Guest experience

What to Put in an Airbnb Welcome Book (Page-by-Page)

Guestkept · 2026-06-09 · 7 min read

A good welcome book does three jobs at once: it cuts your guest messages in half, it makes a rental feel hosted instead of merely unlocked, and it quietly shows up in reviews ("the little guide book had everything"). A bad one — a binder of laminated rules — does the opposite. The difference is entirely in what you include and how you order it.

Here's the page-by-page structure we use, refined across hundreds of host conversations, plus the mistakes that make guests close the book and message you anyway.

The one rule: order pages by urgency, not by category

Guests open a welcome book at three moments: the minute they arrive (wifi, thermostat), when something confuses them (TV, appliances), and when they're planning (where to eat). Your book should answer in exactly that order. The most common welcome book mistake is opening with a two-page personal essay about the house's history. Guests with luggage in hand will never read it — and they'll resent flipping past it to find the wifi password.

Page 1: Welcome + the two things everyone asks first

One warm paragraph, maximum. Then, on the same page, in large type:

• Wifi network and password — yes, even though it's also on a card by the router and in your check-in message. Redundancy here costs nothing and saves messages.
• Trash: where the bins are and which day pickup is. (Strangely, this is among the most-asked guest questions everywhere.)
• Your name and number, with an honest note about response time: "We usually reply within the hour."

Page 2: Getting in, out, and around

Door and keypad instructions (including the lock-behind-you step people forget), exactly where to park and where not to, and your checkout time with the checkout steps. Putting checkout expectations on page 2 — not buried at the back — means no surprises on the last morning, which is where a lot of 4-star reviews are born.

Pages 3–4: The house guide

One short block per system, written like you'd explain it standing next to someone:

• TV and streaming — which remote does what, in one line. Tell guests they can log into their own accounts.
• Coffee — how the machine works and where the filters live. The coffee question is universal.
• Thermostat — exact steps, including the quirk. Every system has a quirk.
• Laundry, hot water, the grill or fire pit — operating steps plus the one safety rule each.
• Known quirks, disclosed proudly. "The basement door sticks in humid weather; a confident shoulder fixes it." Naming quirks converts flaws into charm — and prevents the "broken door" review.

Page 5: House rules — the short list

Five rules, maximum, each with one line of human context. "Quiet hours 10pm–8am — the neighbors are lovely and close" lands completely differently than a numbered list of fifteen prohibitions. If a rule matters enough to enforce, it matters enough to explain. (We've written a full guide to house rules guests actually read.)

Page 6: Safety and emergencies

A simple table: 911 plus your written-out address (guests don't know it under stress), your number, a local backup contact, nearest urgent care and 24-hour pharmacy, and the locations of the fire extinguisher, first-aid kit, water shutoff, and breaker panel. Nobody reads this page until the night they desperately need it — that's the point.

Pages 7–8: Local favorites — opinionated, not comprehensive

This is the section guests photograph. The mistake is writing a directory; the win is writing a short list with opinions:

☕ Coffee — Marsh Light Roasters. 4-minute walk. Get the cardamom bun; they sell out by 10.

Cover: coffee, breakfast, the nice dinner, the no-plan dinner, a drink, groceries, the walk you take visitors on, one "worth the hype" attraction with a timing tip, one local secret, a rainy-day option, and a with-kids option. Ten to twelve entries total. Three honest sentences beat thirty Yelp links — guests have Yelp; what they don't have is a local's opinion.

Last page: the goodbye

Thanks, an invitation to tell you directly if anything was off ("we fix things fast"), and a gentle line about reviews meaning a lot to a small place. That's the whole pitch — more pressure than that backfires.

What to leave out

• The house history essay — one paragraph max, and put it at the back if you must.
• Anything that changes weekly — events listings go stale and make the whole book feel stale.
• Passive-aggressive signage energy — "WE WILL CHARGE FOR…" framing belongs in your platform house rules, not the coffee-table book.
• Twenty restaurant options — decision fatigue isn't hospitality. Curate.

Print, digital, or both?

Both, ideally. A printed book (color, single-sided, in a binder or magnetic photo album — about $10 at any print shop) lives on the coffee table and gets browsed. A PDF version sent with your check-in message gets searched. Same file, two delivery routes. Update it quarterly: a closed restaurant in your book reads as neglect.

Welcome book questions hosts actually ask

Digital or printed — which converts better in reviews?

Printed gets browsed; digital gets searched. The printed book on the coffee table is the one that earns "they thought of everything" review sentences, because guests flip through it while their coffee brews. The PDF earns its keep at 11pm when someone wants the thermostat instructions without getting off the couch. If you only do one, print — but the marginal cost of also exporting the PDF is zero, so do both.

How long should it be?

Eight to twelve pages. Under six and it's missing the local-favorites section that guests actually love; over fifteen and the essential pages get lost. If your house has genuinely complicated systems (well water, generators, a boat dock), give them their own appendix pages rather than bloating the core.

Should I include my full address and door codes in the book?

Address yes — guests need it for delivery apps and emergencies, and anyone reading the book is already inside. Door codes no, if you rotate them per stay; write "your door code is in your check-in message" so the book never goes stale.

What's the best physical format?

A 3-ring binder with sheet protectors (easy page swaps when a restaurant closes), or a magnetic-sleeve photo album for a more finished look. Avoid lamination-as-binding — it makes quarterly updates annoying enough that you'll skip them.

Do guests actually read it?

They read pages 1–2 (wifi, essentials) almost universally, the local favorites at roughly half of stays, and the safety page only when something's wrong — which is exactly the right pattern. The book's real metric isn't readership; it's the messages you stop receiving. Hosts typically see "how do I…" messages drop by half after putting a good book out.

One last note: the welcome book works best as part of a system — the check-in message references it, the house rules match it, and the review ask closes the loop it opens. If you're building all of that from scratch, start with the 5-Star Host System, which wires the whole guest journey together.