Why we do it
A word that hasn't stopped being true in three thousand years. The same word for two different people, because in original hospitality there was no difference: the one who welcomes and the one who is welcomed are the same thing, bound by a pact of trust that ancient cultures held sacred. In Greek mythology, breaking that pact was one of the gravest acts a human being could commit.
Somewhere along the way, something broke.
It's nobody's fault in particular. It happened slowly, the way it has with a lot of beautiful things: someone built a system that was more convenient, more reassuring, more visible. And we, guests and hosts alike, handed things over. We handed our trust to a logo. We handed our choice to an algorithm. We handed the human relationship to a platform that takes its cut, a big cut, just to sit in the middle.
The upshot is that today a German tourist who wants to sleep in an Umbrian farmhouse doesn't trust the farmhouse. They trust Booking. And the owner of that farmhouse, to be found by that tourist, pays up to 18% on every night. That cost doesn't vanish: it ends up in the price. The tourist pays it, without ever knowing.
We're not here to start a revolution.
We're here because we're small, like most of the places you'll find on Italish, and we know from the inside how the system works. We know what it costs to stay on the right circuits. We know how hard it is to be found with no budget. We know that many of the most beautiful places in Italy are invisible, because no one ever helped them tell their story beyond the borders of their own region.
Italish is an attempt to cut a middleman out of the picture.
We don't promise lower prices: we promise that when you book here, the price you pay goes to the host, not to a multinational. What the host chooses to do with it (lower the price, improve the services, invest in the place) is up to them. But at least the choice is theirs.
We've built a free portal for independent Italian accommodation. Every page is translated automatically into seven European languages, because a farm stay in Basilicata deserves to be found by a Dutch tourist who doesn't speak a word of Italian. We've written guides to the Italian regions in six languages, because the tourism we want to encourage is the kind that explores, not the kind that repeats itself.
An ethical booking portal.
Italish is a project by Punto Nero Studio.
How we vet the places
We are not a bank: when a guest books and pays on a property's website, the money goes to the host's account and never passes through us. No property goes online without our team looking at it first. Here is what we do, and what we don't:
- Review before publication. Hosts' sign-ups stay on hold until our team approves them. The pages we prepare ourselves start from public information, and we say so on the page until the owner takes it over.
- CIN in plain sight. Every Italian accommodation must have a Codice Identificativo Nazionale. We ask for it and show it on the page as the place declares it to us: we don't check it against the Ministry's database.
- A real place. Before approving, we check that the place has a public footprint: a Google Maps listing, reviews, a website or online profiles.
We don't guarantee the quality of your stay, that's agreed directly between you and the host, and we don't certify the place's paperwork. Our job is to make sure there's a real, reachable place behind every page.
But if it's free, who funds the portal?
Italish is built and maintained by Punto Nero Studio, a small web agency in Pesaro. The free portal is our main project, but it isn't our only product.
For hosts who want more, we offer extra services. Anyone who chooses one of these services funds the portal: the marketing, the development, the time of the people keeping it going.
It won't make us rich. It will let us do this work, push it forward, and keep the main service free forever.
A custom website for your place
A page with your photos and your words is free, with no end date. The Full site adds your own domain, seven languages and the guest guide: 99 euros a year, or 9.90 a month.
Build your websiteDirect bookings
Guests pick their dates, book and pay on your own website. The money lands in your Stripe account, with no commission per night. From 199 euros a year.
Turn on bookingsDay-to-day operations
For years, having a professional website for your place meant an agency, a few thousand euro, and hoping someone would answer when it stopped working.
The real cost of building these things has changed. The prices people charge you have not. We chose not to inflate the margin, and to start from zero: the entry plan is free, forever. A complete site, on your own domain, costs 99 euros a year. It is not a promotion. It is simply what we think is fair to charge.
It is worth being clear about what it is and what it is not. The free plan is a shop window: one page, in Italian, at a nome.stayitalish.com address, with our signature in the footer and kept out of search engines. For 99 euros a year it becomes your own site: your domain, seven languages, guest guide, no signature, and indexed on Google. A site any agency would charge you at least 500 euros for. Do not expect managed campaigns or bespoke strategies: for that, Punto Nero Studio works on more elaborate projects. Cheaper than Wix, more specific than WordPress, with less to learn.
We're putting together guides on online marketing for independent accommodation: how to use your website to stay competitive, what you can do on your own, and when it makes sense to ask for help.
If you've got a clear idea of what you want, the product works on its own. Most hosts set it up without talking to anyone. If you have particular needs, you can get in touch with Punto Nero Studio. We prefer to do it by email or chat: not because we're cold, but because our time goes into Italish. It's an honest choice, not an excuse.
Write to us
You have a place, a question, or you simply want to tell us something.
Want to lend us a hand?
Italish runs on our own work and on the people who feel like pitching in. No investors, no OTA, no commissions. If you recognise yourself in what you've just read, here are two simple ways to support us: a symbolic coffee or the marketing fund (with public reporting, month by month).
How a place ends up on Stay Italish
In two ways. Most are the hosts themselves, who register their place and manage it in person.
Others we find ourselves: independent places that strike us as having character, for which we prepare a page from the public information available online. In these cases we notify the place, which can take over the page and manage it, or ask us to remove it. Until it does, the page stays up with the data we've gathered, always editable or removable on request.
Either way, being listed is free.