Looking for income alternatives to Airbnb? Start hosting film shoots!

Royaleplace is a site like Airbnb that helps property owners rent their property to high-paying film and photography projects.

Earning income from your home has become a popular trend in recent years, thanks to the incredible success of Airbnb, as well as a range of other niche competitors. Short-term rental (STR) sites are now available in almost every major city in the world, with dozens of companies serving a community of 1.3 billion worldwide tourists. Aside from the segment leader Airbnb, the success of alternatives such as VRBO, HomeAway, Homestay, OneFineStay, Plum Guide, Misterb&b, and Flipkey provide both renters and hosts with a range of options when it comes to booking a place to stay.

Airbnb and these other sites have been SO successful, that in the past few years they’ve faced mounting pressure from city governments eager to curb trends of gentrification and the commercialization of the peer-to-peer home rental market.

The situation has reached a tipping point in many Indian cities such as Mumbai, Chennai, and most recently, Hyderabad, where short-term rentals face serious restrictions, and in some cases, are completely banned.

This government crack-down has put increased pressure on both vacationers and Airbnb hosts to find viable alternatives that maintain the simplicity and reputability of familiar tech-driven STR platforms.

“Once you’ve experienced the streamlined booking process of Airbnb, you’re not going to go back to playing Russian roulette listing your spare bedroom on Craigslist.”

Earn 4x More than Airbnb Hosting Film Shoot At Your Property

Fortunately, there is now a compelling alternative to renting out your property for short-term vacationers: renting for film production.

Not only do film and photo crews pay significantly more than individual property renters (with rates often exceeding ₹20k per day), they are also more professional (since they are renting for work, as opposed to pleasure), and provide stronger insurance protections and allowances for on-site monitoring and damage mitigation (ex. matting, power-generators, portable toilets).

From an income perspective the choice is a no-brainer:

“We listed our Mumbai home on Airbnb for two years, at ₹5k per night, and tried to stay under the 14-day tax exclusion – so around ₹60k per year – pretty much enough to pay for a small trip. Most of that money went to flights, and accommodations with Airbnb hosts in cities we visited on vacation. In 2021, we started listing our property for film and photo rentals, and we now make between ₹30k – ₹40k per month. We don’t use Airbnb anymore as hosts – it just doesn’t pay enough to make the time investment worthwhile.” – Sandeep Sarkar, host on royaleplace.com

While this anecdote doesn’t represent the income opportunity of all property owners (with average monthly earnings on Royaleplace closer to ₹18k), unless you are able to maintain occupancy of 80-90% on Airbnb, film location sites like Giggster are almost always going to provide a greater income opportunity than STRs.

Charging ₹5000 per night on Airbnb in Mumbai would put you in the 90th percentile for all listings in the city in terms of price per night. The average is only ₹4k. While that’s a decent chunk of change, breaking things down on an hourly basis makes Airbnb a minimum wage job for most hosts.

Popular Airbnb properties like this breathtaking mid-century modern home, which are charging ₹800 per hour on Airbnb could be charging ₹4k per HOUR renting for film productions on websites like Royaleplace.

And this opportunity isn’t only limited to Malibu mansions and hilltop estates – high-earning Royaleplace locations come in all shapes and sizes. We’re proud to offer professional content creators the most diverse, and most easily searchable library of film and event locations.

STR sites like Airbnb and VRBO are built around one-size-fits-all spaces, that cater to casual vacationers renters. While their library of locations is compelling compared to standard hotel stays, almost all of their libraries are residential, well-designed, and in high-traffic tourist areas. If you own a house in San Pedro (like the craftsman above) or Van Nuys, your income potential on Airbnb is going to be almost nil, even if you own a million-dollar home. Royaleplace gives you a lane to earn immediate income, as professional location renters typically prefer low-traffic areas where filming can proceed without interruptions. This also means a huge opportunity for renting out off-beat spaces, particularly spaces with abandoned or vintage decor and commercial categories like warehouses, restaurants, and churches.

Royaleplace’s site borrows a lot of inspiration from Airbnb, but also adds a variety of helpful features to boost discoverability. Without a full-text search function (which is at the center of Royaleplace’s search) it’s a lot slower to find the specific features often required for a commercial project. While vacationers just want a “nice place to stay” film renters seek specific items and details tied to their script/storyboard.

Royaleplace was custom built for professional renters – so our location search is extremely powerful. We have thousands of specific keywords for our locations that pull from detailed host categorizations, location descriptions, and advanced image-recognition technology. Our property-owning hosts love this feature because it helps boost discoverability, and gives even new listings a shot at landing a big booking.

” 34% of new Royaleplace hosts have a first booking that exceeds ₹1,40,000 in total payout, and 14% have a first booking that exceeds ₹2,80,000.”

In addition to boasting a more robust library, full-text search is one of the biggest timesavers on Royaleplace and a commonly cited example of why professional renters prefer us over finding locations on Airbnb, Craigslist, or traditional filming location agencies. With Royaleplace, you can type exactly what you need and we’ll show you pictures in search, so you can quickly compare options and find the one that best matches your vision for the perfect pool party, fashion shoot, music video, or whatever.