Running a registered homestay in Sikkim

Sikkim built its rural tourism on families hosting visitors in their own homes, and its rules still read that way: the house, the host and the register are expected to stay together.

Sikkim is a small state with a distinctive legal set-up for anyone who hosts paying visitors. Homestays sit inside the state's tourist-trade regulation, rebuilt in 2024, and the Tourism and Civil Aviation Department is the office that registers them and enforces the rules. Before you list a room in Gangtok, Pelling or a village further north, three things deserve attention: the model the state is protecting, the charge it now collects through hosts, and the extra paperwork that travels with foreign guests.

The legal frame

Homestays were first regulated under the Sikkim Registration of Homestay Establishment Rules, 2013. In August 2024 the Legislative Assembly passed the Sikkim Registration of Tourist Trade Bill, which sets a framework for tourism businesses as a whole and provides for fines when its provisions are ignored; rules under the new Act followed in 2025. We have not been able to read the complete current rules on an official page, so we do not quote a fee, a validity period or a processing time here. Ask the department in writing for the current schedule and forms, and keep the reply with the property file.

A homestay is not something you lease out

In September 2023 the department issued an advisory reminding operators that, under the 2013 rules, a homestay owner may not lease or rent the homestay unit to a third party. The Homestay Association of Sikkim had pressed for that ban, and the state has financed homestays with subsidised loans so that the income stays with local families. The practical consequence is clear. An outside operator cannot take a registered Sikkim homestay on lease and run it as its own business. If you own the house and want help, the arrangement has to leave you as the operator, with anyone assisting you working under a service agreement rather than a tenancy.

The ₹50 contribution collected at check-in

Since March 2025, every tourist accommodation provider in the state — hotels, resorts, homestays, bed and breakfasts and service apartments — must collect a Tourism Sustainable Development contribution of ₹50 per tourist when guests check in, and pass it on to the government. Collection is tracked through the Atithi guest information system. Under rule 83 of the 2025 rules, a unit that fails to remit faces a fine of ₹5,000 for the first month of default and ₹10,000 for the second, and it can be de-registered after three consecutive months. For a small house, the simplest safeguard is to treat the contribution as part of arrival, recorded on the same screen as the guest's identity details.

Foreign guests need a permit before they reach you

• Foreign nationals need a Restricted Area Permit to enter Sikkim, and some northern areas require further protected-area permission and organised travel.
• Ask foreign guests at booking whether the permit is arranged, and say plainly that you cannot help anyone around it.
• Once they arrive, the national duty applies as everywhere else in India: report the stay online through Form-III, formerly Form C, within 24 hours.

Papers the house should hold

• The registration certificate, displayed where guests can see it.
• A guest register completed at check-in, with identity details.
• A bill for every stay and a running note of the contributions collected and remitted.
• Copies of the permits foreign guests presented, filed with their booking.

Tax, briefly

Rooms are taxed under the national GST bands: 5% without input tax credit up to ₹7,500 per unit per night since 22 September 2025, and 18% above that value. Whether you need to register depends on your turnover and on the threshold that applies to Sikkim, so settle it with an accountant before your first season rather than after it.

Buying in Sikkim is its own question

Sikkim keeps its own body of land law, and a purchase that would be routine in another state may simply not be open to someone from outside it. That is a matter for a local lawyer, and it should be answered before any money changes hands.

Where Hexuvium fits

We do not lease homestays and we do not take them over. For a Sikkim owner our work sits behind the counter: listing and pricing, guest messages, the register, Form-III for foreign visitors and the paper trail for the TSD contribution. The registration and the hospitality remain yours.