Guide · Migration
Move from Hostaway to Staywarden
An afternoon to prepare, a morning to switch. Your bookings come along, your channels don’t close for a single day, and Hostaway stays put until you turn it off yourself. It’s the guide we follow for our own lodge — every button named exactly as it appears.
What it actually takes
- Export from Hostaway
- 10 minutes
- Account, cabins and import
- 1 to 2 hours
- Switching the channels
- one morning — plus a few minutes of waiting per channel
- Invoices and card payments
- afterwards, in an afternoon
The rule that makes this safe
One system owns availability. While Hostaway is connected to Booking.com and Airbnb, Staywarden must not be connected to the same channels — and the other way around. That is why the order matters: first you bring your bookings into Staywarden, then you switch the connection channel by channel, and only then does Staywarden start driving. If both drive at once, the same night gets sold twice.
Have this ready before you start
Your Hostaway login
To export the bookings. Nothing needs canceling yet — Hostaway stays untouched until the end.
Your Booking.com extranet and your Airbnb account
The channel switch happens inside each channel, with your own login. Without it, nobody can do this part — not even us.
The list of your cabins
Exact name, how many people it sleeps and the nightly price. The name has to match what you use in Hostaway.
Your team’s names
Who cleans, who welcomes guests, who sees the numbers. Each person gets an invitation to their own email.
For invoicing: your company details
Company name, address, VAT number and the text at the bottom of each invoice (bank details, payment terms). Add the number your series should start from if you are continuing one: we cannot see that from here.
For card payments: your Stripe key
A secret or restricted key from your own Stripe account. The account is yours; the money never passes through Staywarden.
Step by step
Get your bookings out of Hostaway
Open the Reservations list and export to CSV. If your account does not show an export button, ask Hostaway support in the chat — they’ll send you the file.
Every button3
- At a minimum, export today onward. Past bookings can be imported too: they feed the month’s numbers and let Staywarden recognize a returning guest.
- Leave out what is not a stay: inquiries (inquiry), expired holds (expired) and cancellations. If they slip in anyway, no harm done — Staywarden flags them and does not import them.
- Do not rename or reorder the columns. The Hostaway file goes in as it is.
Keep the file. It is your fallback if anything looks odd, and it is the one thing you take with you from Hostaway.
Create your account and your cabins
On staywarden.com press Set up your hotel. Sign up with email and password, or with Google. When you finish signing up, the panel opens.
Every button4
- Sign-up asks for the lodge name, the country, the currency and the type, and then your cabins or rooms. The type cannot be changed later: “cabins” are separate doors, “hotel” means rooms inside one building. It decides how the channels register you.
- Add each cabin right there — or later, under Settings → Your cabins with + Add cabin: Name and Sleeps (the price per night goes under Prices, in the menu). If one “cabin” is several identical rooms, put the number in Identical — the row still counts as one cabin on your plan.
- The name has to match Hostaway (Listing in the file). If it doesn’t, the dry run offers it as a new cabin — you can pick “It is the same as …” there, but matching the names is faster.
- Prices live under Prices (in the menu): the base price per cabin, and seasons with + Season. Outside a season the base price applies. Nothing goes out until you press Publish prices — and the channels only get them once they are connected, later.
Do not connect any channel yet. That is step 4, and it comes after the bookings for a reason.
Import your bookings — a dry run first
Settings → Bring your bookings. Paste the CSV or upload the file, and press Review. Nothing is saved yet: it is a dry run.
Every button6
- At the top it shows the columns found. If one says “not found”, the file doesn’t have it — check the table below.
- Every line gets its verdict: ready to import, already in Staywarden, clashes with another booking, we do not recognize that cabin, unreadable date or canceled — not imported.
- “… new cabins will be created” → for each name keep “Create with that name”, or choose “It is the same as …” if you already have it. Your choice applies to every line with that name.
- “Clashes with another booking” → two bookings want the same night. Work out which one is real. If you really did sell it twice, tick import anyway as an overbooking and sort it out with the guest.
- If the file looks odd, press Ask the Warden: it reads your file and suggests which cabin is which. It doesn’t save anything either — it only fills in the dropdowns.
- When the summary adds up, press the import button — it shows how many bookings it will bring in. You can paste the corrected file as often as you like: bookings already in are not duplicated.
When that is done — while you set up you have Complete free — open Calendar and compare it with Hostaway. Check this week and next month. If it matches, the rest is easy.
Switch the channels — the delicate part
Do it early in the morning, when the fewest bookings arrive, and one channel at a time. Before you touch anything, go to Settings → Channels and press Connect automatically. That creates your property and one room type per cabin, with the mapping already done.
Every button6
- Booking.com — in your extranet: Account → Connectivity provider. Look for the provider Staywarden shows you on screen and confirm it. Confirming the new provider is what makes Booking stop listening to Hostaway for that property.
- Airbnb — here the order is reversed. Airbnb allows ONE channel manager per account: disconnect Hostaway from Airbnb first, and only then connect Staywarden. If you try without disconnecting, Airbnb refuses the authorization and does not tell you why.
- Once Hostaway is disconnected: on Staywarden’s channel screen, pick Airbnb, sign in with the official button, choose your listings and map them to the cabins. Airbnb does not send your existing bookings again — they already came in with the import in step 3. Compare Airbnb’s calendar with Staywarden’s before moving on.
- Expedia — in Partner Central: open Choose your provider, press Begin and pick the provider Staywarden shows you on screen. Expedia takes longer than the other two; it can take days.
- Each channel turns green a few minutes after it approves the connection. In the meantime your listing keeps selling — nothing closes.
- Once the channel is green, press Push everything to channels. From that moment Staywarden drives availability and prices on that channel, for the next 500 days: availability, the nightly rate (never below your lowest price), price by number of guests, and the stay rules — minimum and maximum stay, closed to arrival, closed to departure and closed for sale.
Verify before moving on: open your own listing as if you were a guest and try a night that is booked in Staywarden. It has to show as closed. Booking.com switches over the moment you confirm the new provider, and Expedia can take days — neither needs disconnecting first; Airbnb is the exception. When all your channels are green and verified, switch off whatever is left in Hostaway — and only then cancel your Hostaway subscription.
What comes next, with no rush
The lodge is already running on Staywarden. You can do this the same week, in whatever order suits you.
Every button5
- Invoices (Complete) — Invoices → Invoice setup: company name, address, VAT number, the text at the bottom, and where the numbering starts. Your VAT rate goes under Settings › Your lodge. From then on every finished stay waits under To issue with one button.
- Card payments (Complete) — Settings → Card payments: your Stripe key. The guest pays from their own booking page and the money lands in your account.
- Your team — the Team tab. Invite by email: each person chooses a password, signs in to their own day on the lodge’s team page and ticks off their work there. Remove someone and they are signed out instantly.
- The guest app (Complete) — fill in Check-in from, Check-out before, the Wi-Fi and how to get there. The guest gets in with their surname and four digits; nothing to install.
- Housekeeping writes itself — every departure creates the full clean and every arrival the prep. Anything that is not a cabin (the pool, the shared kitchen, the trail) you add by hand under Areas you clean, with its schedule: every day, between guests, or on Mondays.
Hostaway’s automations have to be rebuilt: Staywarden sends six automatic messages (confirmation, before arrival, during the stay, an offer of extra nights when the cabin is free, departure, and a review request to direct guests). You switch them on one by one under Messages (Complete).
How you know it went well
- Staywarden’s calendar and Hostaway’s show the same booked nights for the next two months.
- A night that is booked in Staywarden shows as closed on Booking and Airbnb when you search as a guest.
- A new booking from a channel lands in Staywarden’s calendar by itself, within minutes.
- Your housekeeper signs in with their own email and sees today’s tasks — with nothing installed.
- Tomorrow’s departure already has its cleaning task, without anyone typing it in.
What does not move — better said now than later
- Reviews stay on Booking and Airbnb, where they have always been. Staywarden reads them from the channels, on each channel’s own scale, and you answer them from Messages — nothing has to move.
- Hostaway’s message history cannot be exported. New threads arrive in Staywarden. If some conversations matter to you, save them before you cancel.
- Automations have to be rebuilt — step 5 says how, with Staywarden’s six ready-made messages. The wording won’t be exactly yours.
- Expenses entered in Hostaway do not come along. Staywarden has its own expense line under Money.
- Staywarden does not do dynamic pricing, smart locks, statements for managers of other owners’ properties or a QuickBooks connection. If you rely on one of those, tell us before you move.
- Under Money, channel commission and costs start as estimates (15% and 42%) and stay labeled as such until you enter your real numbers. Hostaway’s payouts do not come with the file.
- One account is one lodge. If you manage properties for other owners, talk to us first.
If something goes wrong
- Nothing is deleted in Hostaway. Importing is copying. If you want to go back, you reconnect the channels to Hostaway and carry on as before.
- If a night got sold twice, talk to the guest before touching the calendar. In Staywarden the booking can be moved to another cabin or marked as a deliberate overbooking.
- All your data, whenever you want it: Settings › Plan and data › Take your data with you downloads one file with the lodge’s configuration, the bookings, the guests’ passports, the invoices, the payments, the expenses, the reviews, the discount codes, the WhatsApp messages and the deleted bookings. The keys are not included: those are secrets, not data.
- If you want to start over, Settings lets you delete the whole lodge — you have to type the name to confirm.
- If you get stuck, write to us. We usually answer within a day, in Spanish or English, and we can do the migration with you on a call.
Which column is which
Staywarden reads the Hostaway file without touching it. This table shows what it is looking at — and what to check if something comes in wrong.
| In Hostaway | In Staywarden | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Listing | Cabin | Has to match your cabin’s name — otherwise the dry run offers it as a new cabin, or you pair it by hand. |
| Guest name · Guest last name | Guest | The surname matters: it is half the key the guest uses to open their page (surname + four digits). If Airbnb hid the name, the booking still comes in — under “Airbnb”, so the night stays closed. |
| Check-in date | Check-in | Hostaway exports dates as 2026-09-14, which can’t be misread. If your file says 03/04, Staywarden tells you it read it as day/month. |
| Check-out date | Check-out | The departure night is neither charged nor blocked. |
| Channel | Channel | Booking, Airbnb, Expedia or direct — Hostaway’s own booking engine counts as direct. It’s how you see later what each channel costs you. |
| Total price · Currency | Amount | In your hotel or lodge’s currency. Dots or commas both work. |
| Email · Phone | Email · Phone | Optional — but the phone is what the WhatsApp messages go to. |
| Hostaway reservation ID | — | Hostaway’s own number. With it, the same booking never comes in twice — not even from a second export. |
| Status | — | If it says cancelled, declined, expired or inquiry, the line is flagged and not imported. |
What everybody asks
Do I lose sales during the migration?
No. The channels stay open the whole time. The only thing that changes is who sends them availability — and that happens channel by channel, when you press the button.
What about my bookings from previous years?
Import them too. They block nothing — they feed the month’s numbers and let Staywarden recognize a guest who has stayed before.
Do I need the Complete plan from day one?
No. On Essential you run the calendar, the channels with their messages and reviews, housekeeping and tasks, the team and its hours, and the numbers. Invoices, the guest app, card payments, WhatsApp and the website with its booking page come with Complete. You can move over on Essential and upgrade later — you change plans under Settings › Plan and data › Subscription.
What happens to Expedia’s virtual cards?
You keep charging them yourself, as you do today. Staywarden does not charge on your behalf: card payments go to your own Stripe account, with your own key.
We can do the migration with you
Send us your Hostaway file and we will tell you honestly what will come in, what will not, and what it will cost you per month. No sales meeting.