A good welcome book cuts down the 11pm messages more than anything else you can do in an afternoon. It also settles the argument about check-out time before it starts. This covers what goes in one, what order to put it in, and how to build it without losing a Sunday to Canva.
What is an Airbnb welcome book?
A welcome book, which some hosts call a guest guide or house manual, tells guests how your place works and what is worth doing nearby. Printed, PDF, or a web page. The format matters less than whether someone can find the WiFi password in under ten seconds.
The ones that work read like a person wrote them. Most read like a form. If you have ever stayed somewhere and found a laminated sheet of rules in a plastic sleeve, you already know the difference.
What to include
Nobody reads these front to back. Guests arrive tired, they want one specific thing, and they want it now. Order matters more than prose.
1. The welcome note
Keep it short, and put the WiFi password on it. That is what people want first, before they have taken their shoes off. Check-out time belongs here too, somewhere nobody can claim they missed it.
2. Property essentials
This is the section guests actually use. Heating and air conditioning, how the appliances work, where to park, which day the bins go out. Then the quirks. If the shower takes ninety seconds to run hot, say so. If the front gate only opens when you lift it, say so. Anything you leave out, someone will message you about, usually late.
3. House rules
Say them plainly. Noise, extra guests, smoking, pets. Hosts tend to soften these until they are unreadable, which helps nobody. A rule that nobody understood is a rule you cannot enforce.
4. Local guide
This is the part guests remember. You know things a concierge does not: which of the four cafés on that street is worth the walk, which supermarket is not charging tourist prices. Five restaurants with a line each about why you would go. The nearest pharmacy. How to get into town without a car. A couple of things to do that no guidebook lists.
5. Check-out instructions
Put these at the end and be specific. Where do the keys go? Does the bed need stripping? Which bins, if any? What time? Vague check-out instructions are where most disputes start.
PDF, printed, or a web page?
PDF wins for most hosts. You can send it through Airbnb before anyone arrives, it looks the same on every device, and it still opens when a guest’s roaming data does not.
Sending it the day before arrival works better than leaving it on the counter. Guests turn up already knowing where to park.
The checklist
- Welcome message with your name and the WiFi password
- Check-in instructions and door or key access
- Heating, air conditioning, and thermostat
- Kitchen appliances, especially the coffee machine
- Washer and dryer, if you have them
- Parking, including any restrictions
- Trash and recycling days
- House rules: noise, guests, smoking, pets
- Five local restaurants, with a line on each
- Nearest supermarket, pharmacy, and cash machine
- Getting around: buses, metro, taxi apps
- Two or three things worth doing nearby
- Emergency numbers and the nearest hospital
- Check-out: keys, cleaning, time
Where these usually go wrong
Length is the common one. Twenty pages and nobody opens it. Ten is plenty, and every section should be earning its place.
Then presentation. Walls of text get skipped, so use headings and keep paragraphs short. People are scanning, not reading.
Out-of-date recommendations are worse than none at all, because a guest who walks twenty minutes to a closed restaurant remembers that. Read the thing through twice a year and fix what has changed.
And generic tips are not tips. “Visit the Eiffel Tower” tells nobody anything they did not already know. The place you actually go on a Friday night does.
How long this takes
Most hosts who build one in Canva or Google Docs lose the better part of a day to it, between writing the content, wrangling the layout, and fighting with fonts. Once, for one property, that is survivable. If you run several listings, or you want to keep it current, it stops being survivable fairly quickly.
Which is why we built The Checkin Guide.
Create your welcome book in minutes
Answer a few questions about your place and your area, and you get a designed PDF welcome book back. No design work, no Canva.
Create your welcome book →