Airbnb welcome book template: what to include in 2026

Most welcome books start with good intentions and a trip to the printer. Then the Wi-Fi password changes, the bin day shifts, the new coffee machine arrives, and the laminated binder on the kitchen table is quietly wrong. If you’re looking for an Airbnb welcome book template that actually stays right, the trick isn’t the design, it’s putting the correct sections in the correct order, and keeping them current without reprinting anything.

Below is a practical, section-by-section template you can work through in an afternoon. It covers the essentials guests reach for in the first ten minutes, the house manual that saves you the 9pm “how does the oven work?” text, the local tips that make a stay feel personal, and the housekeeping bits that protect your reviews.

Start with what guests need in the first ten minutes

The opening of any good welcome book answers the questions a tired guest has the moment they walk through the door. Put these first, before anything else, so nobody has to scroll or flick past the history of the village to find the Wi-Fi.

• Wi-Fi name and password. The single most-looked-at thing in the whole book. Make it copyable in one tap rather than a string of characters squinted at across the room.
• Check-in and check-out times. State them plainly. “Check-out is 10am” beats a paragraph about flexibility.
• Parking. Where to put the car, any permit on the dashboard, the spot that looks like yours but belongs to next door.
• Emergency and host contact. One tap to call you. A guest who can reach you in five seconds rarely leaves a one-star review about a problem you could have fixed in two minutes.

If you’re hosting on Airbnb, this opening section does most of the heavy lifting on its own, see our notes for Airbnb hosts for how this maps to the platform’s messaging.

Make self check-in genuinely self-service

If guests let themselves in, your welcome book is also your front desk. Spell out how to find the property, the turning that isn’t on the sat-nav, the blue door not the green one, and what to bring or expect on arrival.

For the access code itself, there’s a small but real safety point: a code printed in a binder, or sat in a PDF emailed weeks ago, is a code that’s been seen by everyone who’s ever stayed. A digital guide can keep the door code hidden until it’s close to arrival day, then reveal it automatically. Same convenience for the guest, far less exposure for you.

The house manual: the part that saves you texts

This is the section that earns its keep. Every appliance or quirk you document is a message you don’t receive at an awkward hour. Walk the property as if you’d never seen it before and write down anything that isn’t obvious.

Appliances and heating

• How to work the oven and hob (especially induction, plenty of guests have never used it).
• The dishwasher tablets and where they live.
• Heating and hot water: the thermostat, the timer, what “boost” does.
• The TV and any streaming logins, written out simply.

Short how-to videos beat paragraphs here. A ten-second clip of someone actually turning the right dial on the boiler ends the conversation before it starts.

Bins, recycling and the dreaded bin day

Bins cause more confusion than anything else in a UK let, because every council does it differently and the schedule rotates. Say which bin goes out, where it lives, and, crucially, when. A line that reads “general waste every other Tuesday” is already wrong half the time. A guide that works out the next actual collection date for your postcode is the kind of small thing guests quietly appreciate and never mention.

House rules, kept friendly

Keep rules brief and reasoned. “No shoes upstairs, the carpets are pale” lands better than a wall of prohibitions. Cover the things that genuinely matter: smoking, parties, the wood burner, the hot tub, quiet hours for the neighbours. A short, warm list reads as care rather than suspicion.

Local recommendations that feel like a friend’s

This is where a stay stops being a transaction. Guests can find a generic “top 10” anywhere; what they can’t find is your shortlist, the pub that does a proper Sunday roast, the beach that’s quieter at low tide, the bakery worth the early walk.

Keep it specific and honest. Five places you’d actually send a friend beats forty you copied off a tourism site. Pin each one to a map so nobody’s translating your directions into a postcode. If you run a cottage where guests stay longer and want to really explore, this section does a lot, our page for holiday cottages goes into how owners build these up over a season.

A few categories worth covering:

• Somewhere for a good dinner, and somewhere for a casual lunch.
• The nearest decent shop and the nearest big supermarket.
• One walk, one view, one rainy-day option.
• A useful-numbers list: the local taxi, the GP, the vet, the nearest pharmacy.

Before you leave: the checkout section

The closing section protects two things at once, your turnaround and your rating. Make leaving easy and obvious.

A short “before you leave” checklist does the job: strip the beds or not, where to leave keys, load and start the dishwasher, take the rubbish to the right bin, turn the heating down. Guests almost always want to do the right thing; they just need to know what it is.

A guest who knows exactly what’s expected leaves a tidy property and a calm review. A guest left guessing leaves you a mess and a maybe.

Then, gently, the review. A simple “how was your stay?” prompt placed after a good experience is far more effective than a pushy ask on arrival. The version worth having routes happy guests to your public review link and quietly sends anyone unhappy a private message to you first, so a fixable problem reaches you before it reaches your listing. That single bit of routing has saved more ratings than any amount of fluffy welcome copy.

The real difference: printed goes stale, digital stays current

Here’s the honest problem with any printed or PDF welcome book template, however lovely: the moment something changes, it’s wrong, and there’s no way to fix the copy already in the property. The router gets swapped, the password changes, the bin schedule rotates, the brilliant new café opens, and your binder doesn’t know.

A digital guide opens from a QR code in the guest’s own browser. No app, no login, and it works offline once loaded, which matters if your property sits somewhere with patchy signal. You change the Wi-Fi password once, and every guide is right instantly, including the one a guest is reading at that exact moment. You can see how it works end to end, and the full set of features covers the extras a paper book simply can’t do: auto-translation into seven languages, a guide-wide search, three-day local weather, a moderated guestbook, and issue reporting that routes a problem straight to the right contractor.

If you look after more than one property, the same logic scales. A shared content library means you write the checkout checklist once and reuse it everywhere, with drift detection flagging the guide that’s quietly fallen out of step, which is most of what our property managers come for.

A template you can fill in this week

To recap the order, top to bottom:

1. The first-ten-minutes essentials: Wi-Fi, check-in/out, parking, your number.
2. Self check-in: how to find us, what to bring, the access code.
3. The house manual: appliances, heating, bins, friendly rules.
4. Local recommendations, pinned to a map.
5. Before you leave: the checkout checklist and the review prompt.

Get those five sections right and you’ve covered everything a great welcome book needs, the rest is your photos, your words, and a bit of warmth. The only thing a printed version can’t promise is that it’ll still be true next month.

You can build the whole thing from this template and try it free for 14 days, with no card needed, have a look at the pricing when you’re ready.