Services · Mobile app development · Hotel apps
Codeeo designs and builds guest apps, staff apps and admin systems for hotels in Edinburgh. Guests book direct, see the visitor levy in the price before they pay, check in from the tram or the train, and message the front desk during their stay. Your team handles housekeeping, arrivals and levy reporting from one place, whether you run a townhouse in the New Town, a boutique property off the Royal Mile or a larger hotel near Haymarket.
Edinburgh has rules other UK cities do not: a percentage visitor levy on overnight stays and a licensing regime for short-term lets under Scots law. We plan the app around both from the first discovery call, so pricing, receipts and listings are right on launch day.
200+ companies servedFrom a first store to an ADX listed developer
What an Edinburgh hotel app can include
A visitor to Edinburgh usually lands at the airport and rides the tram into town, or steps off a train at Waverley with a suitcase and a steep walk ahead. Many stay two or three nights, plan around a show or a match, and expect to sort everything from a phone. A hotel guest app development Edinburgh brief should start from those moments, not from a list of features copied from a chain.
The parts below are the ones Edinburgh hoteliers ask about most. We pick and order them in discovery around your property: a small New Town townhouse with no night porter needs very different tools from a large hotel with a restaurant, a bar and conference rooms. Every feature connects to the admin system your staff use, so a request made in the app becomes a task with an owner rather than a message nobody reads.
Room search, rates, packages and payment inside your own app, with the Edinburgh visitor levy calculated on the accommodation element and shown in the total before checkout. Room charges and extras such as breakfast or parking sit on separate lines, so the levy base is clear on the confirmation and the receipt.
Guests see one honest total and your receipts match what the council expects.
Minimum stays, deposit rules and cancellation terms that change by date, so the Fringe weeks in August, the Christmas markets and Hogmanay run on different settings from a February midweek. Rates and restrictions come from your property management system rather than being typed in twice.
Festival dates sell on festival terms without manual edits at midnight.
Guests confirm their details, arrival time and nationality before they travel, giving your desk the register entries UK hotels keep for guests aged 16 and over. Identity checks for overseas guests happen once, inside the app, instead of a queue at reception after a long flight.
Arrivals take a minute at the desk, or no stop at all.
Step by step guidance from Edinburgh Airport, the tram stops and Waverley or Haymarket stations, with notes about cobbles, closes and stairs where they matter. Guests driving in get your parking arrangement and drop-off point, which saves a confused loop round one-way streets in the Old Town.
Fewer calls from lost guests on the Royal Mile.
Where your door locks support it, the app issues a digital key after check-in, so a guest arriving off a late flight can go straight to the room. Smaller properties without a night porter can also send a door code at a set time, logged against the booking.
Late arrivals stop depending on someone staying up to hand over a key.
Many Edinburgh hotels sit in listed Georgian and older buildings with narrow stairs, uneven floors and rooms of very different shapes. The app shows each room honestly, with access notes, lift availability and step-free routes, so guests who need them can book with confidence.
Fewer room move requests and fewer disappointed reviews.
Extra towels, a late checkout, a taxi for the castle esplanade or a table for dinner, sent from the app and routed to the right team. Staff reply from their own devices, and the thread stays on the booking record for the next shift to read.
Requests reach a person who can act, with a full history.
Room status, cleaning priorities, maintenance reports and arrival lists in a staff app, updated as guests check out. On a full festival night the head housekeeper can see which rooms are ready and release them for early arrivals without phoning around.
Rooms turn faster and the desk knows what is ready.
If your group also lets flats or apartments that need a short-term let licence, each listing in the app carries its licence number and permitted occupancy, as the Scottish licensing conditions require for listings and adverts. Hotel rooms and licensed flats are handled as separate inventory types.
Every flat listing shows the details Scottish licensing asks for.
Who this suits
Edinburgh hotel owners rarely come to us with the same problem. Some want independence from booking sites that take a share of every reservation. Some want their small team to stop drowning in festival week. Others have grown from one property into a mix of rooms and flats and need one system across them. Most conversations start with hotel booking app development in Edinburgh, because moving reservations off third party sites and into a channel the hotel controls pays for the rest of the work. These are the four situations we hear most often, with how we would approach each one.
You have a handful of rooms, a lean team and probably no overnight cover. The app does the work a night porter would: it takes payment, collects arrival details, sends access instructions and answers common questions about breakfast, luggage and parking. We keep the first version tight, with direct booking, check-in and messaging, and connect it to the property management system you already use. Extra modules such as mobile keys can follow once the basics are working.
A short scope suits a small team best.
Your guests choose you for the building, the bar or the view of the castle, and you want that feeling in the app rather than a generic template. We design around your rooms and your story, with honest room guides, a local recommendations section written by your staff, and booking that keeps the levy and extras clear. Hotel mobile app developers who skip the design work tend to produce the same app for everyone.
You handle conference delegates, tour groups and rugby weekends at Murrayfield alongside leisure guests. The app needs group bookings with rooming lists, company invoicing, express check-in for coach arrivals and a staff app that copes with a hundred checkouts on a Sunday. We plan integrations with your PMS, your point of sale and your door locks before any screens are drawn.
Your group runs a hotel and a set of serviced flats in Leith or the city centre. The flats need short-term let licence numbers on every listing, while the hotel rooms do not, and both pay the visitor levy. We model these as separate products inside one app and one admin system, so guests book either from the same place and your reports stay accurate.
Working with us
Our team of 80+ works from Dubai, Riyadh and Karachi and serves UK hotels remotely, with discovery, design reviews and demos held by video call. Most Edinburgh properties start with a fixed scope first release covering booking, check-in and messaging. After launch, a monthly retainer keeps the app current with iOS and Android updates, levy changes and new features. Hotel groups planning several properties sometimes take a dedicated team for a longer programme instead.
A defined build with a deadline
We agree what the product has to do, write it down with a price and a date, and build exactly that. Changes are priced before they are made, not discovered on the invoice.
A product that keeps evolving
Named engineers who work your hours, join your standups and stay on the codebase. You direct the backlog; we own the quality of what ships.
Something live that needs looking after
A monthly block of hours for improvements, fixes and the small requests that otherwise wait months. Unused hours carry for a quarter.
Technology
We choose the stack around your property management system, your door locks and the people who will maintain the app after us. Native or cross platform, hosting region and payment provider are agreed in discovery, not imposed, and documented so a future developer understands every choice.
01Mobile
02Data and cloud
03Marketing and tracking
It depends on scope and integrations, and we agree dates in writing before design.
A focused first release with booking, check-in and messaging moves faster than a full platform with mobile keys, ordering and group sales. The biggest variables are your property management system's interface, your lock supplier and how many room types and rate rules you run. We also plan around your calendar: few Edinburgh hotels want to switch systems in July or December, so we usually aim to go live in a quieter month and give staff time to learn the tools before the next festival.
Schedule a free consultation and get a written recommendation, with costs, before you commit to anything.
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