Refer a friend to an Antlerzone homestay in Johor Bahru or Desaru and you earn 5% of the room rate on every direct booking they make through your link or code. Your friend gets RM20 off their first direct booking of RM150 or more. A typical two-night weekend stay earns you around RM15 to RM35; from RM50 you can withdraw to your bank.
Most "homestay affiliate" pages you find on Google are written for bloggers with a website who want to join Agoda or Booking.com. This one is for the ordinary person: you have a WhatsApp group, a few Singaporean colleagues who cross the Causeway on weekends, or a family that comes to JB every school holiday. Here is what that is worth, with nothing rounded up.
How does the Antlerzone referral program work?
Every guest with an account on our guest portal gets one fixed six-letter code and a link that looks like portal.antlerzone.com/booking?ref=XXXXXX. Owners who place their units with us get one too. You share it. Three things then happen, in this order:
| Step | What happens | Who pays |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Friend opens your link or types your code at checkout | Your code is attached to that browser for 7 days (last link clicked wins, the same rule Shopee uses) | Nobody |
| 2. Friend pays for a direct booking | RM20 comes off the room price if the room is RM150 or more and it is their first direct booking | Comes out of our side, not your friend's |
| 3. Friend checks in | 5% of the room rate they paid (after the RM20) is credited to you as confirmed | Comes out of our side |
The key word is direct. If your friend reads your message, then opens Airbnb or Agoda and books the same unit there, there is no referral. Those platforms do not tell us who sent the guest, and the room rate there already carries the platform's own fee. Direct booking is also why we can afford to pay you at all: a direct booking saves us the 15% to 18% an online travel agent would have taken, and part of that saving is what funds your 5% and your friend's RM20.
How much is 5% in real ringgit?
Room rates in Johor Bahru are not high, so be realistic. Across booking sites, JB short-stay apartments average roughly RM135 on a weeknight and RM180 on a weekend night, and family-sized units in Desaru or the better JB towers go above RM250. Using those public ranges, here is what one referral is worth. Commission is calculated on the room rate only, after the RM20 discount, and never on the deposit, cleaning fee or add-ons.
| Stay your friend books | Room rate before discount | After RM20 | Your 5% |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 weeknight, one-bedroom in JB | RM135 | RM115 | RM5.75 |
| 2 weekend nights, JB city unit | RM360 | RM340 | RM17.00 |
| 3 nights, family unit, school holiday | RM750 | RM730 | RM36.50 |
| 4 nights, Desaru family unit | RM1,000 | RM980 | RM49.00 |
Two things stand out. First, a single short stay is coffee money, not income. Second, the RM20 discount applies to the first direct booking only. When the same friend books again, their room rate is not reduced, so your 5% is on the full amount: the 2-night weekend stay pays you RM18 the second time, not RM17.
When does the money become "confirmed"?
This is where most referral programs are vague and where ours is deliberately strict, because the rules decide whether you ever see the money.
A referred booking sits as waiting from the day it is paid until the day your friend actually checks in. On check-in day it becomes confirmed. If the booking is cancelled, whether by the guest, by us, or by a payment that never completed, or if your friend simply never shows up, it is marked cancelled and the commission disappears. A no-show is not a stay, so it does not pay. We read this live from the booking itself, so what you see on your Refer & earn page is never out of date.
Three more rules protect the program from being gamed, and you should know them before you try:
- You cannot refer yourself. If the person paying is the owner of the code, nobody earns.
- A code that was never actually clicked never counts for link attribution. The click is the proof. The exception is when your friend types your code at checkout, which is proof on its own: that works even if they saw your link on a phone and booked on a laptop.
- 7 days. If your friend clicks today and books in three weeks, the link has expired. Typing the code at checkout still works.
How do I get paid, and how long does it take?
Confirmed commissions pile up in your guest portal. Once the confirmed total that has not yet been withdrawn reaches RM50, a Withdraw button appears, provided you have filled in your bank details. Pressing it sends a payout request that our admin reviews. Approved requests are paid by bank transfer, the same bulk transfer batch we use to pay our owners every month. If a request is rejected (for example, bank details that do not match the account holder), the commissions go back into your available balance and you can request again.
So how many referrals is RM50? From the table above, roughly two or three weekend stays by friends, or one longer family holiday. If your circle is Singaporean weekenders who come to JB once a month, one referral per month gets you to a withdrawal every two or three months.
Is 5% good compared with Agoda or Airbnb referrals?
It is fair to ask. The honest comparison:
| Program | What you earn | Catch |
|---|---|---|
| Agoda affiliate | 4% to 7% of the booking, tiered by monthly volume | You need an approved website or app; 4% until you pass 50 bookings a month |
| Booking.com affiliate | 25% to 40% of Booking.com's commission, which works out to roughly 2.5% to 8% of the booking value | Same: built for publishers, not for a WhatsApp forward |
| Airbnb guest referral | Travel credit, not cash, and capped at 10 referrals a year in markets where it runs | Not cash; limited |
| Antlerzone refer & earn | 5% of room rate, in cash to your bank, plus RM20 for your friend | Only on our 100-plus units in JB and Desaru, and only direct bookings |
If you run a travel site with thousands of readers, Agoda will pay you more because the inventory is global. If you are a person with friends who already come to JB, a 5% cash commission on a specific unit you can vouch for, with a discount you can hand your friend, is the better deal, because the conversion is the thing that matters and "I stayed here, use my code" converts.
What should I actually send my friend?
A link alone gets ignored. What works in practice:
- Send the link for the specific unit your friend would like (
?listing=...&ref=...is on every listing's share button in the portal), not the generic booking page. - Say the RM20 out loud: "first direct booking RM150 and above, RM20 off with my code".
- Tell them to type the code at checkout rather than relying on the link, so phone-to-laptop switching does not lose it.
- Remind them that direct bookings include the same eKYC check-in, smart-lock code and parking registration as any other booking; nothing is skipped because it is direct.
One caveat that cuts against us: if your friend is a heavy Agoda or Airbnb user with loyalty status or coupons there, their net price on the platform may occasionally beat our direct rate even after RM20. Do not oversell. Send the link, let them compare, and the ones who book direct will book direct again next time, which is where your repeat 5% comes from.
Your referral link and code are already waiting in the guest portal under Refer & earn; the full terms live on the affiliate page.