Free pilot for selected partners before the 2027 season
Relyo vs Airtable

Airtable alternative for staff housing

Relyo is staff housing software for hotels and resorts, with room planning, grades, inspections, repairs and bill checks built in. Airtable is a no-code toolkit where you build them yourself.

Relyo

Relyo: staff housing software for hotels and resorts

HR, finance and accounting, operations and housing share one record of rooms, occupants, inspections, repairs, bills and costs. You set the rules, such as grades (housing entitlement levels), and Relyo applies them.

Airtable

Airtable: a no-code platform you build on

Airtable is a no-code platform with built-in AI for building your own databases, interfaces, forms and automations. You can model staff housing in it, but every table, formula and automation is yours to build and maintain.

Relyo vs Airtable for staff housing

FeatureRelyoAirtable
Built for
Built for it: Staff housing for hotels and resorts.
  • Organised around arrivals, departures, periods and entitlements
  • A separate system, built only for staff housing
Partly, with workarounds: General-purpose apps, with staff housing yours to build.
  • Operations intake, project management, CRM and more
  • No built-in idea of a room, a stay or a grade
Kept up to date by the people doing the work
Built for it: Occupants, maintainers and scanned bills update the record.
  • Occupants report repairs and do their own inspections
  • Maintainers start and complete jobs from their phone
  • Scanned bills fill 13 fields for your review
Partly, with workarounds: Forms and the mobile apps feed the base, once built.
  • Forms collect requests from anyone with the link
  • Each form, view and automation is yours to build
Room planning
Built for it: Smart Match, the room planner, proposes a room for everyone still waiting.
  • Rules for grades, smoking, pets, optional same-gender rooms
  • Respects people entitled to a room of their own
  • Each proposal explained, accepted in one click
Partly, with workarounds: Linked tables for rooms, beds and occupants.
  • No matching engine: room rules are yours to write
  • Omni AI can help generate the base
Grades and housing entitlements
Built for it: Each grade sets the room, utility allowance and rent cover.
  • Applied the same way to every assignment
  • Off, warn or block, per department if needed
  • Rule changes re-check existing stays
Partly, with workarounds: No concept of grades, but you can model one.
  • Warn-or-block checks are custom work you maintain
  • Someone keeps the formulas and automations working
Seasons and periods
Built for it: Each period starts from the last one.
  • A wizard carries properties, amenity settings and people over
  • Draft, active, then archived and still reportable
  • End-of-period report compares with the last period
Partly, with workarounds: Periods are date fields or a copy of the base.
  • No built-in housing seasons
  • Season-to-season comparison is a report you build
Inspections and damage
Built for it: Four checkpoints per stay, recorded on a phone.
  • Move-in and move-out photos side by side
  • Your team marks new damage, linked to the stay for reporting
  • Never charged for damage that was already there
Partly, with workarounds: Forms and the mobile apps capture photos against a record.
  • A simple checklist is easy to set up
  • No built-in before-and-after comparison
  • Linking repair costs to a stay is yours to build
Utility bills and allowances
Built for it: Scan a bill, check the allowance, share the cost fairly.
  • Bill scan reads 13 fields, from any provider or country
  • Checked against each grade's utility allowance
  • Shared by days stayed, and each occupant sees their share
Partly, with workarounds: Bills as records, with field agents to extract data.
  • Field agents can read PDF attachments
  • Photo reading depends on plan and admin settings
  • Allowance checks and day-based cost sharing are yours to build
Cost per occupant, department and grade
Built for it: Cost per occupant covers rent for the buildings you lease, utilities including overage, damage and repairs.
  • By property, grade and department
  • Full housing cost, including rent on empty leased beds
  • Period cost CSV and season report as PDF or Excel
Partly, with workarounds: Rollups, formulas and dashboards calculate almost anything.
  • You build the data model and reports
  • Someone keeps the formulas right as data changes
Rent and contracts for the buildings you lease
Built for it: Rent, deposits and contracts in one place.
  • Rent tickets 15 days ahead, and overdue alerts
  • Contract scan reads dates, notice period and special clauses
  • Tracks what is owed and paid, while money moves outside Relyo
Partly, with workarounds: A Lease Tracker template, plus automations you set up.
  • Field agents can pull terms from PDF contracts
  • Rent reminders are scheduled automations you build
Repairs and maintenance
Built for it: Repair requests built for housing, with a portal for maintainers.
  • Routing rules assign each request by specialty
  • AI suggests severity and duplicates when your team logs a ticket
  • Occupants can dispute a fix, which reopens the ticket
Built for it: Request intake with forms and automations is common.
  • Automations email, update records and post to Slack or Teams
  • A maintainer view is an interface you design
Portals for occupants, maintainers and landlords
Built for it: Four portals on one record, in the phone browser, nothing to install.
  • Occupants see their room, entitlement, repairs and bill share
  • Maintainers see only the jobs assigned to them
  • Landlords see occupancy, tickets, inspections and rent status
Partly, with workarounds: Possible with interfaces, forms or the Portals add-on.
  • Read-only interface users need Airtable accounts
  • External users through the Portals add-on
  • Interfaces work in the mobile apps, not in mobile browsers
Operational Signals and a daily email
Built for it: Operational Signals: 31 rule-based checks in one ranked list.
  • People, housing, money, maintenance and compliance (inspections, contracts)
  • One email each morning, only when something is new or critical
  • Plus Relyo recommends: up to 3 AI suggestions a night
Partly, with workarounds: A mature automation engine where you write each rule.
  • Triggers on record changes, views or a schedule
  • Monthly run limits depend on the plan
  • No housing checks until you build them
Built for it Partly, with workarounds Not designed for it

Choose Airtable if…

  • You want a flexible tool you design, with housing as one of many workflows
  • Someone on your team enjoys building and maintaining bases, formulas and automations
  • You need an open API, ready-made integrations or native mobile apps
  • You run a small operation and want to start on your own today
  • You want an AI that builds tables, interfaces and automations for you

Choose Relyo if…

  • You would rather use a staff housing system than build one
  • You do not want housing to depend on the one person who built the base
  • You want rooms assigned by your rules and grades applied the same way every time
  • You want bills checked against allowances and cost per occupant without writing formulas
  • You want inspections where nobody is charged for damage that was already there
  • Occupants, maintainers and landlords each need a phone portal with nothing to install

What Relyo has built in for staff housing

Room planning by your rules

In a base you build yourself, room rules sit in formulas and scripts that someone must keep working. Smart Match applies them for you and explains every proposal.

  • 6 hard rules it never breaks, 9 fit factors per match
  • Ask in plain words, and preferences never break hard rules
  • Accept in one click to create the stays

Grades, allowances and bill shares built in

In a base, every grade rule and bill share is a formula to maintain. In Relyo, each grade sets the room, the utility allowance and who pays.

  • Organisation pays, split at the allowance, or occupant pays
  • Bills shared by days stayed, following each grade's policy
  • Overage flagged the month it happens
  • Occupants see their own share in their portal

Start each season from the last one

Seasonal housing restarts every year. A wizard carries properties, amenity settings and people into the new period, instead of you duplicating a base.

  • Periods move from draft to active to archived, and stay reportable
  • End-of-period report with a comparison to the previous period
  • A simple rule-based rehire shortlist

Frequently asked questions

Can we run staff accommodation in Airtable?

Yes, you can build tables for properties, rooms, staff, bills and repairs yourself. What Airtable does not have is a ready-made housing workflow: room rules, grade entitlements, utility allowances, season rollover and move-in and move-out inspections. Relyo has these built in.

Is there an Airtable alternative built for staff housing?

Yes, Relyo is staff housing software for hotels and resorts, ready to use instead of a base you build. It covers room planning by your rules, inspections, repairs, bills checked against grade allowances, rent for the buildings you lease and cost per occupant. If housing is one of many workflows you want to build yourself, Airtable is a good fit.

Is there an Airtable template for staff or employee housing?

Not in Airtable's Real Estate or HR and Recruiting template categories (checked 19 October 2026). The closest are a Lease Tracker template for units, buildings and tenants, and a roommate template for chores and shared bills. Relyo is a staff housing system, so there is nothing to adapt.

What happens to our Airtable base when the person who built it leaves?

Someone else has to learn its tables, formulas and automations before changing anything. Relyo is a product we build and maintain, so a new grade, building or period is a setting, not a rebuild.

How does Relyo compare with monday.com or Notion for staff housing?

monday.com and Notion are general-purpose work platforms, like Airtable, so the trade-off is the same: you design and maintain the housing logic. Relyo comes with room planning, grade entitlements, inspections, bill checks and cost per occupant already built.

Can we move our existing Airtable data into Relyo?

Your staff list, yes: download the Airtable view as CSV and import it, up to 500 rows per file. Properties are set up with a guided wizard and help from the Relyo team. There is no live sync or API, so data moves between the two by file.

How does Relyo AI compare with Airtable Omni?

Both answer plain-language questions and can make changes, and Omni can also build tables, interfaces and automations. Relyo AI is specialised for housing: answers link to the exact records, and every change waits for your approval on a card. Room matching, cost numbers and alerts in Relyo are clear rules, not AI.

How does pricing compare between Relyo and Airtable?

Relyo starts with a free pilot for selected partners: one building, set up with the founders, and pricing is agreed after the pilot. Airtable's plans and prices change, so check them with Airtable directly.

How does Relyo protect our housing data?

Each organisation's data is isolated at the database level, and roles and per-department permissions decide who sees what. Finance data is limited to owners and admins, files sit in private storage behind short-lived links, and every change, including each approved AI change, is logged. For Airtable's security programme, see its trust and security page.

See staff housing software that is ready to use

Bring your Airtable base or spreadsheet to the demo and see the same housing in Relyo.

Free pilot for selected partners: start with one building, set up with the founders.