What to Message Airbnb Guests Before Check-In: Three Messages, Word for Word
The pre-arrival window is where guest anxiety lives. Between booking and check-in, your guest is quietly wondering: did this go through? Where do I park? How do I get in? Will this host be weird? Every question you answer before it's asked converts anxiety into confidence — and confident guests check in happy, which is where 5-star reviews start.
You need exactly three messages in this window. Here they are, word for word, with timing and the reasoning. All three belong in Airbnb's scheduled messages (Menu → Messages → Scheduled messages) so they send themselves.
Message 1: The confirmation — within an hour of booking
Hi {guest first name} — thanks for booking, we're looking forward to hosting you {check-in date}! 🎉
You're all set: I'll send full check-in details the day before you arrive. The address and house guide are in your Airbnb itinerary, and parking is free in the driveway.
One quick question whenever you know it: roughly what time do you expect to arrive? Check-in opens at 3pm. If anything about your plans changes, just message me here — I usually reply within the hour.
Why it's built this way: the first line kills the "did it go through?" worry. The second tells them exactly what's coming and when, so silence between now and then doesn't feel like neglect. The arrival-time question surfaces early-check-in hopes a week early — when they're still cheap to accommodate — and starts a habit of guests telling you things.
Message 2: The week-out — 7 days before, 10am
Hi {guest first name} — one week out! A few quick things so your arrival is smooth:
• Check-in opens 3pm; checkout is 10am.
• Parking: the driveway fits two cars; please skip the street side.
• Pack layers — evenings here drop into the 50s even in summer.Anything you're hoping to do while you're in town? Happy to point you to the good coffee, the best sunset spot, or a dinner worth booking ahead.
Why it works: trip-planning mode begins about a week out — this catches it. The seasonal line ("pack layers") is the highest-value sentence in the message: it's the kind of thing only a human host says, and it shows up later in reviews as "the host was so thoughtful." The recommendation offer opens a concierge channel that costs you one saved quick-reply to service.
For stays booked less than a week out, Airbnb simply skips this one — the other two carry the load.
Message 3: Check-in details — the day before, 9am
Hi {guest first name} — you're in tomorrow! Here's everything you need:
📍 Address: 412 Marsh Lane, Beaufort — written out so you can paste it straight into maps.
🚗 Parking: driveway, either spot.
🔑 Door code: 4821# — keypad on the front door; it activates at 3pm.
📶 Wifi: MarshHouse / saltair2026 (also on the card by the router)The full house guide (thermostat, TV, coffee maker, quirks) is in the welcome book on the kitchen counter. If anything at all isn't right when you walk in, message me first — I can usually fix things within the hour.
Safe travels! 🧳
The three load-bearing choices:
- Morning send, not evening. A 9am message reaches guests while they're planning tomorrow; an 8pm one reaches them tired, mid-packing, or mid-flight — and gets lost.
- Completeness over elegance. Address, parking, code, wifi — all four, every time, even though they're "in the app." Guests at a gas station with 4% battery do not navigate the app.
- "Message me first." The closing line is review insurance: it routes walk-in problems to your inbox — where you can fix them — instead of marinating until the review box.
The timing rules behind all three
- Send between 8am and 9pm, guest-local time. Scheduled messages handle this for you.
- Never send check-in details at booking time. Codes sent three weeks early get screenshot, buried, and asked about again anyway — and stale codes are a security hole.
- Front-load every message. The first sentence does the job; warmth comes second. "Your code is 4821" is more hospitable than a paragraph of welcome with no information in it.
What about after they arrive?
The pre-arrival trio hands off to the in-stay messages — the settled-in check on check-in evening (the single most review-protective message there is), the checkout preview, and the review ask. We've covered the full eight-message backbone in our scheduled-messages guide.
Pre-arrival questions, answered
A guest never responds to anything. Bad sign?
Usually not — many great guests treat messages as read-only until something matters. The system is built for them: every message carries its full information whether or not they engage. Silence plus an on-time arrival is a normal stay; only silence plus odd booking signals (same-day, local, one night) deserves a closer look.
When do I send the door code for self check-in?
The day before, in the check-in details message — not at booking. Early codes get screenshot and buried, go stale if you rotate per stay, and add a security window for no benefit. The day-before send is also why that message gets a 9am slot: a full day of margin for questions.
What if my check-in is in-person, not self check-in?
The same three messages work — message 3 swaps the code block for a meeting plan: "I'll meet you at the side gate at your ETA; text me when you're 15 minutes out." In-person check-ins make the week-out arrival-time question load-bearing rather than nice-to-have, so chase the answer politely at day 3 if it hasn't come.
Should I ask guests why they're visiting?
Don't interrogate — invite. "Anything you're hoping to do while in town?" gets the wedding, the campus tour, the marathon volunteered freely, and each is a chance to be specifically useful. Direct purpose-of-trip questions read as screening and chill the relationship at its warmest moment.
How fast should I answer pre-arrival questions?
Within the hour, 8am–9pm, even if the answer is "checking — I'll confirm tonight." Response speed is a ranked metric on Airbnb, and pre-arrival is when guests are calibrating how responsive you'll be if something goes wrong mid-stay. Fast here is cheap insurance.
One habit that ties the three together
Reread your three pre-arrival templates every quarter against reality. The parking instructions that predate the construction next door, the "farmers market on Saturdays" line after it moved to Sundays, the check-in time your new cleaner's schedule quietly made optimistic — stale specifics are worse than no specifics, because guests act on them. Fifteen minutes a quarter keeps the system honest. And when a guest asks a question your templates should have answered, treat it as a bug report: the answer goes into next quarter's template, and that question never reaches your inbox again.
Every message, every situation — $9
The Guest Message Vault has all three pre-arrival messages plus 57 more: late arrivals, dead door codes, lost guests, discount hagglers, refund demands, and every awkward conversation hosting eventually serves up. Each with the exact moment to send it.
Get the Guest Message Vault — $9New to hosting entirely? Start with the free 75-point launch checklist — loading these messages is one of its operations steps.