How to Book a Farmhouse or Villa for A Company Day Out

Planning A Company Day Out? The useful advice is fairly specific, and most of it is about which numbers on a listing to read and which to ignore.

The rules that decide it

• Can you issue a GST invoice? Establish this before paying the advance, not in the expense-claim window.
• What is the itemised total? Slot rate, the headcount it assumes, the per-person charge above it, the platform fee, and anything chargeable separately. Approvals are given against a number.
• Does the backup power run the air conditioning? Often it does not, which in summer decides whether the afternoon session happens.
• What are the cancellation terms? Corporate dates move more than personal ones.

All of these are on the listing or answered by the owner in the booking chat. Asking them in one message before you pay takes less time than reading a second listing.

No surprises at the gate

The complaints people have about farmhouse bookings are almost always about something they did not know: a per-person charge that doubled the bill, a kitchen they were not allowed to use, a rule about alcohol, a deposit nobody had cash for. All four of those are stated on the listing before you pay.

Rates by slot and by day of the week, the extra-person charge, the deposit amount, the guest limits, the food and drink rules, the music timings, the check-in and check-out windows — it is all there to be read.

Properties that fit this

Picked on somewhere for the group to be after dark rather than on photographs:

• BMF-V379 — 6BHK in Jam-Kandorana, Rajkot — 40 guests by day, from ₹8,800 on a weekday (children's pool, game zone, private pool).
• Aura — 3BHK in Decathlon Sports, Nashik — 12 guests by day, from ₹13,200 on a weekday (game zone, private pool).
• Rupani Dhani — 5BHK in Gurugram, Delhi — 18 guests by day, from ₹7,999 on a weekday (children's pool, home theatre, game zone).
• Arabella Villa — 5BHK in New Tungarli, Lonavala — 23 guests by day, from ₹22,000 on a weekday (game zone, private pool).

Work out the total for your actual headcount before comparing. Above twenty guests the per-person charge routinely reorders which of these is cheapest.

Booking it on the app

If you are looking for short-term rental vacation homes in your own city — farmhouses, villas, resorts or weekend homes — the BookMyFarm app and website carry the same inventory and the same detail. Search by city or by area, filter on the amenities that actually matter to you, read the owner's house rules, message the owner, and book the slot you want.

For anyone who has tried and failed to find this kind of property on a nightly-rate site, it is the closest thing to a purpose-built Airbnb alternative for the Indian farmhouse and villa market — because it is built around how these places are actually rented: by the slot, by the whole property, with two separate guest limits.

Where to look

Browse farmhouses · villas · resorts.

By city: Surat · Delhi · Hyderabad · Lonavala · Ahmedabad · Udaipur · Jaipur · Daman.

For slots, capacities and what lands on the final bill, see how booking works.

Ask the owner directly

Every property has a chat thread attached to it. Use it before booking rather than after — owners field these questions constantly and answer quickly, and it is far more reliable than a broker's summary.

The single most useful question, and the one almost nobody asks: what usually goes wrong at bookings here? Owners have watched hundreds of them and will tell you the specific local answer.