Check-in Apps for Hotels and Rentals in Spain (2026)

None of these apps exists for the guest’s convenience, whatever the marketing leads with. They exist because behind every arrival there is a mandatory filing. Reception desk or not, the obligation in Spain is identical: every guest generates a report that has to be filed immediately and, at the latest, within 24 hours¹ under Spain’s guest registration rules, and what differs between a hotel and a rental is where it hurts.

A hotel has a front desk, so online check-in earns its keep for other reasons: clearing the queue on arrival, spreading the load of afternoon check-ins and, above all, not retyping data a receptionist already collected once. A holiday rental has no desk at all: the check-in app is the only moment your guest hands over their data and signs. Choosing this piece badly costs you the same either way, in rejected reports, guests confused at eleven at night and, in the worst case, fines.

The comparison covers three things for each tool: the price exactly as published on its own site (checked in July and August 2026), which registries it actually files to, and the fine print that decides the invoice (property minimums, lock-in periods and transaction fees). RegistroViajero is on the list, so consider yourself warned: we are an interested party.

Comparison: price, registries covered and fine print

Prices are those published by each provider on its own site² and can change; some require annual payment for the advertised figure. If what you want is Chekin’s full breakdown, plan by plan and with its fees, it is in Chekin alternatives.

Which app to choose for your case: minimums, lock-in and coverage

If you manage 1 or 2 properties in Spain, read the minimums before the unit price, because they are tied to how you pay. Chekin lets you contract a single property if you pay for the year up front, but its monthly plan asks for 3 units. Check-in Scan’s monthly plan starts at 10 properties. HolaHuésped, Partee and RegistroViajero set no minimum either way. With one or two dwellings everything fits except Check-in Scan’s monthly plan, so the real question is whether paying twelve months up front suits you.

If you operate in Catalonia or the Basque Country, coverage decides: you need submission to the Mossos or the Ertzaintza, not to SES. Today that means Check-in Scan, Partee, Chekin or Civitfun: all four state that submission on their own pages². Not us yet: our integration with the regional systems is in development, and you would rather know that before contracting than after.

If lock-ins worry you, read them before the features. Check-in Scan’s general terms of contract provide for plans with an annual commitment even when the invoice is monthly: cancel early and you still owe the remaining monthly fees until the year is complete, and cancellation has to be requested a month in advance². The rest of the list, RegistroViajero included, runs month to month.

If your volume comes from Booking and Airbnb, check from which plan the calendar connects: in Check-in Scan, iCal arrives with the Plus plan; in RegistroViajero, iCal import is always included.

What changes if you run a hotel

Much of the software in this category grew up serving apartments, and it shows. If you have a front desk and a PMS, there are three questions an apartment manager never asks and you should:

Does it integrate with your PMS? This is the one that decides. If online check-in doesn’t feed the PMS, you’ve swapped typing into SES.HOSPEDAJES for typing somewhere else. Of this list, Civitfun is the one that presents itself as hotel-focused, and it documents submission to SES.HOSPEDAJES, the Mossos and the Ertzaintza on its product page, though it publishes no prices, so that means asking for a demo. With the others, PMS connections tend to sit in the upper plans: confirm it with the provider for your specific PMS before signing.

How many reports come out of a single booking? In an apartment, a booking is usually a small group. In a hotel handling groups, coach parties or conferences, the bottleneck isn’t the guest form but batch submission and how rejections get handled. Ask how you retry a batch with three bad reports out of eighty.

Who fills in the form, the guest or reception? Nearly all the software here assumes the former. If your real workflow is reception scanning and typing, what you need looks more like a document reader wired into the PMS than a remote check-in app.

What doesn’t change between a hotel and an apartment is the law: RD 933/2021 draws no distinction by establishment type. Its Article 2 puts both under the same definition of lodging activity:

“a) Those carried out by commercial establishments open to the public that belong to this sector under the rules issued by the competent administration. This concept includes hotels, hostels, guesthouses, boarding houses, rural tourism establishments or similar. b) Those carried out by campsites and motorhome parking areas, whatever their ownership or regime of use, apartments, bungalows and other similar tourist accommodation.”

One obliged party, one list of data: same Annex I fields, same 24-hour deadline, same penalties.

The ID scanner: the feature you may not need to pay for

Much of this category’s marketing revolves around ID scanning: MRZ OCR, biometric matching, verification selfies. Before paying for it, two considerations:

1. It is not a legal requirement in Spain. Royal Decree 933/2021 asks you to collect and report the Annex I data, not images of the document⁴. The data protection agency in fact expressly forbids keeping copies of guests’ IDs and accepts remote check-in with alternative verifications⁵.
2. Scanning does not fill everything. The fields that kill most reports (support number, second surname, relationship to minors) still need review. The scanner saves typing; it does not replace validation.

The guest data Annex I requires (section A.3) comes to fifteen fields, and none of them is an image:

• First name, first surname and second surname.
• Sex, nationality and date of birth.
• Document type (DNI, passport, TIE), document number and support number.
• Habitual residence: full address, town and country.
• Landline, mobile and email address.
• Number of travellers and the relationship between them when any is a minor.

On copying the document, the AEPD is blunt:

“Requesting a copy of the National Identity Document or the Passport breaches the data minimisation principle laid down in Article 5.1(c) of the GDPR and amounts to excessive data processing.”

The same note accepts that the Annex I form be completed online, and treats three ways of authenticating a guest who is not in front of you as valid:

• Digital certificates.
• A match between the data declared and the data attached to the payment method used.
• Security codes sent to the guest’s phone or email address, as authentication factors.

Our position, and the reason we do not offer one: the guest fills in their own data in their own language (RegistroViajero’s check-in works in 9), the system validates the Annex I fields against SES rules before sending, and no image of the document is ever stored. Less friction for the guest and no photocopy archive to guard. Anyone preferring the scanner flow has good options in the table; it is a difference of philosophy, not of compliance.

After check-in: what else RD 933/2021 requires

That is the question separating a check-in app from a complete compliance solution. Check-in collects the data; the legal job ends when the report is accepted by SES.HOSPEDAJES (or Mossos/Ertzaintza) within the deadline, with the data and its receipt kept for three years from the end of the service⁶. Article 6.3 sets the deadline:

“This communication shall be made immediately, and in any case within a period not exceeding 24 hours […] b) At the start of the contracted services.”

And Article 5.3 sets the retention:

“The data in the computerised register shall be kept for a period of three years from the end of the contracted service or provision.”

When comparing, ask each provider about the full cycle: report submitted, response verified, errors retried. Pretty data collection is the easy part.

Frequently asked questions

How does online check-in work at a Spanish holiday rental? Online check-in at a Spanish holiday rental works like this: before arrival, the guest gets a link, fills in the data Royal Decree 933/2021 requires and signs. At the start of the stay, the lodging reports that data to the competent authority (SES.HOSPEDAJES in most of Spain). The apps in this comparison automate that circuit.

Is offering online check-in mandatory in Spain? Offering online check-in is not mandatory. What is mandatory is collecting the data, verifying identity and reporting on time. Online check-in is how you do that without being present, which in rentals without reception makes it nearly indispensable.

Do I need an app with an ID scanner? An ID scanner is not something you need as a legal requirement: the rule asks for data, not images, and the AEPD forbids keeping document copies. The scanner is a workflow preference.

Which apps cover Catalonia and the Basque Country? The apps on this list covering Catalonia and the Basque Country are Check-in Scan, Partee, Chekin and Civitfun, which declare submission to the Mossos and the Ertzaintza. RegistroViajero and HolaHuésped cover SES.HOSPEDAJES; our regional integration is in development.

Why do “from” prices never match what I end up paying? “From” prices rarely match the final invoice because they are usually the cheapest annual plan, without the features you wanted (verification, iCal, PMS) or with unit minimums. Always price your real number of properties, monthly billing, and the features you will actually use.

Does the same check-in software work for a hotel and an apartment in Spain? The same check-in software does work for both, legally speaking: RD 933/2021 asks for the same data and the same deadline in each. What differs is the operational fit. A hotel needs check-in to feed its PMS and batch submissions to be retryable; an apartment needs the guest to manage alone from a phone. Almost all the software on this list is built for the second case.

Is there a free check-in app? No check-in app on this comparison is entirely free and files to SES.HOSPEDAJES. What does exist are trial periods (15 days at HolaHuésped and at RegistroViajero, 14 at Chekin and at Check-in Scan) and free first months, like Partee’s. If you want permanently zero cost, the real alternative is the Ministry portal by hand, with our guest report template to collect the data.

What to check before signing with any of these apps

Three things, in this order: the property minimum and which billing mode it is tied to, whether filing reaches your region’s authority and not only SES.HOSPEDAJES, and whether the provider shows you the report’s real status once sent. The unit price gets decided after that, not before.

If your stack is already in place and the compliance layer is what’s missing, here is how we solve the full cycle, and the 15-day trial asks for no card.

Prices and conditions can change at any time: check each provider’s site before deciding. RegistroViajero is the product of this blog’s authors.