Short answer: yes, every Antlerzone owner portal account has the same Refer & earn link as a guest. A friend who books through it gets RM20 off a first direct booking of RM150 or more; you receive 5% of the room price they paid, counted on their check-in day and paid to your bank once you pass RM50. The part the sign-up page does not spell out: when the booking is for your own unit, the RM20 comes off your unit's revenue and the 5% shows up as a line called Referral Commission in your own owner report. So what you really net depends on which plan you are on. The maths is below.
Where does an owner find the referral link?
Open the owner portal menu and tap Refer & earn. It opens the same referral page guests use, because under the hood the link belongs to your portal account, not to your role. The code is six characters, fixed for life, and the link looks like portal.antlerzone.com/booking?ref=XXXXXX.
You can make it point straight at your own unit by adding the listing — the share button on that page does this for you, and it can also pre-fill check-in and check-out dates. A friend who taps it lands on your unit's booking page with the code already attached.
There is no separate "owner programme", no higher owner rate, and no special approval. If you are managed by us, you already have it.
What does the friend get, and what do you get?
| The friend | You | |
|---|---|---|
| Benefit | RM20 off the room price | 5% of the room price the friend actually paid |
| Condition | First direct booking on this account, room price RM150 or more before the discount, phone number verified, logged in | Friend used your link within 7 days, or typed your code at checkout |
| How often | Once per account, ever | Every booking that is attributed to you, not only the first |
| When it counts | At checkout | On the friend's check-in date (Kuala Lumpur time) |
| What it excludes | Deposit, cleaning fee, add-ons — the discount only touches the nightly rate | Same — 5% is on the nightly total only |
Two details from the rules that surprise people. First, the "first booking" test is per account, not per person-per-unit: a friend who already used someone else's RM20 code gets no discount from yours, but you still earn the 5%. Second, the 5% is worked out on the room price after the RM20 is taken off, so on a RM600 stay the commission is 5% of RM580, which is RM29, not RM30.
The general rules — the 7-day window, "last click wins", cancellations and no-shows paying nothing, the RM50 withdrawal threshold — are covered in how much you can earn referring friends to a Johor Bahru homestay. This article is only about the owner's side.
Who actually pays the RM20 and the 5%?
This is the question that matters when the unit is yours.
The RM20 is a discount on the room price. The guest pays RM580 instead of RM600, and RM580 is what enters your unit's revenue for the month. It is not topped up by anyone. (Antlerzone separately pays the software platform a small charge for every ringgit of discount it hands out — that is our cost, not yours, and it never appears in your report.)
The 5% is not deducted from the room price. It is booked as an expense line in the owner report called Referral Commission, and like every other expense line it has an owner: Owner, Host (that is us) or Shared. The default in our services package is Shared, which on the net-profit plans means it is deducted from revenue before the split, and on the 90% plan — where the owner carries all expenses — it means you.
So when you refer a friend to your own unit, you pay some or all of the RM29 as an expense, and you receive the full RM29 as a referral payout. The 5% is mostly a wash. The RM20 is a real reduction in your revenue. Whether the link is worth sending therefore depends on one thing: what would the friend have done without it?
Worked example: RM600 stay, three plans, three ways the friend could book
Take a friend staying three nights at RM200 a night, room total RM600. Cleaning, utilities and other expenses are left out of every column on purpose — they are identical whichever way the friend books, so they do not change the comparison. Plan rules are the three we currently offer new owners, as laid out in 90% of revenue vs 80% or 70% of net profit. Airbnb's host-only service fee is taken as the 15.5% of the booking subtotal it has charged most hosts worldwide since the end of 2025.
| What the friend does | Revenue in your report | Extra cost | 90% plan (owner pays all expenses) | 80% net plan | 70% net plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A. Books direct, no code | RM600 | — | RM540 | RM480 | RM420 |
| B. Books through Airbnb | RM600 | OTA fee RM93 | RM447 | RM405.60 | RM354.90 |
| C. Books direct with your code | RM580 | Referral Commission RM29, then RM29 paid back to you | RM493 + RM29 = RM522 | RM440.80 + RM29 = RM469.80 | RM385.70 + RM29 = RM414.70 |
Reading across:
- C beats B comfortably — by RM75, RM64 and RM60 on the three plans. If your friend would otherwise have booked the same unit through an OTA, send the link every time. The OTA fee is bigger than the RM20 and the commission put together.
- C is slightly worse than A — by RM18, RM10 and RM5. If your friend was already going to book direct without any code, the link makes you a little worse off and makes them RM20 better off. That is fine if you want to give a friend a discount; just know it is coming out of your side, not ours.
- The 5% is nearly a round trip on your own unit. On the 90% plan you pay RM29 as an expense and receive RM29 back. On the 80% plan you effectively pay RM23.20 of it and receive RM29, a RM5.80 gain. The commission was designed to pay guests for bringing in bookings; on your own unit it mostly moves money from one pocket to the other.
One case changes this. If your services package sets Referral Commission to Host-borne rather than Shared, we carry the RM29 and your column C rises by RM29 on the 90% plan (to RM551) and by RM23.20 on the 80% plan (to RM493) — then C beats A on every plan. Ask us which setting your package has before you decide; the default is Shared.
Is there a better way for an owner to use the link?
Yes: send it for units that are not yours.
The commission is charged to the report of the unit that was booked. If your link sends a friend to a different Antlerzone unit — a bigger one for their family, one in Desaru for a beach weekend, one nearer where they are going — the RM20 comes off that unit's revenue, the Referral Commission lands on that unit's report, and the 5% comes to you with nothing deducted on your side. For you that is a clean 5%.
The plain ?ref= link without a listing does exactly this: your friend picks whatever unit suits them, and any booking they make in the next 7 days is yours. Add the listing only when you specifically want them in your own unit.
There is one thing the link does not do. It is a guest-referral programme. Introducing another owner who hands us a unit does not generate a commission through this link — there is no owner-to-owner referral in the system, and we would rather say so than let you expect one.
What stops this being gamed?
The rules are the same for owners and guests, and they are enforced by the booking system, not by someone checking afterwards:
- You cannot use your own code on your own account. The checkout rejects it.
- The friend must be logged in with a verified phone number, so one person cannot collect RM20 repeatedly under different names.
- One code per booking, no stacking with any other promotion, never exchanged for cash.
- A click that is more than 7 days old is forgotten. A code typed at checkout beats a click.
- Cancelled, no-show and unpaid bookings earn nothing; the commission only becomes payable on the check-in date.
- Withdrawals need RM50 of eligible commission, bank account details on file, and only one open request at a time. Payouts are reviewed, then sent by bank transfer in the same batch as owner payments. A rejected request returns the amount to your balance.
Note that nothing in the system stops an owner from referring guests to their own unit — it is allowed, it is just not as lucrative as it looks, which is the point of this article.
How does it look in the monthly report and at tax time?
In your owner report the booking shows the room revenue the friend paid (RM580 in the example), and Referral Commission appears under expenses with the owner/host/shared split your package specifies. The referral payout itself is not part of the owner payout — it comes from the Refer & earn page, into the bank account you registered there, and shows up as its own transfer.
On tax: referral commission is income to the person who receives it, separate from your homestay rental income, and the RM20 reduces the rental income your unit reports. How that is treated in your return depends on your circumstances; this article is not tax advice, and the owner-side treatment of homestay income is covered in how homestay income is taxed differently from long-term rental. Check with a tax agent before relying on any of it.
Five steps to send your unit's link tonight
- Open the owner portal, menu, Refer & earn. Your six-character code and link are at the top.
- Decide what you are doing. Giving a friend RM20 off your own unit: use the share button and attach your listing and their dates. Earning a clean 5%: send the plain link and let them choose.
- Send it by WhatsApp. Tell the friend to log in and verify their phone before paying, otherwise the RM20 does not apply and they will ask you why.
- On their check-in day, the commission moves from waiting to eligible on the same page.
- At RM50, press Withdraw with your bank details filled in. The transfer follows after review.
If you are still deciding whether to hand a unit over at all, start with how much a managed Johor Bahru condo actually pays out. If you already have one with us, the link is already in your portal — the full programme terms are on /affiliate.