What to put in a holiday let welcome pack

A welcome pack is two different things that share a name, and most of the frustration around them comes from treating them as one.

The first is physical: a basket, a tray, a shelf. Tea, coffee, something local, the things a guest needs within an hour of arriving and will not have brought. It is hospitality, it is finite, and it gets used up.

The second is informational: the Wi-Fi password, the bin day, how the shower works, what time to leave. Hosts often print this and put it in the same basket, which is where the trouble starts — because the first kind is consumed and replaced between guests, and the second kind changes on its own schedule and needs to be correct every single time.

This guide covers the basket. Where information belongs is the last section, and it is the part worth reading even if you have the rest sorted.

The basics, which nobody praises and everybody notices

There is a short list of things a guest will look for in the first hour. None of them is memorable. All of them are noticed by their absence, usually at an inconvenient moment.

• Tea. More than two bags. A box that is nearly empty reads worse than no box.
• Coffee. Matched to what is actually in the kitchen — ground coffee beside a pod machine is a small daily irritation for a week.
• Milk. The one item on this list with a deadline. Fresh if you can manage the timing, long-life as a backup, and say which it is.
• Sugar. Cheap, small, and a genuine nuisance to go out for.
• Toilet paper. More than the roll on the holder. A spare that is visible is worth two that are in a cupboard nobody opens.
• Washing-up liquid and a sponge. Both, and the sponge new.
• Bin bags. The size that fits your bins, near the bin, not in a drawer.

Salt, pepper and cooking oil belong here too if the property has a kitchen people are expected to cook in. A holiday let advertised with a full kitchen and stocked with nothing to cook with is a promise half kept.

None of this is exciting, and that is the point. The basics buy you the absence of a problem, not praise. The next section is where praise comes from.

The part guests remember

One or two things, chosen deliberately, beat a large basket of supermarket items.

What works is almost always local and specific: coffee from a roaster in the same town, a jar of something made nearby, biscuits from the bakery two streets away. The value is not the item. It is the evidence that somebody who knows the area chose it, which is the exact thing a guest cannot get from a chain hotel and the reason they booked a house instead.

A handwritten note does more work than its cost suggests, for the same reason. It does not need to be long. Two sentences naming the place and one thing you like about it is enough.

If your property has a season — a cold house in February, a garden in July — let the pack reflect it. Firelighters in winter and a couple of cold drinks in summer land better than the same basket all year.

And be honest about scale. A welcome pack does not have to be a hamper. For a one-night stay, a decent coffee and a note is proportionate. Overshooting sets an expectation you then have to meet on every booking, including the ones that barely cover the cleaning.

What does not belong in the basket

Anything that changes.

The Wi-Fi password is the clearest case. It goes in the basket, the router gets replaced eighteen months later, and the card stays exactly where it was, quietly wrong. Nobody tells you. They message you instead, and you answer it by phone every time, which is the failure the card was supposed to prevent.

The same applies to the cleaner’s phone number, the bin collection day, the door code, the name of the restaurant that closed last spring, and anything else that was true when you printed it. Printed information does not update, and a guest has no way of knowing which parts have gone stale.

Perishables need the same caution in the other direction. Fresh milk, fruit and bread are excellent when the timing works and slightly grim when it does not. If you cannot control the gap between changeover and arrival, choose things that tolerate it.

Giving guests the Wi-Fi without the paper slip goes through the transcription problem in detail and what to do when the password changes.

Welcome book, welcome pack, house manual

The words get used interchangeably and they describe different objects.

The welcome pack is the physical one: consumables, replaced between guests.

The welcome book — also called a house manual, and a guidebook on some platforms — is the information: how things work, what to do, when to leave. It is not consumed. It needs to be accurate rather than generous.

Keeping them apart solves the restocking problem in one move. The pack gets refilled on changeover with everything else; the book is updated when a fact changes, which is a different task on a different schedule, and one you can do from your phone if the book is digital rather than laminated.

That is the argument for a digital guide in one sentence: information that changes should live somewhere you can change it. A QR code on the wall points at a page you edit once, and every guest from that moment on reads the corrected version — including the ones already in the house.

What to include in a guest guide covers the sixteen subjects worth writing, and printing and placing your QR sign covers where the code goes so people actually find it.

A checklist you can copy

Adapt it to your property — a city flat and a rural cottage need different things.

Consumables

• Tea, coffee, milk, sugar
• Salt, pepper, cooking oil
• Toilet paper, with a visible spare
• Washing-up liquid, sponge, tea towel
• Bin bags that fit the bins
• Hand soap, and soap in the shower

Local and seasonal

• One or two local items, chosen rather than bought in bulk
• A short handwritten note
• Something appropriate to the season

Practical, and easy to forget

• Spare light bulbs of the fittings you use
• A basic first aid kit
• Phone charging cable of the common type
• Umbrella, if your weather warrants one

Not in the basket — in the guide

• Wi-Fi network and password
• Door codes and key arrangements
• Bin day and recycling
• Appliance instructions
• Check-out time and what to do with keys
• Contact number for problems

Restocking without thinking about it

The pack is part of changeover, not a separate job you remember. That means a written list your cleaner can work from, the same list every time, and a small buffer stored on site so a missing item is a walk to a cupboard rather than a trip to a shop.

Check the dated items on every turnover and the undated ones monthly. Tea goes stale, sugar clumps, and the second-to-last roll of anything is the one that runs out at midnight.

Then leave it alone. A pack that works is one you stop thinking about, restocked by somebody following a list, while the information a guest actually needs lives somewhere you can correct in under a minute.

How to stop answering the same guest questions is the method for working out which of those questions are content gaps and which are discovery gaps.