What to include in a guest guide

There is no shortage of lists telling hosts to include “house rules” and “local recommendations”. The trouble is that “house rules” is a heading, not content, and the gap between having the heading and having a useful answer under it is where most guest guides quietly fail.

This is that gap. Sixteen subjects guests actually look for, what a good answer inside each one looks like, and — at the end — the things that keep being added to guides and read by nobody.

The six that matter before anything else

If you write nothing else, write these. They cover the questions that otherwise reach you by phone.

1. Wi-Fi

The network name exactly as it appears in the phone’s list, and the password exactly as typed, including capitals. If the network name has a space in it, say so. If there are two networks, say which one guests should use and why the other one exists.

Put the password on its own line. A guest is copying it character by character while holding a phone in one hand. Giving guests the Wi-Fi without the paper slip goes further into the handover — the characters that get misread, the two different kinds of Wi-Fi QR code, and what happens to a printed one when the password changes.

2. Getting in

The whole sequence, in order, as a numbered list: where to park, which door, where the key or code is, what to do if the code does not work. Include the thing that is obvious to you and invisible to a guest — the door that sticks, the gate that is unlabelled, the entrance that is round the back.

If there is a lockbox, say where it is in terms a stranger can follow. “By the front door” is not a location; “on the wall to the right of the front door, below the light” is.

3. Contact

How to reach you, and what counts as urgent. Give a channel you actually watch. If you answer messages within the hour between 8am and 8pm and not otherwise, write that down — a guest who knows when to expect a reply does not send three more.

4. House information

The appliances that need explaining and nothing else. The heating, the hot water, the induction hob that needs a specific pan, the dishwasher that has one strange button, the TV input. This is the section that grows without limit if you let it; the test is whether a guest would be stuck without the answer.

5. House rules

Short, specific, and framed as facts rather than requests. Quiet hours, smoking, pets, parties, extra visitors, shoes. A rule a guest has to interpret is a rule that gets broken honestly.

Rules are the one section where wording does most of the work, and the one most damaged by a language barrier — a guest who half-understands a rule breaks it without knowing. Writing house rules guests actually follow is the long version: separating the rules that matter from the ones you merely prefer, and writing them so they survive being translated. The cost of getting it wrong is in what a language barrier actually costs.

6. Check-out

The time, and the list. What to do with keys, linen, dishwasher, bins, heating, windows. Be explicit about what you do not want done — hosts who ask guests to strip beds and hosts who would rather they did not are both common, and a guest cannot guess which you are.

Check-out and check-in deserve their own treatment, because they are read under time pressure at opposite ends of a stay: structuring check-in and check-out information.

These six are what a QRiousStay free account carries, and that is not a coincidence — they are the set that makes a guide functional rather than decorative.

The ten that make a guide genuinely good

7. Restaurants

Six places, not thirty. For each: what it is, how far, and one sentence on why you are recommending it. “Best food in town” tells a guest nothing; “small, twelve tables, book a day ahead in summer” tells them everything.

Say if a place closes out of season. A recommendation that sends a guest to a dark window in November is worse than no recommendation.

8. Parking

Where, whether it costs anything, whether it is yours, and what the rules are for the street if it is not. If parking is genuinely difficult, say so plainly before arrival rather than letting a guest discover it while circling.

9. Shops and services

The nearest grocery and its hours, the pharmacy, the cash machine, the petrol station. Opening hours matter more than distance in most places, and more than either in rural ones.

10. Taxi and getting around

Local taxi numbers, whether ride-hailing operates here, bus or ferry basics, how long the journey to the station or airport really takes. Guests plan their departure around this and get it wrong when it is missing.

11. Emergencies

The emergency number for the country, the nearest hospital or clinic, where the fuse box and the water stop-tap are, where the fire extinguisher and first aid kit live. This section is short and almost never read, which is exactly why it must be right.

12. Cleaning

Whether there is a mid-stay clean, what to do about waste and recycling and which bin goes out when, where the vacuum is, what to do about a spill. Bin day is one of the most reliably asked questions in any guide.

13. Wellness

Only if you have something: sauna instructions, hot tub rules and heating time, pool hours and depth, gym access. Safety facts belong here, not in the small print — how hot, how long, who should not.

14. Local tips

The things that are not restaurants: the walk worth doing, the beach that is better than the popular one, the market on Saturday, what is genuinely worth the drive. This is where a guide stops being a manual and starts being a reason to come back.

Write about the season a guest is actually in if you can. A summer tip in February reads as carelessness.

15. FAQ

Use this for the questions that do not belong anywhere else — the ones your messages keep producing that have no natural home. If you find yourself with a long FAQ, it usually means a section above it is incomplete.

16. Anything that is only true of your place

The one thing no checklist can supply. The boat and its rules. The well water that is safe but tastes of iron. The neighbour’s dog. The road that floods. The gate that must be shut because of sheep.

This is what separates a guide that reads as yours from a guide that reads as a template, and it is usually the part guests remember.

Welcome book, house manual or guest guide?

Three names, broadly one object, and the differences are worth knowing because they change what people expect when you use the word.

A welcome book is the traditional form: a folder or ring binder left in the property, usually printed, often assembled by hand. The name carries a promise of warmth — it is the hospitality version — and the weakness is that it is a snapshot. Everything in it was true on the day it was printed.

A house manual is the same information under a more practical name, and the name sets a different expectation: less introduction, more instruction. Some booking platforms use it as a field on the listing. It tends to be the version people write when they are tired of explaining the boiler.

An Airbnb guidebook is a specific feature of that platform, and it is worth being precise about what it does. It is built for recommendations — places to eat, things to see, neighbourhood notes — and it belongs to that platform rather than to the property, so it is not where the boiler instructions or the bin day naturally live. It is a good complement to a guide and a poor replacement for one.

A guest guide is what this site calls all of the above when it is digital: one place holding both the hospitality and the instructions, reachable from a code on the wall, edited by you rather than reprinted.

The distinction that actually matters is not the name. It is whether the thing updates. A printed welcome book and a digital guest guide can contain identical words; only one of them is still correct after you change the Wi-Fi password, and only one of them corrects itself for the guest currently standing in the house.

Whichever you call it, keep it separate from the basket of tea and coffee by the kettle. That is a different object with a different job — what to put in a holiday let welcome pack covers the consumables and why the information does not belong in with them.

What to leave out

Your booking terms. Cancellation, deposits and damage policies belong where the booking happened. Restating them buries the useful parts.

A long welcome letter. One warm sentence is generous. A page is an obstacle between a tired guest and the door code.

Everything about the area. A guide is not a tourist board. Six good recommendations beat sixty; a guest facing sixty picks none of them.

Anything you will not maintain. An event listing from last season, a restaurant that has closed, a phone number that has changed. A guide is trusted as a whole: one stale fact makes a guest doubt the rest of it.

That last one is an argument for keeping the guide short, and an argument for keeping it somewhere you can edit in a minute rather than reprint. In QRiousStay the printed code points at the accommodation rather than at a snapshot of it, so a correction is live at the next scan and the sign on the wall never changes.

A structure you can copy

Everything above, as a blank. Sixteen headings in the order guests need them, each with the one question that section has to answer. Copy it, delete what you do not have, and write one or two sentences under each heading.

There is nothing to download and no form to fill in — it is plain text, because plain text pastes into whatever you are actually writing in.

WI-FI
  Network name, exactly as it appears in the list. Password, exactly as typed.

GETTING IN
  Where the key or the code is, and what to do when it does not work.

CONTACT
  Who to reach, how, and how quickly — plus what counts as an emergency.

HOUSE INFORMATION
  Heating, hot water, the appliances a guest will actually touch.

HOUSE RULES
  What is not allowed, and the one-line reason each rule exists.

CHECK-OUT
  The time, and the three or four things to do before leaving.

——— the ten that make it good ———

RESTAURANTS        Six you would send a friend to, with why and how far.
PARKING            Exactly where, and what happens when that space is taken.
SHOPS AND SERVICES The nearest food shop, the pharmacy, their real hours.
TAXI AND TRANSPORT One number that answers, and how long it usually takes.
THINGS TO DO       A handful, seasonal, with the one that is worth the drive.
WELLNESS           Sauna, hot tub, pool — how to use it and when not to.
EMERGENCIES        112, the nearest clinic, and where the stopcock is.
FAQ                The questions you answer by message every single week.
MINIBAR            What is there, what it costs, how to pay.
YOUR OWN           The thing only this property has.

If a section runs past four sentences, it is usually two sections. If a section is empty after ten minutes of thinking, you do not have that section — delete the heading rather than writing filler under it.

What good wording actually looks like

The structure is the easy half. Most guides fail on sentences that are true and unusable, so here are three, before and after.

Wi-Fi. “The Wi-Fi is in the kitchen drawer” is not Wi-Fi information, it is a treasure hunt. “Network: Granvik-Guest. Password: sommar2026 — all lowercase, no spaces” is. Say whether the password is case-sensitive, because half of them are and a guest cannot tell by looking.

Getting in. “Use the lockbox” assumes the guest has found it. “The lockbox is on the left of the front door, at waist height. Enter 4 7 2 1 and pull the latch down firmly — it sticks in cold weather” is the same fact with the three things that go wrong already answered.

Check-out. “Please leave the house as you found it” means nothing operationally, and a guest who wants to comply cannot. “Strip the beds, run the dishwasher, put the bins in the green container by the gate, leave the key in the lockbox” is four actions somebody can finish.

The pattern is the same each time: name the thing exactly, say where it is from where the guest is standing, and answer the failure before it happens.

Essential, or merely true

The six above the line are not a recommendation — they are the guide. A guest who cannot find the Wi-Fi, get in, or reach you has a problem you will hear about tonight. Write those six before you write anything else, and publish with only those six if that is all you have time for.

The ten below the line change the stay rather than rescue it. They are the difference between a guide that prevents messages and a guide a guest actually enjoys, and they can be added one at a time across a season.

The test for anything not on either list is not whether it is true. It is whether a guest, standing in your hallway with a bag in one hand, would go looking for it.

How much to write

Less than you think, in more places than you think.

A guide of sixteen short, correct sections outperforms a guide of six long ones, because guests do not read guides — they search them. Every section should be answerable in the time it takes to stand in a hallway.

If you are unsure whether something belongs, ask whether a guest would look it up. Not whether it is true, or interesting, or something you would like them to know. Whether they would go looking.

Finding the gaps in your own guide

Once it is written, the remaining questions are the useful signal. Every message a guest still sends you is something the guide failed to answer, or answered somewhere the guest did not look — and those two failures need different fixes. How to stop answering the same guest questions is the method for telling them apart.

If you are starting from nothing, how to set up a digital guest guide covers the whole arc, from inventory to a printed sign on the wall.