Flipbooks and business cards

Two smaller tools that solve the same problem from opposite ends: getting something of yours onto a guest's phone in a form they will actually use. Both are on the Pro plan and above.

Flipbooks

A flipbook takes a PDF - a brochure, a menu, a house manual, a property pack - and turns it into something readable on a phone.

The reason to bother: a PDF opened on a phone is a pinch-and-zoom experience that most people abandon. A flipbook is a page you swipe.

Upload the PDF, publish, share the link. A QR code pointing at it is the natural pairing - on a table, in a folder, on a window.

You get view tracking: how many opened it, how far through they got, and whether they clicked the call-to-action. The "how far through" number is the useful one - if everybody stops at page two, page two is the problem.

Good candidates: a villa brochure for enquiries, a restaurant menu you keep in the welcome folder, a property pack for a sale, an island guide.

Poor candidates: anything that changes weekly, and anything better served by a welcome book. If it is house information for a guest already staying, use a welcome book instead - it is editable in place and does not need re-exporting from a design tool every time a phone number changes.

Business cards

A digital card carrying your name, business, phone, WhatsApp, email, website and social links.

The point is the vCard: a guest taps once and you are in their contacts, properly, with the right spelling and the right number. Compare that to a phone number read off a printed card and typed in wrong.

Three ways to use it:

• A QR code on a printed card, so the paper version puts you in their phone
• In your email signature, so every message carries the whole set
• As a link in a WhatsApp reply or an Instagram bio

Scans are tracked, so you can see whether the card on the counter is doing anything.

Practical notes

Keep the PDF small. A 40MB brochure loads slowly on island mobile data. Export at screen resolution rather than print resolution - it is being read on a phone, not printed.

Landscape PDFs read badly on phones. If you have the choice at design time, portrait pages suit the format.

Update the card, not the print run. The whole point of a QR code on a printed card is that the card is permanent and the details behind it are not. Change your number in Isle Stay and every card already handed out is correct.

Common questions

Can I replace the PDF in an existing flipbook? Yes, and the link stays the same - so anything already printed or sent keeps working.

Do flipbooks work offline? No. Both need a connection. For anything a guest must have without signal - the door code, an emergency number - put it in the welcome book and also in your arrival message.

Can I have more than one card? Yes, which is worth doing if you trade under more than one name, or want a personal card and a business one.

Does the free plan include these? No. Both are Pro and above. Welcome books and QR codes are the free-plan tools, and between them they cover most of what a single-property host needs.