For hosts
Via Nostalgia charges hosts 1% of each completed stay booked here. Your listing is free, with your own booking links on it, and nobody can pay to rank higher.
Guest roomsRun by the family who lives there.
The math
Fees a host pays on €10,000 of bookings
You keep
more than with Airbnb’s 15.5% fee, on the same €10,000. Guests pay their own 1% on top.
Your rules
If your house is in the EU, Booking.com may no longer stop you from selling cheaper elsewhere. EU rules have banned those clauses since November 2024.
Keep Booking, Airbnb and your regular guests. Calendars sync with them to avoid double bookings.
Set house rules, use our fair cancellation ladder, and decline stays that don’t fit your house, for any lawful reason.
You can leave at any time, with no minimum term and no exit fee. Bookings you have already accepted are kept or cancelled under the usual rules.
Two ways in
Listed · from day one
Bookable · when you’re ready
The host agent
Your week
Your calendar
Send “full 12–14 June” by WhatsApp or text. Nothing to install.
At launchLink the calendars once. Links can take hours to refresh, so same-day requests are checked with you first.
At launchIf you already use one, we join it as one more channel and you work as you do now.
PlannedA free two-way channel manager for Booking and Airbnb, set up for you.
PlannedA village keeper or a weekly call keeps the calendar right if you don’t manage it on a phone.
A camp or a reunion arrives as one request from one organiser, split across houses in the village if needed.
Cancellations
What a guest pays you if they cancel, share of the room price
Walk-ins
Guest at the door
| Included | Cash, same day · 0% | Prepaid · 1% + 1% |
|---|---|---|
| Guest contact and messages | Yes | Yes |
| Emergency card and trail relay | Yes | Yes |
| Guest registration and reports | Yes | Yes |
| Reviews | Yes | Yes |
| Escrow and payout | No | Yes |
| Cancellation penalties | No | Yes |
| Access to damage and liability cover | No | Yes |
Payouts
after check-in at the latest, by bank transfer, instant where your bank supports it.
Codes and referrals
Example
to the creator who sent a €300 stay booked with 10% off. Nothing for clicks or cancellations.
Bring five
Found by AI assistants
Paperwork and bad days
Filed for you on stays booked here. For guests from other channels too: optional, €10 a month.
Shown on your listing wherever your country requires one (EU rules, since May 2026).
Each year we report your earnings to the tax authority, as EU platform rules (DAC7) require, and send you the same figures.
Optional cover on prepaid stays from licensed insurers. Report with photos in the chat.
Verified guests, masked phone numbers, and the right to decline a stay for any lawful reason.
An AI helper first, with people behind it, 24 hours a day.
Hikers, groups and camps
On trails like the Camino or the Appalachian Trail you see who is walking toward you and when they should arrive. If a hiker is late, you get a nudge. If they can’t be reached, we follow the plan they agreed to: their contact first, then 112, 911 or mountain rescue.
One tap passes a hiker’s details to the next host on the trail.
A group of 24 is split across several houses in your village. Each guest pays their own share, and you only see your guests.
Group organisers can release unused beds without penalty until 31 days before arrival.
Heritage camps and field schools book beds for weeks, with one organiser and one invoice.
Former volunteers can come back with family and friends, and ask for the host they knew.
Events near you
The Volunteer Atlas
Village rules
Why it matters to you
Your neighbours stay neighbours. We don’t list flats run by investors or companies.
A share of the upside
of Via Nostalgia in virtual shares, planned for our next funding round and shared among founding hosts and creators through completed stays. Like all shares, it is diluted by later rounds.
Verification
Have ready
Cost to you
Verification is free. We pay for it, because guests trust verified hosts.
Join
On WhatsApp, by SMS or with a call.
Send photos, a few words and your booking links. The agent drafts your page for you to approve.
Your registration number, and a short call or a keeper’s visit in new villages.
Travelers see your page, your links and your events. Free.
Verify your ID, add a bank account and link your calendar. Guests book here at 1%.
Become a founding host
For travelers
Stays in villages and along trails, with a 1% fee for you and 1% for your host. More of what you pay reaches the people who host you.
Slow travelGo where the church clock still sets the pace.
Where your money goes
Part of that fee buys advertising. Booking Holdings spent 4.4% of everything booked on marketing in 2025, about €13 of a €300 stay.
The four biggest booking apps spent $20.3 billion on marketing that year.
How it works
Hosts keep more, so they have room to charge you less. If a host keeps the same €253.50 as on the app, your stay costs €258.62 instead of €300.
What’s on
The Atlas
Roots trips
Pilot: the first 20 families, €300 a plan. You pay the host for your stay.
The Volunteer Atlas
Heritage alumni
Book with your assistant
No signal
Send a text to book, change or cancel. Your booking code arrives by SMS and the host can check it without a connection.
Speak your language. A voice agent books the stay and texts you the code.
Found a place today? Pay the host in cash. There is no fee, and you still get the emergency card and the host’s contact.
Cancellations
What you pay if you cancel, share of the room price
Safety
Groups and needs
One booking across several houses in a village. Everyone pays their share, and unused beds can be released free until 31 days before arrival. Leaders get a planner for every stage.
Hosts say which animals are welcome and where they can sleep.
Steps, doorways and bathrooms described by the host, with photos.
Tell us your diet once. Every host on your trip knows before you arrive.
Messages with hosts are translated both ways, so a language barrier never decides where you stay.
Money that stays
Your host pays the baker, the cleaner and the guide who grew up there. The money that used to buy ads stays with them.
Creators you follow
Hosts choose
off for you, and up to 10% for the creator who sent you.
Be on the first trips
We open on 31 December 2026, as the Camino’s Holy Year begins, on three trails: the Camino, the Via Francigena and the Appalachian Trail.
For creators
Hosts on Via Nostalgia pay 1%, not 15% or more. So they can give your followers up to 20% off, and you up to 10% of every stay you send.
Stories worth sharingCrafts, food and villages, booked through you.
What booking sites pay you
What you earn when a follower books a €300 stay
The math
You earn
after checkout, and your follower saves €12.15. The host keeps €7.20 more than on Booking.com.
Or bigger discounts: at 10% off and 6% for you, your follower saves €27.30, you earn €16.20 and the host keeps €251.10.
How codes work
Once, by message: “creators: 10% off, 6% to you”. They can change it any time.
Pick places you love and get a link and code at once. Hosts can ask to approve you first.
By link, code, text message, or their AI assistant. Each follower gets a code of their own.
Your share is split from the host’s payout by our licensed payment partner.
Codes that can’t leak
What to make
A pilgrim way or a long trail, one stage a day. Each stage ends at a bed your followers can book.
Old photographs and family stories from the Atlas, shared with consent.
A festival, a trail day, a camp reunion or a choir trip. You earn the host’s rate on every stay booked around it.
Hosts can offer bigger discounts when rooms would otherwise stay empty.
An afternoon with a potter, a baker or a winemaker, next to a bed for the night.
Trips back to a family village, for emigrant families and their grandchildren.
The rules
Advertising, including affiliate marketing, must be disclosed.
European Commission, Influencer Legal Hub (2023), summarisedFounding creators
of Via Nostalgia in virtual shares, planned for our next funding round and shared among founding hosts and creators through completed stays.
Join
Tell us where you post and the places you know.
Your ID and a payout account.
Hosts with open offers, or invite your favourite place to join.
Your link, your codes and the stories behind each place.
Become a founding creator
Trails and grants · October 2026
Beds at every stage, a safety net between hosts and open trail data, for Europe’s 52 cultural routes and America’s long trails.
A walking boom
pilgrims reached Santiago de Compostela in 2025. That is a record, and 6% more than in 2024.
A day on the trail
The host taps “left”. Tonight’s host gets the walker’s plan: stage, route and expected time.
Nothing to do. The plan is already with the next host.
Tonight’s host sees who is coming and when.
The relay calls the walker, then the contact they chose.
Still no answer: 112, 911 or mountain rescue, with the last stage and time seen.
Every long trail is a chain of stages. Each one ends where a walker needs a bed that night.
Walkers need tonight’s bed confirmed by phone or text when there is no data signal.
We sign up the small hosts in stage villages, including people without a smartphone.
What we add
Stages, beds, water, shops and transport for each route, under an open licence that trail groups and apps can reuse.
Public good · associationThe safety chain between hosts. Free for walkers and hosts, and it works by SMS and phone.
Public good · associationStamps from hosts and route sites, by app or SMS. Certificates for each route, and for walkers who finish two.
Public good · associationOral histories, family photos and former volunteers’ memories of each village, recorded with consent and published openly.
Public good · associationA free map of volunteering projects run by NGOs and public bodies, where they recruit volunteers.
Public good · associationBookings at 1% for hosts and 1% for walkers, by app, SMS or phone. Same-day cash walk-ins pay no fee.
Service · companyHosts set a discount for followers and a share for creators, paid from the host’s payout after the stay.
Service · companyWhatsApp, SMS or a call: calendars, guests and paperwork in one thread.
Service · companyCouncil of Europe cultural routes
Europe
The United States
Beyond Europe
Pilgrim ways: Camino de Santiago, Via Francigena, Kumano Kodo, Shikoku. Historic routes: Oregon and Santa Fe trails, Qhapaq Ñan, Silk Roads. Long trails: Appalachian, Pacific Crest, Continental Divide, Te Araroa, Great Himalaya, Jordan and Transcaucasian trails.
Twin trails
Heritage alumni
Heritage NGOs across Europe run summer camps to repair walls, roofs and paths, some with Solidarity Corps volunteers.
Volunteers maintain much of the Appalachian Trail, through the ATC and its local trail clubs.
Archaeology field schools across Europe and the Americas. The Archaeological Institute of America lists hundreds.
The return loop
They find a camp or a dig in the Volunteer Atlas, and often live with a host family.
AssociationTheir photos and stories join the open archive, with consent.
AssociationReunion weekends, family trips, a week with the old host.
Company · 1% + 1%Their posts bring friends. Hosts pay them a referral after the stay.
Company · creator ratesThey mentor new volunteers and vouch for new hosts.
AssociationAlumni are invited by the organisations that sent them, never bought as a list. They choose what to share, and they can leave at any time.
The Volunteer Atlas
Volunteers and their grants
| Programme | What it pays for | Who applies | Next date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solidarity Corps Quality Label | Nothing yet: it is the ticket to host volunteers | Association | Rolling, about 8 weeks |
| Solidarity Corps volunteer teams | Daily rates, travel and support for 2 weeks to 2 months | Association with the label | Feb 2027, expected |
| Erasmus+ youth exchanges | Travel and daily costs for 5–21 days, ages 13–30 | Association, or an informal youth group | Feb 2027, expected |
| Erasmus+ small-scale partnerships | €30k or €60k lump sum | Association or company | Mar 2027, expected |
How to set it up
Option A
A Berlin non-profit that owns the open data, the stories and the Volunteer Atlas, and hosts volunteers. An e.V. needs seven founders; a non-profit UG, one.
Option B
A Berlin UG, a GmbH by the round, that runs bookings, payment partners and the host agent, with a US subsidiary if the US test grows.
Option CRecommended
The association owns the public goods. The company runs bookings and pays for what it uses. The founder applies to the Prototype Fund alone or with a small team.
Eligibility
| Programme | Grant | Association | Company | Founder | Next date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prototype FundDE | €47.5k alone, €95k as a team, up to 95% | No | No | Yes* | 30 Nov 2026 |
| NLnet RestackEU | €5k–50k to start, for open source | Yes | Yes | Yes | 3 Nov 2026 |
| GründungsBONUS PlusBerlin | Up to €50k, half the costs | No | Under 18 months | – | Open now |
| Pro FIT early stageBerlin | Up to €200k, half grant, half loan | No | Under 12 months | – | Rolling |
| DBU Green Start-upDE | Up to €125k, 100% | No | If green | – | Rolling |
| R&D tax creditDE | 35% of R&D costs, paid even at a loss | No | Yes | – | After year end |
| Erasmus+ small-scale partnershipsEU | €30k or €60k lump sum | Yes | Yes | – | Mar 2027 expected |
| CERV European RemembranceEU | Lump sums for larger projects | Partner | – | – | 24 Feb 2027 |
| Creative Europe cooperationEU | Up to €200k at 80% | Partner | Partner | – | 2027 TBA |
| Horizon Europe, cultural tourismEU | Up to about €4.8M per project, 100% | Partner | Partner | – | 23 Sep 2027 |
| Fonds SoziokulturDE | €5k–30k at 80%, Berlin-side | Yes | No | – | 2 Nov 2026 |
Calendar
Watch: no dates yet
GründungsBONUS Plus, Pro FIT, DBU: rolling · INVEST for angels, to 31 Dec · Creative Europe 2027 · the next IGP call · Postcode Lotterie 2027 · DFJW on the Via Francigena · Berlin’s Madrid and Paris partnerships
Year one
Largest grant each source can give, if approved
Base case
Prototype Fund, Erasmus+ and GründungsBONUS Plus.
Stretch case
Adds a second Prototype Fund stage, NLnet and DBU.
De minimis: €175k of the company’s €300k cap.
Beyond grants
Hosts, walkers and alumni give a few euros a month, tax-deductible when our purposes are culture, monuments, education or international understanding.
Non-profit incomeRecurring gifts from the founder’s audience through betterplace.org, which keeps 2.8% of each donation.
Non-profit incomeHeritage camps where the work and the learning are the point. Tourist-style trips belong in the company.
Tax-favoured if educationalCourses for hosts, villages and trail groups, often paid from their own LEADER or town budgets.
Tax-favoured as educationCompanies pay for staff trail-work weeks as part of their social responsibility plans.
Taxable trade, free up to €50kTicketed storytelling evenings and exhibitions from the Atlas archive.
Tax-favoured as cultureWhere we start
Spain and Portugal. 530,987 pilgrims in 2025, a record, and 2027 is a Holy Year.
Italy first, on the way to Rome. About 100,000 walkers in 2025, a Jubilee year.
A smaller US test in A.T. Community towns, with bank payments first.
Partners
Camino pilgrim associations and the Via Francigena association, then the trail groups on the routes that follow.
They get bookable beds at every stage, the relay and open data tools.
The Appalachian Trail Conservancy and its clubs, the PCTA and Rails-to-Trails Conservancy.
They get the relay and passport, open source, and data on where walkers sleep.
Council of Europe routes, starting with the Saint James Way and the Via Francigena.
They get a booking map, passport stamps and visitor data.
Town halls and LEADER groups on our trails, Italy’s roots towns, and the 56 A.T. Communities in the US.
They get free event listings, host training and visitor data, and a calendar under their own name if they buy one.
Lead partners for Horizon Europe, and the archaeology field schools.
They get live data, pilot sites and beds for students.
World Heritage Volunteers organisers and Solidarity Corps hosts.
They get free recruitment in the Volunteer Atlas, beds for camps, and a way to stay in touch with alumni.
Erasmus+ and Solidarity Corps alumni, World Heritage Volunteers and US trail crews.
They get reunion trips, creator rates and a home for their stories.
Creative Europe and Horizon Europe need partners from at least three countries, for example Spain, Portugal and Italy.
They get a share of EU projects and pilot sites.
Impact
| Measure | Year-one target | How we count it |
|---|---|---|
| Stages with a bookable bed | Every stage on the three pilot trails | Live map built from the open data |
| Hosts on the network | 300 founding hosts | Signed host agreements |
| Share of the price kept by hosts | 99% | Fee data, published every month |
| Money spent in villages | Set with each trail | Bookings plus reported cash stays |
| Walkers on the relay | Set with each trail | Sign-ups, alerts and how each was resolved |
| Open trail data | All three pilot trails, openly licensed | Downloads and reuse by other apps |
| Stories recorded | Set with each trail | Published openly, with consent |
| Hosts trained | Set with each trail | Training records, with shares of women and over-60s |
| Alumni who come back | Set with each trail | Stays booked by former volunteers and students |
| Events, volunteer calls and RSVPs | Set with each trail | Listings, RSVPs, sign-ups and volunteer days, by site |
| Off-season nights | Set with each trail | Nights from March to May and September to November |
Staying eligible
Next steps
Fonds Soziokultur, NLnet and the Prototype Fund: a Berlin story project, the open trail data, and the booking protocol built by the founder, self-employed for it.
Register the Berlin UG and the association, build the events calendar and the Volunteer Atlas, and ask partners on all three trails for letters of intent. Offer Galician towns a Holy Year calendar under their own name.
Open the calendars as the Camino’s Holy Year begins, and invite Xacobeo organisers, trail clubs and hosts to post for free.
GründungsBONUS Plus before the funded work starts. With partners: Erasmus+ and the Solidarity Corps, and CERV by 24 February.
Join a Horizon Europe consortium on cultural tourism, and Creative Europe as a partner in spring.
We are looking for
Trail associations, route networks, heritage camps, alumni groups, towns, universities and co-funders, in Europe and the US, who want walkers to sleep, eat and spend in villages.
Appendix · Sources
Appendix · Grant sources