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Tabellara vs Touch Stay: which digital guidebook fits your rental?
The short version: pick Touch Stay if you need offline access or its guest chatbot and messaging toolkit today. Pick Tabellara if you want the full AI build on every property rather than just your first, six designed layouts, page-level analytics, and building that stays free with no 14-day clock. Since building and previewing on Tabellara costs nothing, the cheapest way to decide is to connect a listing and compare the two results side by side.
| Tabellara | Touch Stay | |
|---|---|---|
| Trying it | Free for 30 days, no card required; drafts never expire. Guest WiFi and Guest TV each get their own 30 days free at a first property | 14-day free trial, no card; the AI-generated guide is deleted after 14 days unless you set a password |
| Switching from Touch Stay | Paste your Touch Stay guest link and the whole guide copies over in seconds: your sections, cards, formatting, website links, and map pins, intact (text only; photos come from your listing at full quality) | Not applicable |
| AI builder | The full build runs for every property: each connected listing becomes a finished guide in about a minute, with your photos placed on the right pages and local recommendations researched and mapped | The AI generator builds your first guide from an Airbnb or Booking.com link in about 60 seconds during sign-up; additional guides use an AI content assistant inside each topic text box |
| Listing sources | Airbnb, through a free Hospitable Connect link (an official Airbnb partner), and OwnerRez, with reservations and guest contacts syncing; more on the way | A public Airbnb or Booking.com listing URL for the first guide, no account connection needed; an Airbnb connector and PMS integrations can import properties |
| Entry price, one property | $6/mo, or $54/yr (three months free). Guest WiFi is $6 per network and Guest TV $6 per property with three TVs; all three at one property is the $15 bundle | Starter: $12.50/mo, or $99/yr. The cheapest tier with analytics is Growth, at $139/yr |
| Feature tiers | One plan, everything included: analytics, templates and linked sections, deep links, PDF export, video, all six layouts | Three tiers. Starter does not include analytics, offline access, PDF export, PIN access, review pop-ups, contact collection, a custom domain, or extra team seats; those start at Growth ($139/yr) and Pro ($159/yr) per property |
| Design | Six distinct layouts (Card, Editorial, Field Guide, Retreat, App, Noir), fifteen themes, custom colors and your logo | One guidebook format with deep branding controls: logo, colors, fonts, and imagery |
| Media | Photos imported in full resolution from your listing, plus YouTube or Vimeo video on any card (tap to play) | Images and videos in guides |
| Analytics | Page-level: the ten most-read cards at a glance, every visitor session with city, state, device and the QR or deep link they arrived through, searchable, sortable and exportable to CSV, plus a counted tap on every quick link including book-direct | Not included in Starter. From the Growth tier up: a data dashboard (unique visitors, view trends, topic ratings) plus contact collection |
| Multi-property | Start a new property as a copy of any guide; copy sections or single cards between guides; mark any guide as a template and link its sections, so one edit to house rules or checkout updates every property while each guide keeps its own arrival details and WiFi | Shared content across guidebooks through a Content Hub and tags, with per-guide customisations |
| Personalized guest links | Reservation-aware links: connect an Airbnb or OwnerRez listing and every booking gets its own link that greets the guest by name with their dates and party, sent automatically (Airbnb message five minutes after booking, or an OwnerRez template field) and expiring after the stay; the permanent guide link keeps working alongside it | Per-property guidebook links; a per-reservation personalized guidebook page is not a documented feature |
| Guest access | Web link and QR code, no app, no login, plus a direct link and QR for every section and card (a code by the coffee maker opens the coffee card) and a designed PDF download for printing | Web link and QR code, no app. Offline access and PDF export are not in Starter; they start at Growth |
| Languages | Automatic translations into 25 languages, included with every guide; guests are offered their own language on arrival and can switch in one tap | Multi-language guidebooks |
| Beyond the guidebook | Guest TV ($6 a property, three TVs): a welcome by name on the Google TV they already watch, the guide on screen, a rating from the remote that sends 4 and 5 stars to Google, and every app signed out at checkout, all run by a Guest Journey you set once per property. Guest WiFi ($6 a network): a branded sign-in page that captures every guest's email. Guest Store on every plan | AI chatbot on every plan, Message Hub (scheduled email and two-way SMS), guest contacts, review pop-up, upsell widget, PMS integrations |
| Selling extras | Guest Store on every plan: sell early check-in, late check-out, and extras from inside the guide. Guests pay your own Stripe account directly (you are the merchant of record), each item is instant or approve-first on a window you choose, and Tabellara's fee is 2% per completed order | An in-guide store with online payments is included on every tier, with a per-order commission on sales |
| Earning from local tours | Tick one box and Viator tours near the house appear in the guide's Local Experiences section and on the Guest TV screensaver, each with a code to book; 4% of every booking is paid to you through your own Stripe account | Not a documented feature |
Touch Stay pricing, tiers, and feature gates from their public pricing page and pricing calculator as of August 2026 (Starter/Growth/Pro per-property tiers; promotional strikethrough prices shown as billed-annually equivalents); check touchstay.com for current details.
Start free, without a stopwatch
Both platforms let you start without a card, but the deals differ where it counts. Touch Stay gives you 14 days, and the guide its AI generates is deleted after the trial unless you set a password. Tabellara's free tier has no clock: build every guide, run the AI builder, preview all six layouts, and take a month to decide if you like; nothing expires and nothing is deleted. You pay only at the moment a guide goes live to guests. When you do publish, a property runs a flat $6 a month on Tabellara against $12.50 for Touch Stay's Starter tier, or $54 a year against $99. And that is entry tier against everything included: to add analytics, offline access, PDF export or review pop-ups on Touch Stay you move to Growth at $139 a year, which makes the real like-for-like $54 against $139.
The AI builder: every property, not just the first
Both platforms generate a guidebook from your listing, and Touch Stay's generator is genuinely quick: paste a public Airbnb or Booking.com link at sign-up and a guide appears in about 60 seconds. The difference is what happens after the first one. Touch Stay's own page states the AI generator is only available for your first guide during sign-up; every additional guide uses an AI content assistant that helps you write inside each topic text box. Tabellara's full build runs for every property: your tenth listing gets the same one-minute treatment as your first, with your amenity photos placed on the right pages and real local restaurants and attractions researched, mapped, and photographed. One honest trade-off in Touch Stay's favor: their generator takes any public URL including Booking.com, while Tabellara's build works through a free Hospitable connection to your Airbnb account, which takes a minute to approve and is also how your WiFi and house manual arrive verbatim instead of scraped.
Switching without rebuilding
The strongest reason hosts stay on any guidebook platform is the hours already sunk into it, so here is exactly what switching costs: about one minute per property. Connect your Airbnb, click build, and compare the finished Tabellara guide against your current one side by side, on a free account with no expiry. Your best hand-written passages paste over the AI draft in minutes. Nothing about trying it commits you, because nothing is paid until you publish; if the comparison does not go Tabellara's way, close the tab and you have lost five minutes.
Design: six layouts versus one flexible format
Touch Stay gives you one well-built guidebook format with deep branding control. Tabellara treats design as a first-class feature: the same content renders as friendly tiles, a boutique magazine, a field manual, full-photo glass, a native-feeling app, or a moody after-dark serif, and you can switch any time without touching your content. These are the six layouts, live, and each one links to a tappable full-size demo:
The Driftwood
📍 12 Shorebreak Avenue, Folly Beach, SCThree blocks to the sand. Boards in the garage.
Timberline Cabin
Basecamp for the Blue Ridge. Trails start at the back gate.
The Velvet Hour
808 Rue Dauphine, New Orleans, LA ↗An upstairs hideaway in the Quarter. Pour something.
Analytics: dashboards versus page-level truth
Touch Stay's Starter tier, the one priced against Tabellara, includes no guide analytics at all: their data dashboard (unique visitors, view trends, per-topic ratings, contact collection) starts on the Growth tier at $139 a year per property. Tabellara includes analytics on the one plan there is, and goes a level deeper on the guide itself: the ten most-read cards at a glance, then every visitor session with city, state, device and the QR or deep link they arrived through, searchable, sortable and exportable to CSV, plus a counted tap on every quick link, so you know whether guests read the hot tub instructions and whether anyone hit book-direct. If you want to edit your guide based on what guests actually read, that visitor-level table is the difference.
Multi-property: templates versus tags
Both platforms reuse content across properties; they differ in how you set it up. Touch Stay uses a Content Hub and tags: tag topics to appear across guidebooks, then customise per guide, which works well once you have learned the system. Tabellara makes it one verb: mark any guide (your best one, published or not) as a template, then in any other guide choose Import from another guide and link the sections that are the same everywhere. Linked sections stay in sync, so the quiet-hours change lands on every property at once; everything local (the arcade, the parking quirks) stays local. New properties can start as a full copy of an existing guide, and single cards copy to any number of guides. Ten properties stop being ten times the work.
Where Touch Stay wins
Honesty matters in a comparison you publish yourself, so: Touch Stay has been at this since 2014 and it shows. Scheduled messaging comes with every tier including Starter; an AI chatbot that answers guest questions and offline access with PDF export arrive at the Growth tier. Add PMS integrations, an Airbnb connector, and a first-guide generator that accepts Booking.com listings with no account connection at all. If those are must-haves, Touch Stay is the safer pick right now.
Where Tabellara wins
The full AI build on every property instead of the first one. Free building with no trial clock and no deletion date. Six designed layouts guests notice. Page-level analytics on every plan rather than gated to a higher tier, deep enough to act on, with a visitor table you can search and export and every book-direct tap counted. Automatic translations into 25 guest languages, included, with each guest offered their own language the moment the guide opens. A Guest Store on every plan that pays into your own Stripe account, with approve-first control over every order. Templates and linked sections that make the tenth property minutes of work. Reservation-aware links that greet every guest by name and expire after the stay, sent automatically from Airbnb's own scheduled messages. A flat $6 a month per guide at any portfolio size, with three months free on annual billing. And a screen no other guidebook has: Tabellara TV, which puts the right information on the property's television at the right moment of each stay.
The bottom line
Choose Touch Stay if you want a mature guest-communication suite around your guidebook: chatbot, messaging, offline. Choose Tabellara if you want the AI build on every property, the design range, analytics without a tier upgrade, and one plan with everything at a lower price. Connecting a listing and looking at what comes out costs nothing.
Common questions
Do I need a Hospitable account to use Tabellara?
Only for the AI build. Connecting is free, takes about a minute, and links your Airbnb the official way (you approve it on Airbnb; no passwords are shared). It is also how your WiFi, house manual, and full-resolution photos arrive verbatim. You can build and publish guides entirely by hand without connecting anything.
What happens to my guides if I cancel?
Nothing is deleted. Your guides, photos, and properties stay in your account; published guides simply unpublish at the end of the period you already paid for. Resubscribe any time and republish the same guides.
Do my guests need an app or an account?
No. Guests open a normal web link or scan a QR code, and everything works in the browser on any phone. Analytics use anonymous sessions; guests never hand over personal information to read your guide.
Can I import my guide from Touch Stay or another platform?
Yes. Paste your Touch Stay guide's public guest link on the New guide screen and the whole guide copies over in seconds: your sections, cards, rules, and recommendations, with formatting and map pins intact (text only; photos come from your listing import at full quality). From any other platform, upload the guide as a PDF or paste its text and the AI rebuilds it. See Switch from Touch Stay in one paste in our help center for the walkthrough.
Is my guide public on the internet?
No. Guides live on unlisted links that you control and are excluded from search engines. Only people you share the link or QR code with can open it, and you can unpublish instantly.
Build a guide guests actually open
Tabellara turns this advice into a working guidebook: app-style guides, area maps, and page-level analytics.
Create your guide