Hotel lost and found software: the guest checked out, their charger didn’t.

Why hotels outgrow the logbook

Most hotel lost and found still runs on a paper log or a spreadsheet: an item is described in a few words, stored in a back office, and matched by memory when a guest calls. That works until the descriptions blur together. One black phone charger reads exactly like the next, the person who logged the item is off shift, and the guest is already home in another city.

The result is slow phone tag, items that are never matched to their owners, and storage shelves that fill up until a seasonal clear-out. Each unreturned item is a guest who remembers your hotel for the wrong reason.

How vFound works in a hotel

Housekeeping or the front desk photographs the item on a phone as it is handed in. vFound AI fills in the listing from the photo, staff add where it was found and where it will be stored, and the item goes up on your hotel’s own branded page at your own vFound address: the same link every time, easy to print on a card at the desk or send after checkout.

• Guests browse photos of found items around the clock, from any phone, without calling reception.
• A guest who recognizes an item submits a claim with private identifying details: the contents of the wallet, the lock-screen photo, the scratch on the case.
• Your team compares those details with the item and any staff-only photos, then accepts or declines the claim.
• Guests can book a pickup time within your hours, with an add-to-calendar link and a reminder, or arrange a return by post in the claim’s private messages. Every return is recorded with who did what and when.

vFound AI for guests who have already checked out

By the time a guest misses their charger, they may be in another city or another country. vFound AI helps at every step across that distance, from the housekeeping photo to a reply in the guest’s own language.

• One photo from housekeeping becomes a draft listing: vFound AI suggests the title, category, colour, a brand it can read on the item and a description, ready to check and save.
• For items logged with photo auto-fill, search keywords are written in English, Spanish, French, German, Dutch and Italian, so a guest who types “cargador” or “chargeur” finds the charger.
• A guest who has already left can describe the loss in their own words and language; vFound AI asks a few short questions, fills in the report for them to check and send, and ranks likely matches with a one-line reason for each.
• If nothing matches yet, a standing watch keeps checking new items for 90 days and emails the guest each time a likely match is logged.
• Guest messages in another language are translated for your team, and staff reply in the guest’s language, starting from a draft written by vFound AI.
• For a watch or a wallet, the claim check compares the guest’s answers and proof photos with your private record and flags answers copied from the public listing. AI suggests. Your team decides.

Built for how hotel teams actually work

vFound runs in the browser on any phone, tablet or front-desk computer. There is nothing to install and no per-device licence. Every team member gets their own login, so the night auditor, the executive housekeeper and the concierge see the same inventory with their own accountability trail.

Items carry a holding period matched to your policy, with expiring items surfaced before they lapse. Photos a guest should not see, such as a passport data page or an engraved initial you want to use for verification, stay private to staff while the item itself remains findable. vFound AI’s privacy guard helps: when photo auto-fill reads a photo that shows an ID, a bank card or a lit screen, it switches that photo to staff-only.

One line of code adds the lost and found to your hotel’s website as an embedded page or a floating button, and you can run it on a subdomain of your hotel’s own website, such as lostandfound.yourhotel.com. New claims, lost reports and pickups can also post to Slack, Microsoft Teams or Google Chat, with no guest personal details included.

Link each item to the stay

A room number alone does not say whose charger it is: rooms turn over every day, guests move, and back-to-back stays share the same room. vFound Hotel stays keeps a minimal private record of each stay, and your team links a found item or a guest’s parcel to it only when they choose to.

• The item keeps the room where it was found, even after the guest moves to another room, while the stay shows the room they are in now.
• A room number never suggests an owner. Linking a stay is always a deliberate choice by your team, and each claim is still decided on the guest’s own proof.
• Add stays by hand, import them from a CSV file or send them from your own system through the scoped vFound API.
• On Cloudbeds, an owner or manager connects your own property API key limited to read:reservation, tests it and syncs minimal reservation and room context. vFound cannot change a reservation, and your team keeps working by hand if the connection pauses.
• A stay holds only what the desk needs, such as the reservation reference, guest name, dates and room. Rates, card and payment details, loyalty data, ID documents and preferences stay in your property system.
• Stays are private to your team and are deleted 13 months after their last known date, unless an item or parcel still needs them.

Several hotels, one login

Each hotel or resort runs as its own venue, with its own guest page, inventory and subscription, so a guest searches the property they actually stayed at. One owner sign-in switches between your properties, and a customer-owned group command centre shows aggregate workload, account health and policy differences across the hotels you own, with group-wide or regional access for your managers. Group access never grants billing or the right to close a property’s account.

What your guests experience

Instead of describing an item from memory to a busy front desk, the guest opens your page, searches “sunglasses” or “lunettes de soleil”, and sees them. Every status change and message arrives through a private link, with no account to create and no app to download. Guest pages, claim pages and emails come in twelve languages, chosen from the guest’s browser or picked by the guest, and the experience carries your hotel’s name, colours and cover photo, not ours.