Minoan Review

Minoan is not a guest-messaging or property-management tool — it's a free B2B purchasing platform that gives Airbnb hosts, property managers, interior designers and boutique hotels member-only discounts on furniture, mattresses, electronics, linens and amenities from a catalog of 150-plus brands, plus a "Showroom" feature that turns a listing's own photos into a shoppable storefront guests can buy from. Founder Marc Hostovsky built it after years in online retail at Jet.com and Walmart; the company calls its model "native retail" — selling through the real spaces guests already occupy instead of a traditional storefront.

Pricing

There's no subscription to evaluate. Minoan's own site states plainly, "No membership fees. No subscriptions. No catch — just savings." The purchasing side makes money by negotiating trade discounts with its 150+ brand partners and passing most of the saving to the host — the company says "most Minoan orders save 30–60%" (a February 2024 figure on its how-it-works page), with no purchase minimum required. The Showroom side is also free to run — "no setup costs or monthly subscription fee" — and instead pays the host a commission when a guest buys something shown off in their space. Minoan does not publish its commission percentages anywhere public; the site says the full brand-by-brand commission list is "available to approved Minoan members in the Help Center" only, so a prospective host can't see the actual take rate before applying.

Who it's for

Minoan is built for people who furnish or restock short-term-rental and boutique-hotel properties — hosts, property management companies, and hospitality interior designers — not for anyone managing guest communication or bookings. Access isn't automatic: signing up runs through a three-step application ("Details," "Project," "Eligibility") that collects your name, contact details, business type and location, and the presence of a dedicated eligibility step means Minoan is vetting applicants rather than opening the discount catalog to anyone who registers. Once approved, a host can use the platform purely to buy at a discount, purely to run a Showroom storefront, or both — there's no requirement to do one to access the other.

What we could verify

We confirmed the mechanics Minoan describes on its own site: a Chrome extension that carries a single cart across 150+ brand websites, one dashboard for order and shipment tracking, returns that "mirror our brand partners' policies" rather than a Minoan-specific policy, and Showroom payouts issued quarterly by email with a choice of instant Minoan-credit payout or bank deposit. We could not verify the actual commission percentages, since those sit behind Minoan's members-only Help Center. We also could not verify the company's background claims — that its investors have previously backed Etsy, Facebook, Warby Parker and Harry's, or that staff came from Google, Uber, Walmart and Zillow — since these are self-reported on Minoan's About page with no dollar figures, dates, or named investors attached. For independent, third-party sentiment: Minoan's G2 listing exists but returned an HTTP 403 (blocked) when we tried to load it, and we could not find any Minoan listing on Capterra or Trustpilot at all, so there's no independent review-platform rating to weigh against the company's own claims. One independent STR-tools directory, STR Hub, lists free access and broad brand discounts as strengths and flags a slower purchase process than buying direct plus a learning curve to build an efficient quote-gathering workflow as the tradeoffs — the closest thing to independent commentary we located.

How it compares to our top pick

Minoan and BnBGenius aren't really competitors — they monetize opposite ends of a stay. BnBGenius is a flat $10/month AI layer (free for your first 500 messages) that needs no PMS and runs the operational side of a listing: an AI phone concierge, a guest-task loop, review writing, and automated gap-night upsells. Minoan never touches the guest conversation or the booking calendar; it's a procurement and passive-commission tool for the physical furniture and goods inside the unit. A host furnishing a new property or restocking worn-out linens has a real use for Minoan's discount catalog and Showroom commission — that same host still needs something answering the phone, chasing tasks, and selling the empty night before checkout, which is where a tool like BnBGenius comes in. The two can run side by side without overlapping.

See how Minoan compares to every other option in our best Airbnb host software ranking.