Boutique homes · 18 countries
Stay somewhere with a point of view.
A small, edited collection of architect-designed houses, island villas and city apartments. Booked direct from the people who own them, with a real person on the other end of the email.
The collection
Homes we are recommending this month
Picked by the team who visited them — a mix of what is quiet in April, what has just been renovated and what our guests keep asking us to hold.
Why Cloubay
We turn down about nine homes in ten.
Cloubay started in 2019 with four houses in Corsica and a simple rule: if we would not send our own family there, it does not go on the site. That rule has cost us a lot of inventory and saved our guests a lot of bad weeks.
Every property is visited, measured and photographed by us. We write the descriptions ourselves, in plain English, including the things a host would rather we left out — the steep drive, the church bell at seven, the one bathroom that is smaller than it looks.
Just added
New to the collection
What booking direct gets you
Four things we do not compromise on
We go and stay first
Nobody lists on Cloubay from a PDF. A member of our team sleeps in the bed, runs the shower and checks the wifi before a home goes live.
Book the house, not a feed
Rates come straight from the owner or their manager. No auction-style pricing, no surge on school holidays, no surprise cleaning fee at the end.
One person, start to finish
The same travel specialist answers your first question, holds the dates and sorts the taxi from the airport. Replies inside two hours, seven days a week.
Money held until check-in
Deposits sit in a segregated client account and are released to the host the day after you arrive. Damage cover up to $5,000 is included.
Guests
“Booked a farmhouse in Puglia for eleven people and half of them were fussy. Cloubay sent the floor plan, the pool depth and a photo of the coffee machine before we paid a cent. Everything was exactly as described.”Rachel P. — booked Masseria stay, June 2026
“We had to move our dates twice because of a work thing. Both times someone replied within the hour and just fixed it. That is worth paying for.”Daniel & Ko — booked Corsica, August 2026
“The house in Nova Scotia was better than the photographs, which never happens. We have already booked next October.”Ana M. — booked Chimney Corner, October 2026
The Journal
Notes from the road
Guides6 min readWhere to go in the shoulder season
Nine months of the year the good houses are free and the towns still belong to the people who live in them. Our team on when to travel where.
Destinations8 min readA weekend in Ostuni, off the tourist strip
Olive groves, a whitewashed old town and one bakery worth setting an alarm for. What to eat, where to swim and which trulli to book.
Design5 min readWhat actually makes a house comfortable
Good architecture photographs well. Comfort is quieter: mattress quality, blackout curtains, where the plug sockets are. Our checklist, in full.Newsletter
New houses, twice a month.
Roughly forty homes a year make it through. We send the good ones before they are published, plus the odd note on where to eat.