The Best Touch Stay Alternative for Hosts Who Want Guests to Ask, Not Read

If you have been looking at digital guidebooks, you have probably come across Touch Stay. It is a well-built product that lets you create a polished, web-based welcome book for your guests. It looks great, and for many hosts it is a real upgrade on a printed binder. But there is one limitation built into the format itself, and it is worth understanding before you commit.

This guide explains where digital guidebooks like Touch Stay shine, where they fall short, and how an AI concierge works as an alternative for hosts who want guests to ask questions rather than read pages.

What Touch Stay does well

Touch Stay is a genuinely good digital guidebook. It lets you organise your property information into a clean, branded, mobile-friendly format that guests open with a link or a QR code. You can include photos, embed maps, and present your local recommendations attractively. Compared with a PDF or a printed folder, it is more pleasant to use and far easier to keep up to date.

If your goal is simply to present information beautifully, a digital guidebook does the job. The question is whether presenting information is the same as answering questions. It is not.

The limitation every guidebook shares

A guidebook, however well designed, still asks the guest to do the work of finding the answer. They open it, navigate to the right section, and read. That is more friction than most guests will accept when they have a single, specific question. So they do what they have always done: they message you instead.

This is the core issue. The reason hosts get the same questions over and over is not that the information does not exist. It is that finding it is harder than asking. A guidebook reduces that friction a little. It does not remove it.

The alternative: an AI concierge guests can ask

AskYourStay takes a different approach. Instead of giving guests a book to read, it gives them an AI concierge to ask. The guest scans a QR code, types a question in plain language, "how do I connect to the WiFi?", "is there parking?", "what time is checkout?", and gets an instant, accurate answer drawn from your property details, in their own language.

There is nothing to navigate and nothing to skim. Asking the AI is easier than messaging you, which is exactly why message volume drops. You can try the live demo to feel the difference between reading a guidebook and simply asking.

How the two approaches compare

• Finding an answer: A guidebook makes the guest search. The AI concierge answers the exact question instantly.
• Languages: A guidebook is written in the languages you author. The AI replies automatically in over 50 languages.
• Effort for the guest: Reading and navigating versus asking one question.
• Insight for you: A guidebook cannot tell you what guests struggled to find. The AI shows you what guests actually ask, so you can fill the gaps in your listing.
• Updates: Both update digitally, with no reprinting.

Which should you choose?

If you mainly want a beautiful, branded place to present your property information, a digital guidebook like Touch Stay is a solid choice. If your real goal is to stop answering the same questions, and to make guests feel instantly supported, an AI concierge is the better fit, because it removes the friction that makes guests message you in the first place.

Many hosts find the concierge approach also does more with less effort. You paste your existing details once and the AI handles the rest, including the long tail of unusual questions a guidebook could never anticipate. For the broader picture, see our guide to the best Airbnb welcome book alternative and how to reduce guest questions by up to 80 percent.

Try it on your own property

The fastest way to judge the difference is to set up your own concierge and test it. AskYourStay takes under five minutes to set up, costs from £5 a month, and includes a free 30-day trial with no card required. See the pricing or start your free trial and let your guests ask instead of read.