Adding a stay
Every way in ends the same way: a filled-in stay for you to check. Nothing joins your record until you confirm it.
The eight ways in
Four are free. Fill in the form by hand, paste a confirmation, import a file (.pdf, .txt, .html, .eml or .ics), or send one straight in from Mail with the iOS share sheet. Sharing works on a file, so a PDF open in Safari goes in and a web page does not.
Four more come with Stayed Pro. Forward confirmations to your own address at in.stayed.info and each one waits for you in triage. Connect Google Calendar, or scan Apple Calendar on your phone. Bring years of history in from a CSV file.
Which booking sites it knows
Nine are recognised by name: Booking.com, Expedia, Hotels.com, Agoda, Airbnb, Vrbo, Trip.com, HRS and Hostelworld. Bookings made directly with twelve hotel groups are recognised the same way. Separately, 140 hotel brands are recognised from the hotel’s name, so the right mark appears on the stay. Most of those brands belong to one of the 33 programmes the wallet tracks, and a few do not.
Anything else still works. The reader doesn’t need to know the sender, only the booking, so a confirmation from a hotel you have never heard of reads the same as one from a chain.
Why a booking site turns earning off
Most rooms booked through an agent earn no nights, no points and no status, however loyal you are. So when a booking arrives from one of those nine, the Stayed app sets its earning switch to off and says so on the stay.
Some rates are exceptions. If yours is one, switch it back on. The app defaults to the answer that is right most of the time and leaves the decision with you, because a stay wrongly counted inflates your own numbers and nobody else’s.
What reads your confirmation
Four things are tried, cheapest first. Many confirmations carry structured booking data, and that is read directly with no guessing. Calendar invitations are read the same way. Failing those, your phone reads the text itself using Apple’s on-device model, where the hardware supports it.
Only when none of that works does the text go to a cloud model, and the app asks you first. The privacy policy sets out exactly what is sent.
When it can’t read one
You get the form, already open, and it takes under a minute. A hotel name and two dates are enough to file a stay; everything else can be added later or not at all.
Two things genuinely defeat it. A screenshot or a photo, because it reads words and not pictures, so open the booking and copy the text instead. And an itinerary holding three hotels at once, which comes back as one stay, so add those one at a time.
Adding the stays you have already taken
The passport, the night counts, the countries and the loyalty tallies are all built from stays you have already taken, so an app holding one upcoming booking has almost nothing to show you.
An evening spent adding the last year or two is what turns this from a calendar into a record. Stays added by hand count exactly the same as ones that were read for you.
What it won’t do without you
Nothing is saved until you confirm it. Every way in, including the ones that run overnight, ends on a draft you check.
One honest limit: if you type the same stay in twice by hand, you’ll have it twice. The other ways in check for duplicates; the form doesn’t.
Still stuck? Email hello@stayed.info, or read the frequently asked questions.