If you host a house on Ko Villas you take on real obligations. You hold the lease, you control the property, and the legal responsibility for it is yours. These terms set out what that means.
You are not a Ko employee, agent or partner. You are an independent operator running your own accommodation business. You are legally responsible for the property, for compliance with local law, for the safety of the people in it, and for anyone you engage to work there. Ko does not host villas. It provides tools, and in the Ko collects model it coordinates card payments through Stripe, and nothing more.
You are an independent contractor operating your own business. Nothing creates employment, agency, partnership, joint venture or franchise between you and Ko. You control your property, your pricing, your rules, whom you accept, and how you run the house.
You may not represent yourself as Ko, act on Ko's behalf, or make commitments on Ko's behalf.
You are also a resident of the property you operate. That does not change your responsibilities to the other residents.
You warrant that for every campaign you run:
Where the property owner is not you, we may require a signed acknowledgement from them that the premises will house the stated number of residents.
You are solely responsible for complying with every law that applies to what you are doing. That includes, without limitation:
You confirm compliance when you create each campaign. Ko does not verify compliance, does not advise on it, and takes no responsibility for it. Rules vary enormously between jurisdictions and change frequently. Take local advice.
If a permit is refused or revoked, or you are ordered to stop, you must tell us and your residents immediately.
You warrant that for the whole of every stay the property:
You must disclose any known hazard on the listing — unfenced pool, steep stairs, no hot water, construction nearby, unreliable power, anything a reasonable person would want to know before booking.
You must not place any camera or recording device inside the property. External security cameras must be disclosed on the listing. Cameras in bedrooms or bathrooms are prohibited absolutely and result in permanent removal and referral to authorities.
You must respond promptly to safety issues raised by residents and must not retaliate against anyone who raises one.
Listings must be accurate and current. Photographs must be of the actual property, taken within the last 12 months, and must not misrepresent size, condition or outlook. Room descriptions, prices, occupancy, amenities and house rules must be correct.
You must disclose anything that materially affects a stay: shared bathrooms, absent air conditioning, poor connectivity, ongoing building work, animals, other occupants who are not part of the campaign, or a separately collected security deposit.
If something changes after residents commit, tell them immediately. Material misrepresentation is grounds for refund, payout freeze and removal.
You choose whom to accept. You must respond to requests within 72 hours or they expire automatically.
You must not discriminate on the basis of race, colour, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, age, pregnancy or marital status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. You may apply legitimate criteria unrelated to protected characteristics.
Your approval is your commitment. Once a resident has committed to a room, treat their place as settled.
You may remove a resident who presents a genuine risk to others. Tell us immediately, with your reasons and any evidence. Removing someone without proper grounds is a serious breach of these terms.
Shared costs are yours to manage. If you spend less than you collected, the surplus is yours; if you overspend, you absorb it. You must not ask residents for more money than the price they committed to.
Anyone you engage — chef, cleaner, driver, maintenance, security, co-host — is your worker or contractor, not Ko's. You are responsible for engaging them lawfully, paying them, their tax and social contributions where applicable, checking they are entitled to work, and for their conduct in the property.
You are liable to residents for anything your staff do or fail to do, including theft, damage, injury and misconduct. You must ensure anyone with access to the property or to residents' rooms is suitable for that access.
You are strongly advised to hold public liability insurance covering paying guests, property insurance covering short-term letting, and employer's liability where you engage staff.
Most standard home and landlord policies exclude short-term paying occupants. Check your cover before you list — an exclusion discovered after an incident is discovered too late.
Ko provides no insurance, no guarantee and no indemnity to you, and Ko collects no damage waiver or security deposit from residents.
Above 8 rooms we may require evidence of liability cover before a campaign goes live.
When you set up a house you choose how residents pay. The Payment Terms set out the resident side of each model.
You are the merchant of record. Residents pay on your own Stripe connected account, which needs identity, bank and tax verification with Stripe before you can receive payouts. Ko collects is available where Stripe can pay out to your country.
Ko's fee is 12% of room and shared costs, plus the estimated card processing cost (2.9% + 30¢), taken out of each charge as an application fee. Ko takes no fee on occupancy tax. Residents see one final price, and Ko never charges you: nothing is taken from your bank account by us.
Payouts are released in three stages: 30% once your signed lease is verified, 40% midway through the stay, and 30% seven days after checkout. A resident's check-in flag or an open dispute freezes the stages not yet released until a person at Ko resolves it. Your Stripe balance is on a manual payout schedule that only Ko can trigger. You cannot change the schedule or pay yourself out from the Stripe dashboard.
Where you can't use Stripe, residents pay you directly, in the way you tell them, and you mark each resident as paid. Ko is not a party to those payments and cannot control or stage them. Residents pay Ko a fee of 12% of their room price on top; you pay Ko nothing. The fee is charged only once every resident is marked as paid, so mark payments honestly and promptly. If the payment window closes before everyone is marked paid, the house falls through, and you must refund any resident who already paid you.
Ko takes no fee. Residents pay you directly, and Ko does not hold, route, guarantee or refund that money. Ko only records a resident's "I paid" declaration and your confirmation. Confirm payments you have received, and do not confirm payments you have not.
You are responsible for the lease, the landlord's deposit, and all costs of running the property. Ko does not fund, guarantee or underwrite any of it.
Cancelling before your house fills costs you nothing. Residents' card holds are released and nobody is charged.
By then residents have committed their money and are arranging flights, giving notice on their homes and turning down alternatives. In a Ko collects house, every resident is refunded in full, including Ko's fee, from money not yet paid out to you. In the booking-fee and trust models, you must refund everything residents paid you.
You also agree that:
You receive personal data about residents — names, contact details, dates, application answers. You must use it only to run the stay, keep it secure, not disclose it to anyone else, not use it for marketing without consent, and delete it when you no longer need it.
You are an independent controller of that data and must comply with applicable data protection law. Do not publish resident information, share it with other operators, or add residents to mailing lists without their agreement.
This survives termination and applies whether or not the claim is brought against Ko directly.
We may suspend or remove you, cancel campaigns, freeze payouts and refund residents immediately where we believe in good faith that a property is unsafe or unlawful, that a listing is materially inaccurate, that you have breached these terms or the Community Standards, that residents are at risk, or that you have failed to respond to a serious issue.
Where we freeze a payout, funds are held pending resolution. Where a dispute is decided against you, we may direct refunds from unreleased funds.
You may stop operating at any time, subject to obligations for stays already booked.