Ask most owners of a holiday let or a boutique hotel what their guest experience runs on and you get a list. A digital guidebook app, such as Touch Stay. A welcome screen on the TV from someone else. A booking system. WhatsApp, email, or a messaging inbox in the channel manager. Maybe a feedback form that nobody looks at. Each tool does its job. None of them knows the others exist.
The result is a guest who gets three different emails with three different looks, a TV that says "Welcome, Guest", and a host copying names and arrival times between tabs. A proper guest experience treats the whole stay as one journey and gives you one system behind it.
The whole journey, not a guidebook
A digital guidebook covers one moment: the guest is in the property and wants the wifi password. That matters, but it is a small slice of the stay. The journey actually runs from the day they book to the day after they leave, and each stage is a chance to make the stay better or to earn a little more from it.
- Before arrival: directions, parking, check-in details and a chance to order extras.
- Arrival: a welcome that feels personal rather than generic.
- During the stay: house information, local tips and an easy way to ask for help.
- After the stay: feedback, a thank you and a reason to book direct next time.
What a guest experience app should actually do
1. Send a pre-arrival guide before the stay
A few days before arrival, the guest gets one email with everything they need: how to get there, where to park, how check-in works and what time they can arrive. It is branded as you, not as a software company, and it links to the rest of their guide. This one email cuts out most of the "what is the door code?" messages that arrive at 9pm.
2. Let guests pre-order extras
This is where the money is. Guests are most open to spending in the days before a trip, when they are planning and looking forward to it. A short menu of extras in that pre-arrival guide does the selling for you: a welcome hamper, a bottle of wine or fizz chilling in the fridge, an in-room massage, a kitchen pre-stocked with breakfast, flowers for an anniversary, late check-out. They pay up front, so the revenue lands before check-in and you know exactly what to prepare.
3. Welcome guests by name on the TV
When guests walk in and switch on the TV, they should see your branding, their name and the local forecast for the next few days, not a cable box menu. It is a small touch that costs almost nothing once it is set up, and it is the moment that makes a stay feel looked after. The TV can also show house rules, the wifi details and a QR code that opens the guide on their phone.
4. Hold the house information and your local picks
How the heating works, where the spare bedding lives, what day the bins go out, how to use the coffee machine. Then the good stuff: your favourite pub, the bakery that sells out by ten, the walk with the best view. Your local knowledge is part of what guests are paying for, so it deserves better than a laminated folder.
5. Capture messages and feedback before they become reviews
A simple way to message you during the stay, plus a quick check-in on the first evening ("Is everything as you expected?"), gives guests somewhere to raise a problem while you can still fix it. A shower that runs cold is a five-minute fix on day one. Left unsaid, it becomes a three-star review on day five. The best systems ask for feedback privately first, then point happy guests towards leaving a public review.
6. Give the owner one place to run it all
Behind all of this sits one dashboard. Bookings come in, guest names and dates flow through to the emails and the TV automatically, extra orders show up with what needs preparing and when, and messages land in one inbox. If you run several properties, you see them all in one view. This is the part most bolt-on setups never get right, and it is the part that saves you the most time.
Your guests do not care how many tools you use. They notice whether the stay feels joined up.
How upsells add revenue to every booking
Most owners already offer extras, they just offer them badly: a line on the website, a mention in a message, or a hopeful note in the welcome folder after the guest has already done their supermarket shop. Moving that offer into the pre-arrival guide, with photos, prices and a pay button, changes the numbers.
You do not need many guests to say yes for it to matter. If even a modest share of bookings add a hamper or a bottle of wine, that is extra revenue per stay that you were not getting before, collected in advance with no awkward conversation. Over a season, across every booking, it adds up to something meaningful, and in many cases it is enough to cover the cost of the system itself. Your own figures will depend on your guests, your prices and what you offer, so start with a few extras you can deliver well and see what sells.
Every extra paid for through your own system is also money you keep in full. If you take a lot of bookings through third-party platforms, our post on direct bookings versus third-party platforms covers why owning the guest relationship matters.
What to look for
- No download. Guests should open everything from a link or a QR code. Asking someone to install an app for a three-night stay is asking a lot.
- Your brand, not theirs. The emails, the guide and the TV screen should look like you.
- Connected to your bookings. If you have to type guest names in by hand, it will not get done on a busy changeover day.
- Payments built in. Extras should be paid for at the point of ordering, straight to your account.
- Easy to update. Changing a recommendation or a price should take a minute, not a support ticket.
- You own the data. Guest details and history should belong to you, so you can invite people back directly.
What it costs, honestly
There is no single price, because "guest app" can mean anything from a guidebook template to a fully joined-up system. Off-the-shelf guidebooks and TV welcome tools usually charge a monthly fee per property, which is cheap for one cottage and less cheap once you have several properties and three or four subscriptions stacked up. Some also take a cut of upsell sales.
A custom build costs more up front. What drives the price is mostly scope: how many properties, whether it connects to your booking system or channel manager, whether you want the TV welcome, how many extras and payment options you need, and how much ongoing support you want. The trade is a larger first payment in exchange for one system you own, no stack of monthly fees, and no commission on your extras. If you are curious how build costs work more broadly, we wrote up how much an app costs in the UK.
Build your own or buy off the shelf?
For a single holiday let with a simple setup, an off-the-shelf guidebook is often perfectly good, and we would tell you so. It gets you online quickly and the monthly cost is small.
A custom guest experience starts to make sense when:
- you run several properties or rooms and the subscriptions are piling up;
- you want extras to be a real revenue line, not an afterthought;
- your brand matters and the generic look of a template undercuts it;
- you are tired of copying guest details between systems;
- you want to own your guest data and build direct, repeat bookings.
The middle route is common too: start with the pieces that pay back first, usually the pre-arrival guide and pre-ordered extras, then add the TV welcome and messaging once the core is working.
Questions owners ask
What is a guest experience app?
A guest experience app is the set of digital touchpoints a guest uses around their stay: a pre-arrival guide, a way to order extras, house information and local recommendations, a welcome on the in-room TV, messaging with the host and a way to leave feedback. The good ones join all of this up and give the owner one place to manage it.
Do guests need to download an app?
They should not have to. The best guest experiences run in the browser, opened from a link in the pre-arrival email or a QR code in the room, so guests get everything without visiting an app store. A native app only makes sense for larger groups or venues with a lot of repeat guests.
How do upsells in a guest app make money?
By letting guests order extras such as hampers, wine, late check-out or treatments before they arrive, when they are excited about the trip and planning ahead. Payment is taken up front, so the revenue lands before check-in and you can prepare in advance rather than scrambling on the day.
Should I build my own guest app or use an off-the-shelf tool?
Off-the-shelf tools are quicker and cheaper to start with, and a digital guidebook on its own is often fine for a single property. A custom build makes sense when you want everything joined up with your booking data and branding, when you run several properties, or when monthly fees across several tools are adding up to more than owning one system would cost.
The bottom line
A guest experience is not one app, it is the whole stay. Join up the pre-arrival guide, the extras, the TV welcome, the house guide and the messaging, run it from one place, and you get happier guests, fewer late-night messages and more revenue from every booking you already have.
If you are running a holiday let, a group of cottages or a small hotel and want to talk it through, tell us how your stays work today. We will tell you honestly whether an off-the-shelf tool will do, or whether something built around you would pay for itself.
