Our story
The guest writes to the person with the keys.
Written by Virgin Islands Villas · Updated Oct 2026 · How this was checked
Virgin Islands Villas is a directory of houses on St. John, St. Thomas and the British Virgin Islands, listed by the people who own them, with the real rate shown and no service fee. It was built by an owner on St. John, who runs a house on Great Cruz Bay and lists it here on the same terms as everyone else.
The promise:
- No service fee
- No payment window
- The owner answers
- A flat fee a year, never a percentage
How it began
We run our own house on St. John
Our own house sits on the water in Great Cruz Bay, and nobody runs it but us: the calendar, the greeting at the ferry, the reply to every note. It is listed here on the same terms as every other house, and it is where we learned what a listing owes a guest.
Most houses on these islands are kept the same way, by the person whose name is on the deed or by a small local manager who knows the house and the road to it. That is who you write to here.
Explore villasWhy it exists
Built by an owner, paid for by owners
The booking sites were built to stand between you and that person. A service fee comes out of every stay, a payment window goes in between, and the message box strips out any phone number either of you types. On Airbnb the fee is 14.1% to 16.5% of the subtotal from the guest, or, under the single fee it now requires of most hosts, about 15.5% from the host, by its own fee page as of October 2026. Here the service fee is 0%.
Owners pay a flat fee a year to be listed, and that is the whole business. It leaves us no reason to steer you toward the wrong house, and no reason to keep its owner out of sight. We never take the booking, never hold the money and never send you elsewhere to finish. What we can check, we do: the mark on a listing means a person here read it before it went live and confirmed it is run by the person who listed it. The tradeoff: with no platform in the middle, nobody holds your money for you. You pay an owner you have not met, by the method they name, so read paying an owner safely before you send anything.
More than a directory
Everyone pays for the middle, and nobody gets to talk.
This site is the directory we wanted to exist. Every claimed villa is listed by its owner or manager, and where a page is built from a villa’s public listing before its owner joins, it says so at the top. The rates are theirs.
Where the owner has linked a calendar, it is read from their own booking system every day, and villas without one say so. You write to them, they write back, and if you agree the dates you pay them directly.
How direct bookings workHow the pages are checked
Every fee and fare carries the date we checked it
A fee, an hour, a fare or a schedule on a guide comes from the authority or the operator that sets it, such as the National Park Service or the ferry company, and the sentence says when we checked it. Drive times are our own measurements, not another site’s estimate. Local guides and news are read to get the names right, but a guide cites only the government or the business the fact is about, and links no booking or review site. Where nobody publishes what a reader needs, such as how good a reef is or how busy a beach gets, the page gives our own read and says it is ours; a price or a timetable is never estimated. The editorial policy has the rest.
What we believe
Nobody knows a house like the person who keeps the keys.