Alternative to Hostfully Guidebooks and Staymate: a Device in the House, not an App on the Phone
Hostfully Guidebooks and Staymate are digital guest directories the guest opens on their own phone — through a link or a QR code, with nothing to download. Both do that well, and for many properties it is exactly right. ChaletMoments takes a different route: a device that sits in the house. The difference sounds like a detail and decides almost everything in practice.
Phone web app or device in the house: the structural difference
Hostfully describes its guidebook as a simple private link; Staymate describes its guest web app expressly as an application without download, reachable via QR codes and links. Both require a step from the guest: scan, open, engage. A tablet on the dining table requires nothing — it gets picked up. In exchange it stays in the house: a phone guidebook goes up the mountain, a tablet does not. That is precisely why ChaletMoments to go exists, putting the day's edition on the guest's own phone with a scan.
Who maintains the content: fill it yourself, or have it maintained
Hostfully works with a wizard and templates, topped up with recommendations pulled from Google and sponsored listings; Staymate speaks of a single knowledge database the operator maintains. In both cases the operator is the editor. With ChaletMoments the region is the editorial subject: 135 activities, 115 restaurants and more than 1,600 events are maintained continuously, not entered by the individual house. In fairness: Staymate's Discover does supply genuine destination content from official sources. The difference is who carries the maintenance.
Recommendations by weather, time of day, season and family composition
Both vendors personalise — Staymate by the guest's location, Hostfully with AI-assisted itinerary planning. Neither, as far as our review of their public product documentation shows, orders content by weather, hour, season and the composition of the booking. ChaletMoments scores every recommendation on exactly those four axes: twenty centimetres of fresh snow moves the right valley forward, a grey afternoon offers the thermal spa, and children in the house change the selection again.
Upsells: an offer that arrives, not a tab to browse
Hostfully has a Marketplace through which early check-in and late checkout can be sold — their own help documentation says so, paid through Stripe directly to the host. The host sets a fixed price per item, and the Marketplace is, again per Hostfully's own description, an optional tab the guest opens. ChaletMoments reverses the direction: the offer arrives on its own, at the right moment, priced as a percentage of the gross nightly rate with a floor and a ceiling. The wording is chosen by the 24-hour forecast; children in the booking override the weather variant.
Paying in the house: NFC at the device instead of a web form
Both competitors settle through a web checkout — Hostfully via a Stripe form inside the guidebook, Staymate online or on the room bill. Tapping a card or a phone against something requires that something to exist. ChaletMoments uses Stripe Terminal for this: the guest taps the tablet and is done, with no form, no account and no card number.
After departure: inventory verification and the housekeeping handover
For what happens after checkout, we found no published solution from either vendor (as of September 2026). Hostfully answers the same worry by a different route — guest screening and damage protection up to USD 50,000, that is, through cover rather than verification. ChaletMoments verifies instead: Room Check compares the room against a reference captured once and reports what is missing with the photo beside it, in the housekeeper's own language.
Where Hostfully and Staymate are the better choice
Hostfully's guidebook has a permanently free tier and needs no hardware — for a single house, or a portfolio growing faster than on-site logistics allow, that is hard to beat, and the guest keeps the guidebook after departure, with offline access. Hostfully's Property Management Platform is moreover a full PMS with a channel manager and over 120 integrations; ChaletMoments is not a PMS and replaces none. Staymate, in turn, is a Vienna company with Österreich Werbung and SalzburgerLand partnerships, integrations into hotel PMSs such as apaleo and Casablanca, an AI chatbot and website widgets. If that is what you need, you are better served there.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between ChaletMoments and Hostfully Guidebooks?
Hostfully Guidebooks is a digital guest directory the guest opens on their own phone via a link or QR code, with the host maintaining the content through a wizard and templates. ChaletMoments is a device in the house whose regional content is editorially maintained and whose recommendations follow weather, time of day, season and the composition of the booking. Hostfully has a free entry tier and needs no hardware; ChaletMoments requires a tablet per unit.
Can you sell late checkout with Hostfully or Staymate?
With Hostfully, yes — the Marketplace can carry early check-in and late checkout as items, paid through Stripe directly to the host. The host sets a fixed price per item, and per Hostfully's own description the Marketplace is a tab the guest opens. For Staymate, the upsell mechanics could not be established conclusively from public documentation. With ChaletMoments the offer is triggered automatically, priced as a percentage of the nightly rate, and varied in wording by the forecast and by whether children are in the booking.
Is ChaletMoments a property management system?
No. ChaletMoments replaces neither a PMS nor a channel manager, and handles neither calendar management, channel distribution, direct booking nor owner accounting. It sits alongside them and reads the booking position. If you are looking for a PMS, Hostfully offers one with their Property Management Platform.
Does ChaletMoments require hardware in every property?
Yes — one tablet per unit, running in kiosk mode as Device Owner and protected against removal by a GPS geofence. That is the price of the guest having nothing to scan, install or remember. Phone-only guidebooks are faster and cheaper to roll out; they reach the guest only if the link actually gets opened.
The comparison that counts happens in the house.
We will set up a tablet in one of your units, and you can see in daily operation what a device in the house does differently from a link to a phone.