Touch Stay Alternative: What to Look For in a Digital Guest Guidebook
Touch Stay is a well-known digital guidebook tool, widely used by vacation rental hosts to replace paper welcome books. If you're reading this, you're probably not unhappy with the concept — a digital guidebook is clearly the right direction — you're just checking whether another tool might fit your property, your budget, or your workflow better.
This guide isn't a takedown. It's a practical checklist for evaluating any digital guidebook platform, including where OnboardGuest specifically fits.
Why hosts look for alternatives in the first place
Most searches for "Touch Stay alternative" come from a handful of recurring needs:
- A free tier to start with. Many hosts want to try a digital guidebook on one property before committing to a paid plan.
- A lower price point, especially for hosts managing a single unit or just starting out.
- One tool that covers both hotels and short-term rentals, instead of switching platforms as a portfolio grows or diversifies.
- A faster setup, ideally without manually retyping information that already exists in a PDF or a house manual.
None of this means Touch Stay is a bad product — it's an established one. It just means the market has room for different pricing models and different feature priorities, and it's worth comparing before you commit.
What to actually evaluate in a digital guidebook tool
Skip the marketing pages and check these directly:
1. Pricing structure
Does the tool offer a genuinely free tier, or only a trial? Is pricing per property, per booking, or flat? For OnboardGuest, pricing is straightforward:
| Plan | Price | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Free | €0 | 1 property, all sections, QR code |
| Pro — Hotels | €10/month | Unlimited properties, photos, branding, statistics |
| Pro — Short-term rentals | €5/month | Unlimited properties, photos, branding |
There's no forced trial period and no card required to start on the free plan.
2. Setup time
Building a guidebook from scratch, section by section, can take hours. Look for a tool that can import an existing document — OnboardGuest includes a PDF import feature that reads an existing welcome book or house manual and pre-fills the guidebook sections automatically, so you're editing rather than starting from a blank page.
3. Guest-side experience
The guidebook should be accessible instantly, without an app download or an account. A QR code placed at check-in or in the room should open a clean, mobile-first page directly in the browser. That's the baseline expectation now, and it's how OnboardGuest guidebooks work — scan and read, no install.
4. Language support
If you host international guests, check whether the tool translates content automatically or requires you to write and maintain every language version by hand. OnboardGuest supports multi-language guidebooks with automatic translation, so one guidebook serves guests in their own language without duplicate work on your side.
5. What's actually included at each price tier
Some tools gate basic features — like custom branding or usage statistics — behind higher tiers. Check what "unlimited properties" actually means, and whether photos, your own logo, and visit statistics are included or sold separately. On OnboardGuest's Pro plans, branding, photos, and statistics are included, not add-ons.
6. Hotels vs. short-term rentals
Some guidebook tools are built primarily for one property type. If you run both a boutique hotel and a short-term rental, or plan to expand into either, check whether the platform genuinely supports both guest journeys (front-desk-style hotel info vs. self-check-in rental instructions) rather than forcing a single generic template.
How OnboardGuest compares on these points
- Free to start: one property, every section, on the free plan — not a time-limited trial.
- Fast setup: import an existing PDF welcome book and edit from there instead of building from zero.
- QR-code guest access: no app, no login, works on any phone.
- Multi-language by default: guidebooks translate automatically for international guests.
- Built for both: dedicated support for hotels and for short-term/vacation rentals, each with pricing that matches the property type.
- Live demo: you can try a working guidebook on the OnboardGuest homepage before creating an account.
Making the decision
The honest answer is that the best digital guidebook tool depends on your property type, your budget, and how much content you're migrating from an existing document. If you want to see whether OnboardGuest fits before switching anything, the fastest way is to try the live demo and compare it directly against what you're using today.
If you're earlier in the process and still deciding what a digital guidebook should even include, our complete guide to digital guest guidebooks covers the fundamentals — sections to include, how QR-code access works, and what separates a good guidebook from a static PDF.
Ready to see it in action? Start free with OnboardGuest — no card required, and your first guidebook can be live in a few minutes.
