What to Put in an Airbnb Welcome Book | The Complete Host Checklist

Every host builds a welcome book with good intentions. Most guests never open it.

Not because guests are lazy. Because most welcome books are built like brochures, and guests use them like manuals. A brochure is read on the sofa, cover to cover, with a glass of wine. A manual is opened at the exact moment something is blocking you: the wifi will not connect, the thermostat is a mystery, the trash has to go out and you do not know which bin.

Once you accept that guests read in moments of need, the whole structure of a welcome book changes. Here is what to put in, what to leave out, and how to order it. At the end, a note on format, because the same content works very differently on paper, in a PDF, and on a live page.

The rule: order by moment, not by topic

Do not organize your book the way a hotel organizes a compendium (A to Z, amenities first, legal last). Organize it by the timeline of a stay. A guest's questions arrive in a predictable order, and your book should match it.

Minute zero: arrival

These are the questions a guest has while standing outside your door with luggage. If the answer is buried on page 12, they are already messaging you.

Exact address and how to find the entrance. Which door, which floor, which buzzer. A photo of the entrance saves paragraphs.
Parking. Where, whether a permit is needed, what it costs, what to avoid.
Door code or lockbox instructions. Numbered steps, one action per line. Include what to do if the code fails.
Wifi network name and password. This is the single most-asked question in hosting. Put it first, make it copyable, and put it on paper too. We wrote a whole piece on this: how hosts stop answering the wifi question.

The first hour: making the place work

Lights, heating, and cooling. Especially anything non-obvious. Every rental has one switch nobody can find. Name it.
Hot water. If there is a quirk (wait 30 seconds, pull the lever halfway), say so plainly. Water quirks generate more messages than almost anything except wifi.
TV and streaming. Which remote, which input, whether guests can log into their own accounts.
Kitchen basics. Coffee machine instructions, dishwasher tablets location, anything with a non-standard interface.

The first evening: the rules that matter

House rules are where hosts write too much. A wall of twenty rules teaches guests to read none of them. Pick the rules with real consequences and state them in one line each.

Quiet hours. The exact times, and why (neighbors, building policy).
Smoking. Where it is forbidden, and where it is allowed if anywhere.
Trash and recycling. Which bins, where they live, and collection day if guests need to act.
Guests and visitors. Your policy on extra people, stated without drama.
Anything that breaks the lease or the law locally. Keep it short and factual.

The stay: local tips guests trust

This is the part guests enjoy rather than need, and it is where you earn the review sentence "the host's recommendations were spot on." Three principles:

Curate, do not aggregate. Five places you actually go beat fifty scraped from a map. Guests can find the top-ten list themselves. They cannot find your judgment.
Group by intent. Eat, coffee, do. That is how a guest thinks at 9am and at 7pm.
Add the one-line personal note. "Get the pistachio croissant, arrive before 10" is worth more than a star rating. Include walking time and a maps link.

The last morning: checkout

Checkout instructions are read under time pressure, often while packing. Three steps maximum, plus the time.

Checkout time.
The three actions you actually need. For example: trash in the outside bin, keys in the lockbox, windows closed. Not ten. Three.
What NOT to do. If you prefer guests leave the linens on the beds, say so. It removes guilt-driven guesswork.

Always available: safety and contact

Your phone number and the fastest way to reach you. Messaging app, SMS, whatever you truly answer.
Emergency numbers for the country, plus the nearest pharmacy and hospital.
Practical locations: fire extinguisher, first aid kit, water shutoff, fuse box. Nobody reads this section until the moment it matters, which is exactly why it must exist.

What guests skip (leave it out)

Cutting is as important as adding. These sections cost you credibility and bury the content guests need:

Your hosting story. A warm two-line welcome is lovely. A page of biography is skipped.
Generic city guides. History of the neighborhood, climate charts, "about the region." Guests have Wikipedia.
Repetition of the listing. They already booked. They know it has a balcony.
Legal boilerplate walls. Keep required terms, lose the intimidation.
Twenty-rule lists. As above: many rules, none read.

A useful test: for every block, ask "what message does this prevent?" If the answer is none, cut it.

The format question: paper, PDF, or live page

The same checklist performs very differently depending on where it lives.

The paper binder works only for the guest sitting next to it. It cannot be sent before arrival, it drifts out of date, and nobody photographs page 4 to carry the wifi password to the terrace.

The PDF or Canva template is the most common upgrade, and it is homework twice. Once for you (fighting a design tool, re-exporting on every change) and once for the guest (pinch-zooming an A4 page on a phone at the front door). A PDF also cannot do the one thing guests most want: tap to copy the wifi password.

The live web page is the format that matches how guests behave. It opens from a QR code or a link in your pre-arrival message, it is built for a phone screen, and when the wifi password changes you edit once and every future guest sees the fix. No re-printing, no re-sending.

This is the format Keystay builds. You fill in one guided form (the checklist above, essentially, takes about 10 minutes) and you get a hosted mobile guidebook with the wifi card first and tap-to-reveal for passwords and door codes, plus a printable QR sign for the entryway. It costs $39 once, not a subscription, with hosting included for 5 years + export anytime. You can poke a live demo guidebook on your phone before deciding, and the pricing is one page long.

Start with the one item guests need most

If building the whole book today feels like a project, start where the messages come from: the wifi.

Our free Wi-Fi QR Sign Maker takes a network name and password and gives you a printable sign guests scan to connect. No signup, no watermark games. Print it, put it where guests drop their bags, and you have removed the most repeated question in hosting this afternoon.

Then, when you are ready, the rest of the checklist is one form away at keystay.co.

The checklist, compressed

For your fridge, or your notes app:

Address, entrance, parking
Door code, numbered steps, failure fallback
Wifi name + password (page one, and on paper)
Heating, cooling, hot water quirks
TV, coffee, kitchen non-obviousness
Five rules that matter, one line each
Trash: bins, location, day
Local tips: eat, coffee, do, with a personal note each
Checkout: time + three actions
Your number, emergencies, extinguisher and shutoffs

Answer these before they are asked, and your message thread goes quiet. That silence is the whole point.

Keystay is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Airbnb, Vrbo, or Booking.com. A Keystay guidebook works for any short-term rental listed on those platforms, and for direct bookings.