---
title: "Touch Stay Alternative: HolidayHero vs Touch Stay"
description: "Compare HolidayHero and Touch Stay: digital guidebooks, online check-in, smart locks, upsells that post to the folio, WhatsApp messaging and pricing."
url: "https://www.holidayhero.com/compare/holidayhero-vs-touch-stay"
updated: "2026-07-15T11:12:55+00:00"
---

# HolidayHero vs Touch Stay

> Touch Stay is a well-liked digital guidebook platform, now extended with an AI chatbot, an upsell store and a guest CRM. HolidayHero starts from the guidebook too, then runs the rest of the stay: check-in and registration, smart devices, every messaging channel, and revenue that posts to the folio. The real difference is how much of the stay each platform is built to carry.

## Capability comparison

### Arrival & check-in

| Capability | HolidayHero | Touch Stay |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Online check-in before arrival | Included — Configurable per brand | Not available — Not publicly documented |
| ID / passport capture & verification | Included — Country-aware document types | Not available — Not publicly documented |
| Automatic guest registration filing (police / municipality) | Included — Spain SES Hospedajes live | Not available — Not publicly documented |
| Smart-lock / door-code / mobile-key access | Included — Goki, Bold; stage-gated codes | Not available — Not publicly documented |

### Guest app & experience

| Capability | HolidayHero | Touch Stay |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Own colours, logo & theme on the guest app + comms | Included — App + all comms | Included — Logo, colours, fonts |
| Guest app served on the operator's own domain | Included | Not available — Not publicly documented |
| Guest app adapts by moment-in-time vs the reservation (stages) | Included — Per reservation stage | Not available — Not publicly documented; journey via scheduled messages |
| Guests and operators add items to an in-app itinerary | Included — Guests + operators | Not available — Not publicly documented |
| Create / sort / hide custom guest-app sections | Included — Per stage | Included — Topics fully customisable |
| Digital guidebooks / house manual | Included — Also feed the AI | Included — Core product |
| Auto-translation into many guest languages | Included — Auto-translate, rich text | Included — 30+ languages |
| Local / venue events distributed to guests in the app | Included | Not available — Not publicly documented |

### Messaging & AI

| Capability | HolidayHero | Touch Stay |
| --- | --- | --- |
| One inbox across channels | Included — Email, WhatsApp, SMS | Partial — Email worldwide; two-way SMS US-only |
| Autonomous AI answering & actioning guest messages | Included — Answers + actions inquiries | Partial — Guidebook-scoped Q&A chatbot |
| WhatsApp as a guest channel | Included — Rich two-way | Not available — Not publicly documented |
| Scheduled / templated messages gated by conditional rules | Included — Conditional rules at send time | Included — Templates + scheduling; SMS US-only |
| Booking.com / Airbnb messages synced into the inbox | Included — Booking.com + Airbnb | Not available — Not publicly documented |
| PMS guest-message threads synced into the inbox | Included | Not available — Not publicly documented |

### Upsells & revenue

| Capability | HolidayHero | Touch Stay |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Upsell / ancillary catalogue in the guest app | Included — Per-unit/person, VAT by country | Included — Up to 20 items; Stripe |
| Charges post to the folio / PMS bill | Included — Via supported PMS | Not available — Not publicly documented; Stripe checkout |
| Supplier routing with automatic commission split | Included — Automatic three-way split | Not available — Not publicly documented |
| Inquiries offloaded directly to suppliers (no middleman) | Included — Supplier portal | Not available — Not publicly documented |
| Local experiences / activities catalogue | Included — Curated catalogue | Included — Partner integrations (Viator, Tiqets etc.) |

### Operations & intelligence

| Capability | HolidayHero | Touch Stay |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Single operational dashboard for the property | Included | Partial — Guide + store analytics hub |
| Guest-app analytics / actionable insights from guest data | Included | Included — Data dashboard |
| Guest sentiment detection | Included — Across interactions | Partial — Guide feedback sentiment |
| Composite 0–100 guest engagement score (5 dimensions) | Included — 0–100, 5 dimensions | Not available — Not publicly documented |
| Event-driven automations / workflow builder | Included | Not available — Not publicly documented |
| In-stay surveys & post-stay review generation | Included — In-stay + post-stay | Included — 5-star popup + private feedback |

### Platform & fit

| Capability | HolidayHero | Touch Stay |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Runs beside the existing PMS (no rip-and-replace) | Included — ~17 documented PMS | Included — Runs beside any PMS |
| Headless guest app: run the guest experience inside your own app/site | Included | Not available — Not publicly documented |
| Integration API for system-to-system integration | Included | Not available — No public developer API documented |
| Breadth of PMS / channel / lock / payment integrations | Included — PMS, locks, registration, content | Included — 40+ claimed; ~30 PMS listed |
| Multi-property / group management & rollup | Included — Org > workspaces rollup | Included — Single unit to large portfolios |
| Run multiple distinct brands from one account | Included | Not available — Not publicly documented |

### Pricing & commercial

| Capability | HolidayHero | Touch Stay |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Public, self-serve pricing (no mandatory sales call) | Included — From €6.50/unit/mo | Included — From $8.25/property/mo |
| Free / self-serve start | Included | Included — 14-day trial, no card |
| No commission taken on the operator's guests | Included | Included — Flat per-property pricing |
| Guided onboarding / setup | Included — Guided, €100–250 one-time | Included — Self-serve; setup service |

### Security & data

| Capability | HolidayHero | Touch Stay |
| --- | --- | --- |
| GDPR compliance & EU data residency | Included | Partial — Encryption + compliance stated; EU residency not publicly documented |
| Operator owns & can export first-party guest data | Included — Exports | Included — CSV export |
| PCI-compliant payment handling | Included | Included — Via Stripe |

## Detail

Touch Stay is a digital guidebook platform: it turns the printed welcome book into a shareable web guide, and has grown a toolkit around it with an AI chatbot, an upsell store, scheduled messaging and a guest CRM. HolidayHero is a whole-stay platform for hotels, parks, hostels, aparthotels and rentals, where the guidebook is one pillar among arrival, messaging, revenue, operations and smart-home control.

### Where Touch Stay shines

Touch Stay has spent years perfecting the digital guidebook, and it shows. Guides are quick to build (the AI generator can draft one from an Airbnb listing in minutes), need no app download, speak 30+ languages, and connect to a long list of PMS platforms. Pricing is public and self-serve with a 14-day free trial and no credit card. If a beautifully executed guidebook is the whole brief, Touch Stay does that job well.

### Why HolidayHero

HolidayHero's bet is that the guidebook is the start of the stay, not the end of it. Everything between booking and review lives on one platform, and that changes what you can offer guests and what you earn from them.

**Arrival is a workflow, not a page.** Touch Stay's guide explains how to check in. HolidayHero performs the check-in: online check-in with configurable fields, ID and passport capture, automatic guest registration filing with the authorities (live for Spain's SES Hospedajes), and smart-lock access via integrations like Goki and Bold. None of these arrival capabilities are publicly documented on Touch Stay's site, which is consistent with its guidebook focus.

**Messaging without borders.** Touch Stay's Message hub covers email worldwide, with two-way SMS currently limited to US-based users per its own FAQ. HolidayHero runs a unified inbox across email and rich two-way WhatsApp, with Booking.com and Airbnb threads and PMS guest messages synced in. The AI concierge answers and acts on guest messages across those channels, with sentiment detection and a 0–100 engagement score to flag the guests who need attention.

**Revenue that reaches the folio.** Both platforms sell upsells. Touch Stay's widget supports up to 20 items with Stripe checkout. HolidayHero's catalogue is unlimited in practice, supports per-unit and per-person pricing with VAT by country, routes inquiries directly to suppliers with an automatic commission split, and posts charges to the room bill via supported PMS. For operators with on-site F&B, spa or activities, the folio is where ancillary revenue actually lands.

**A guest app that changes with the stay.** HolidayHero's app adapts by reservation stage: what a guest sees before arrival, in-stay and after checkout is controlled per stage, down to custom sections, an in-app itinerary guests and operators build together, and smart-home devices that appear only when relevant. Touch Stay covers the journey through scheduled messages; a stage-adaptive guest app is not publicly documented.

**Built for portfolios and builders.** HolidayHero runs multiple distinct brands from one account, serves the guest app on your own domain, and offers a headless guest app plus an integration API for teams that want the engine without the UI. It is PMS-agnostic across ~17 documented integrations including hotel systems, is GDPR-compliant with EU data residency, and publishes pricing from €6.50 per unit per month with a self-serve start.

### Capability by capability

The table above tells the story row by row. In short: the two platforms are at genuine parity on guidebooks, branding, multilingual content, transparent pricing and self-serve trials, and Touch Stay's data dashboard is a real strength for guide analytics. HolidayHero pulls ahead across arrival (all four rows), messaging depth (WhatsApp, OTA and PMS inbox sync), revenue plumbing (folio posting, supplier splits and routing), operations intelligence (workflows, engagement scoring) and platform openness (headless, API, multi-brand, custom domain).

### Which fits you

If all you need is a polished digital guidebook with an upsell widget on top, Touch Stay is a fine pick, especially for individual hosts in the US where its SMS messaging is available. If you run hotels, parks, hostels or a growing rental portfolio and want arrival, messaging, revenue and operations handled on one platform that your guests and your PMS both plug into, HolidayHero is built for exactly that.