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Trade report
HiGo lists twice as many homestays as hotels, but only 470 homestays have 50 or more reviews
Of those 470, more than six in ten score 4.5 or above; Melaka Tengah district has the most.
For a year-end booking, check first whether there are enough reviews to go on: of the homestays in HiGo's listings, only 470 have 50 or more reviews, against 1,975 hotels.
On 9 November 2026, HiGo listed 11,082 homestays and 5,499 hotels, so homestays outnumber hotels 2.02 to 1.
Plenty of homestays, but only 470 have 50 or more reviews; hotels have 1,975
The first thing to check when booking a homestay is whether it has enough reviews. Counted one by one, the homestays come to 11,074 (a few fewer than the category count above), and of those only 470 (4.24%) have 50 or more reviews. The 50-review mark is HiGo's own cut-off, not an official standard.
Hotels run the other way: of the 5,497 counted the same way, 1,975 have 50 or more reviews, or 35.93%. There are twice as many homestays as hotels, and on reviews the bigger group becomes the smaller one.
Few reviews doesn't mean poor quality — it just means there aren't enough public reviews to judge by.
Among those with 50 or more reviews, more than six in ten homestays score 4.5 or above, against just over one in ten hotels
Of these 470 homestays, 61.49% score 4.5 or above; of the 1,975 hotels with 50 or more reviews, only 13.22% do.
Don't go by the score alone: the median review count for these homestays is 75, not far above the cut-off of 50, so read the score together with the review count.
Selangor has the most homestays in HiGo's listings, and only Kuala Lumpur has more hotels than homestays
Of the 16 states and federal territories, Kuala Lumpur is the only one with more hotels than homestays: 526 against 198.
Measured against all the listings in each state, Terengganu has the highest share of homestays at 6.54% (out of 16,472 listings), and Kuala Lumpur the lowest at 0.39%.
Selangor has the most homestays in raw numbers, at 1,366, but that is only 1.19% of its listings.
What these numbers mean for you
- Check the review count before the score: homestays with enough reviews are hard to come by.
- Homestays with 50 or more reviews cluster in Melaka Tengah, with 36, then Johor Bahru district with 18; outside those two, no district has more than 17, so there is less to compare and it pays to look at more places.
- Three of the 470 are marked permanently closed, and the ratings were recorded between 2 and 4 September 2026, so check on the map that the place is still open and read the latest reviews before booking. This data doesn't cover prices, availability or licensing.
Places nearby
If you are staying around Jonker Street in Melaka Tengah, here are four of the places within 500 metres rated 4.5 or above with at least 200 reviews. None of them are homestays, and any type of business counts here; ratings and review counts were recorded on 4 September 2026.
Ratings and review counts come from Google's public data, as recorded by HiGo on 4 September 2026. They are not a HiGo ranking or recommendation.
Data: HiGo merchant listings, 9 November 2026. Ratings are public Google ratings and, like review counts, were recorded between 2 and 4 September 2026. "Homestay" and "hotel" are each a single category that businesses choose for themselves, and each business is placed in only one; lodging, guest house, resort hotel and chalet are not counted as hotels. The counts include businesses already marked as permanently closed. HiGo's listings don't cover every business in Malaysia.
