Jung Seung-ho opens Seoul Dalbit Guesthouse after months of renovations, permit battles, and anxious waiting. Day one: empty rooms, nervous energy, and the reality that running a legal guesthouse in Korea starts now.
13. Grand Opening
The big day has arrived.
Writer Jung Seung-ho, Seoul Dalbit Guesthouse
Editor ONDA Manager Somora
Seoul Dalbit Guesthouse Dongdaemun (Main Branch) Address: 329-18 Changsin-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul Room Types: Small Twin, Small Double, Standard Twin Facilities: Shared living room and kitchen, rooftop garden Nearby Attractions: Naksan Park, Heunginjimun Gate, DDP, Changsin-dong Stationery Toy Market, Dongmyo Flea Market
Seoul Dalbit Guesthouse DDP Branch Address: 74 Jangchung-dong 2-ga, Jung-gu, Seoul Room Types: Double, Family (3/4/6-person) Facilities: Shared living room and kitchen, rooftop garden Nearby Attractions: Jangchung Gymnasium, Namsan, Gwanghuimun Gate, Cheonggyecheon Stream
Seoul Dalbit Guesthouse SNS Website: http://seouldalbit.com Instagram: @seoul_dalbit
January 2nd, 2016. The day we'd been waiting for had finally come. Our very first day of business.
Administrative Procedures for "Legal" Operations
Before opening, there was plenty to prepare. First and foremost: administrative procedures. Since our guesthouse applied for a building use change to "tourist accommodation," the requirements were quite demanding. For tourist accommodation, you need to submit a business plan in advance, and they scrutinize everything — wall thickness between rooms, corridor width, even the width of the street in front of the building.
If you're a reader dreaming of opening a guesthouse and planning to convert a building that wasn't previously used for accommodation into lodging, as I mentioned in earlier posts, the most accurate route is to consult an expert — an architect.
When processing permits with government offices, standard accommodation goes through Health and Sanitation (public health office), while tourist accommodation goes through the Tourism Administration department for document review and permit approval. Honestly, from the operator's perspective — especially for small to mid-sized guesthouses with around 20 rooms — whether you get licensed under one or the other doesn't massively impact your business.
That said, if you're preparing to launch an accommodation business, it's worth reading through the relevant laws at least once and understanding the subtle differences between the two.
- Accommodation Business Act for standard lodging: http://www.law.go.kr/법령/숙박업법/(00809,19611206)
- Tourism Promotion Act and special laws for tourist accommodation: http://law.go.kr/lsInfoP.do?lsiSeq=149966#0000
Once you've brought the facility up to legal standards and passed the on-site inspection by the relevant official, the building use change is complete. Now you need to register your lodging business operations.
During this process, multiple administrative procedures can get confusing, but basically it works like this: First, you secure a "building zoned for lodging use." Then, you "declare that you're operating a lodging business" in that building. Step one — completing the building use change — is done. Step two is the business registration phase, where you declare you're running a lodging operation.
Business registration varies by business type, but as mentioned above, standard lodging registers with the public health office (Health & Sanitation department), while tourist accommodation registers with the tourism department of your local government. For registration, you'll need to prepare documents: identity verification for the business owner (for corporations, corporate registry and seal certificate), interior floor plans, electrical safety, gas safety, fire safety documents, and if required, a certificate of completion for online education courses. The required docs may seem overwhelming, but a quick call to the relevant department will get you friendly, clear guidance — so don't worry.
After completing your business registration, visit the local tax office to finalize your business license, and then all administrative procedures are complete. Registering with the tax office is also straightforward — you can confirm the process via phone or online inquiry. If you have the necessary documents and information, the whole process takes only a few dozen minutes.
One more critical point: insurance. Following several safety incidents at multi-use facilities with tragic outcomes, "disaster liability insurance" became mandatory in 2017 for restaurants, lodging facilities, libraries, museums, and more. While typical fire insurance covers property damage, disaster liability insurance covers bodily harm and loss to others — that's the key difference.
If you operate standard or tourist accommodation, you're required to carry this insurance. Failure to do so results in fines, so make sure you're covered.
(In 2019, the National Safety Agency was consolidated into the National Disaster & Safety Portal)
National Disaster & Safety Portal — Learn About Flood Insurance
Listing on Online Sales Channels to Take Reservations
With the headache of admin work behind you, now comes the real action: marketing and sales. Which sales channels you use depends on whether your property is in Seoul or the provinces, a famous tourist spot or not, whether it's a guesthouse, hotel, pension, or motel, whether your target is domestic or international guests, students or families — every factor matters.
So defining your property's identity clearly and then deciding on sales channels and marketing strategy is far more effective.
My guesthouse was located in Seoul's Dongdaemun area, where the majority of guests are foreign tourists, so I registered with OTAs (Online Travel Agencies) heavily used by international travelers — Booking.com, Agoda, Airbnb, and the like.
These online booking sites are called OTAs, and currently the global OTA market is dominated by the Priceline Group (led by Booking.com) and the Expedia Group (Expedia, Hotels.com, Trivago). Beyond those, there's China's Ctrip, a solo giant powered by Chinese demand, and Airbnb, which appeared like a comet and has been shaking up the OTA landscape.
OTA commission rates vary slightly, but they typically take around 15–20% of the sale price. Eye-watering, right? And since many of them don't have legal entities in Korea, you can't even reclaim VAT. But what choice do we have? Without these agencies, there's almost no chance of reaching international tourists.
Among the sites listed above, Booking.com is overwhelmingly dominant in traffic (number of visitors). It may not have huge name recognition in Korea, but as of 2018, its traffic is more than double that of TripAdvisor (the #2), and exceeds the combined traffic of #2 through #5.
My personal guess is that while other OTAs required upfront payment to protect against no-shows, Booking.com offered the game-changing option of on-site payment at check-in, and also expanded its sales channels by partnering with various travel agencies and airlines — which is how it became the overwhelming #1.
Of course, the on-site payment policy means the risk of flaky bookings, no-shows, and fraudulent reservations falls entirely on the property operators.
To register with an OTA, visit each platform's extranet (host management page), sign up, and add your new property. Back in early 2016, when we first started, I remember the paperwork being quite complicated and tedious. But after Airbnb — the new powerhouse — dramatically lowered the barrier to entry, the legacy OTAs must've felt the heat, because now the registration process is much simpler.
You select your property location, number of rooms, accommodation options (breakfast, TV, private/shared bathroom, etc.), configure rooms, and set rates — and that's basically it. Running promotions and discounts to catch travelers' eyes is now up to you.
When you're listed on multiple booking sites, reservations come in from each separate dashboard — you'd have to manually check each one, confirm guest names and room types, adjust inventory to avoid overbooking, and since bookings arrive from different time zones, you'd be up at all hours checking your inbox. The labor cost is enormous. Luckily, there's a solution that syncs everything in one place: Channel Managers and PMS (Property Management Systems).
A Channel Manager automatically pulls in reservations from each booking site and syncs availability across platforms to prevent overbooking. A PMS is literally a property management system — it lets you see reservation status, track revenue and occupancy at a glance, and manage your property. Usually, a channel manager and PMS work hand-in-hand.
In Korea, the dominant channel manager with the most robust system is ONDA (formerly ZARI). It connects to major OTAs — Booking.com, Agoda, Expedia, Airbnb, Ctrip, Hostelworld — and also provides sales channels for domestic marketing platforms like Naver, Tmon, and 11Street.
Its PMS interface (screenshot below) is as intuitive as an Excel spreadsheet — super easy to manage. I've been using it since 2016, over three years now, and my partners and I currently operate four properties total, all on ONDA's system.
Globally, there are services like MyAllocator and EZ PMS, but for use in Korea, I don't think there's a service as optimized as ONDA.
If you'd like to sign up for ONDA, visit https://onda.me/. I believe they paused new signups for the legacy service when they launched a new product in April — but the new service, ONDA Wave, is being refined steadily, so I'd recommend trying it out. Given the quality of their service, the wait for full maturity is well worth it.
Shooting Photos That Make People Want to Book
When listing your property on booking sites, nothing matters more than photos that make people think, "I want to stay there." If you're just occasionally renting out a room on Airbnb when you're away, sure, snap some shots on your phone and slap a filter on them. But if you're serious about running a lodging business, hire a professional photographer, rent quality equipment, and dedicate a full day to the shoot.
As I've mentioned in other posts, platforms that connect you with designers and photographers are widely available now, and pricing is quite reasonable. For ₩300,000–500,000, you can get dozens (or hundreds) of beautiful photos you'll use for years. That's a solid deal.
If paying that upfront feels like a burden, Airbnb offers a photography service where they send a photographer at no initial cost — roughly ₩150,000 per session, deducted automatically from future booking revenue.
In our case, we hired the same designer who created our logo to shoot interior photos and handle post-processing. The results were extremely satisfying.
Hiring Staff to Run the Show
You've registered your business, shot your photos, and listed on OTAs. Now comes the most critical piece: the people who'll greet guests on-site and manage the facility — hiring staff.
For our first guesthouse's first hire, fear came first. We didn't want to hire a stranger. So we asked around among friends, talked to my brother's friend and a junior from school, and ended up hiring people through their networks as our first staff… Looking back, maybe I was a bit too distrustful of unknowns.
In hindsight, when we hired direct acquaintances, things generally went well. But when those people introduced their friends, we often got underwhelming results — people who couldn't handle the work. Thinking it over, I suspect it's because they weren't driven by "I want to work at a guesthouse" — it was more like, "I have spare time, and my friend happened to introduce me."
After a few disappointing experiences with referrals, we switched to job platforms like Albamon and Alba Heaven, and the results were far better. We got dedicated, motivated staff — sometimes people I learned from. I think it's because these were people who genuinely wanted to work as guesthouse staff.
Many people apply to work at guesthouses because "I stayed at a guesthouse/hostel on a trip and loved it," "I want to experience that travel vibe," or "I want a job where I use foreign languages in Korea." But as I've mentioned in earlier posts, there's no romance in running a guesthouse. You get entitled guests from all over the world, wholesale shoppers from certain countries who rip open dozens of boxes and scatter the contents across the floor, and equipment breaks down constantly.
So when I first started, I tried to make the job sound nice and easy during hiring. Lately, though, I do the opposite — I explain upfront that it's hard work, there's a lot of dirty work, and it's not all fun and games.
After over three years of operation, we've had more than 20 staff members pass through, including one who worked for over two years and became a full-time employee. Every single one of them has been a precious connection.
I realize this sounds like a grumpy boomer preaching about "attitude," but when you're hiring someone to represent you and take responsibility for the business, you can't help but be more cautious and conservative.
So: business license? Check. Listed on booking sites? Check. Staff hired? Check.
All the tedious prep work was done. January 2nd, 2016. Opening day. Our first guest arrived.
A family of four from Korea.
No one knew what to do. Where do we start? What do we show them first? We didn't even have a manual!
Since it was opening day, all the business partners, plus staff — five people total — were running around showing them this and that, and after some chaos, we finally checked in our first guests.
When we told them they were our very first guests, the family was delighted and listened attentively to our explanations. When they entered the room, they looked satisfied.
It felt relieving, thrilling, nerve-wracking, and moving all at once.
And so, after more than seven months, the guesthouse opening project came to an end,
and so, our guesthouse's operations began.
[Series Index]
2020.01 Grand Opening
2020.02 Epilogue – The Resignation Process
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