Thailand’s accommodation runs from licensed city hotels to village homestays, floating river rafts and national park cabins, and each of those categories answers to a different set of rules. Knowing which kind of stay you are booking, and whether it is licensed to take you for the length of stay you want, matters more here than in most destinations.
Hotels and how they are licensed
Every hotel in Thailand needs a licence under the Hotel Act, and licensed properties fall into four types: Type 1 is rooms only, Type 2 adds a restaurant or dining room, Type 3 adds a conference or entertainment venue on top of that, and Type 4 has both. A small property can skip the licence entirely as a Type 0, non-hotel registration if it has no more than eight rooms across one or more buildings and a maximum of 30 guests — that ceiling was raised from four rooms and 20 guests in a 2023 update to the rules. Room rates carry 7% VAT, the reduced rate the Revenue Department has kept in place instead of the 10% standard rate.
Condos and long-stay rentals
Renting out a condo or house to travellers for under 30 days at a time counts as running an unlicensed hotel business under the same Hotel Act, and most individual apartments cannot meet the building standards a hotel licence requires. Fines run to THB 20,000 plus THB 10,000 for each day the letting continues. On top of that, the Condominium Act lets a building’s own juristic person ban short lets in its bylaws regardless of what the Hotel Act says. A booking of 30 days or longer is treated as an ordinary residential lease and sidesteps both problems — the practical takeaway if a nightly-rate condo listing looks too good to be a hotel.
Homestays
A village homestay puts you with a family or in a stand-alone bungalow on their land, and the booking is usually arranged through a local cooperative so the money stays with the village rather than an outside operator. Packages typically bundle transport, accommodation, meals, activities and an English-speaking guide into a couple of nights. What “homestay” means in practice varies: some villages put you in a private bungalow with its own bathroom and air conditioning, while others are closer to the name, such as a family’s stilt house with a fan-cooled room and a shared cold-water shower. Activities run from clam-digging at low tide in a Krabi fishing village to noodle-cooking and weaving in Sukhothai and farm work on pineapple and rubber holdings in Trat.
Floating rafts
On the Kwai Noi river in Kanchanaburi, several resorts operate as raft houses moored to the bank rather than buildings on land — River Kwai Jungle Rafts has run as a floating hotel since 1976, with bamboo rooms and electricity limited to the common areas. A 2023 rule change formally brought rafts, tents and shipping containers into the hotel licensing system, and for a raft it requires a life vest for every guest room, guardrails, lighting, fire extinguishers and rubbish facilities if the operator serves food. Ask before booking whether a raft stay has power in the room, since some still don’t.
National parks: cabins and camping
Fees for Thailand’s national parks are set in four categories, and foreigners pay more than Thai nationals at every one of them: category 1 parks (including Doi Suthep-Pui) charge 100 baht for a foreign adult against 20 baht for a Thai adult, category 2 (Khao Yai, Khao Sok) 200 against 40, category 3 (Doi Inthanon) 300 against 60, and category 4, the Similan and Surin islands, 500 against 100. Erawan National Park charges the category-3 foreign-adult rate of 300 THB as a conservation fee on top of a separate parking charge. Park bungalows and campsites are booked through the Department of National Parks; where you don’t bring your own tent, most sites rent one on-site.
Practical tips
- Ask what type of licence a small guesthouse or boutique stay holds if you’re booking direct rather than through a platform; a Type 0 registration caps the property at eight rooms.
- If a “hotel” listing is actually a private condo, check the stay is 30 days or longer, or that the building runs a proper hotel operation — a short nightly stay in an unlicensed unit is the host’s problem, but it can also mean the booking simply falls through.
- Book homestays through the village cooperative or a CBT-affiliated operator rather than an unaffiliated platform, so the visit fits the community’s own schedule.
- Confirm whether a raft room has electricity and a private bathroom before you book; both vary resort to resort.
What to check before you go
- Which of the four park fee categories your destination falls into, so the foreign-visitor entrance charge doesn’t surprise you at the gate.
- Whether your condo or house booking is 30 nights or longer if you’re renting outside a licensed hotel.
- The emergency number and currency are in the facts box.