Walker.

According to Business Foundations, which supported the company through the federal government’s Boosting Female Founders Initiative, the business grew out of Walker’s experience as a holiday-home owner after service declined and fees increased when she listed her property on an international booking platform.

WA HomeStay subsequently expanded nationally under the Aussie Holiday Stays name, describing itself as “a locally built Australian booking platform” for holiday homes.

The business was built around offering cheaper booking fees for guests and better cash flow for property owners than larger international platforms, restricting listings to registered holiday homes and aiming to return profits to local communities through sustainable tourism practices.

In the closure announcement, posted to the company’s Instagram account, the team wrote that it did not have “the runway to continue to push for a national booking platform.”

The post said that while there was “a huge amount of support for an Australian-based booking platform,” the cost of connecting the service to the various property management systems used by accommodation providers across the country meant it was not financially viable to continue.

Aussie Holiday Stays is not the only Australian travel booking platform to exit the market in 2026.

Lastminute.com.au, owned by Expedia Group and operating in Australia for more than 25 years, ceased taking new bookings from June 2 after a phased wind-down beginning in mid-May, with the company directing existing and prospective customers to Expedia.

However, Expedia is not leaving Australia and still provides local bookings through its Australian website, expedia.com.au.

Aussie Holiday Stays has not indicated what will happen to existing bookings or currently listed properties following the closure. The Instagram post did not specify an exact date on which the platform would stop operating.

The Epoch Times has contacted the operators for comment.

Domestic Travel Demand Grows

Aussie Holiday Stays’ announcement comes as aggregate demand for domestic travel has continued to grow.

Tourism Research Australia’s domestic figures for the March quarter of 2026 recorded $29.7 billion (US$21.5 billion) in spending on overnight domestic trips, up 3 percent on the previous year, across 28.9 million trips and 105.6 million nights.

Day trip spending rose 30 percent to $13 billion across 71.2 million trips, a 9 percent increase in numbers.

Accommodation was the largest single spending category, at $8.5 billion, ahead of restaurant and takeaway meals ($4.5 billion), domestic airfares ($4.1 billion) and petrol ($3.2 billion).

But the tourism sector has faced a tough winter, with data suggesting that cost-of-living pressures continue to shape household travel decisions.

A Tourism & Transport Forum survey of more than 1,000 Australians’ winter travel plans, published in July of this year, found 54 percent of respondents were planning a winter holiday, down from 74 percent two years earlier.

More than half of respondents said cost pressures were affecting their travel plans: 16 percent said they were taking shorter trips than planned, 15 percent were choosing destinations closer to home, another 15 percent were cutting accommodation spending, and 13 percent were postponing or cancelling holidays altogether.