Airbnb Welcome Guide Template: Free Download (2026)

You've explained the WiFi password to fifteen different guests this month. You've printed the same A4 sheet you-don't-remember-how-many times, and somehow it still ends up wrinkled on the kitchen counter by day two.

You know there's a better way. This article is it.

By the end, you'll have a free, complete Airbnb welcome guide template you can download and use today — plus a clear understanding of what makes a welcome guide actually work (most don't).

Why your welcome guide matters more than you think

Most hosts who skip the welcome guide say something like: "My listing description is detailed enough" or "I just message people what they need."

Both are wrong.

Your listing description is read once, weeks before arrival, on a desktop, during research mode. Your guests will not remember the WiFi password by the time they're standing in your kitchen with two suitcases and a tired toddler.

Messaging info on the day of arrival means asking your guests to dig through a chat history at the exact moment they need a quick answer. Anyone who's tried it knows: it's a mess.

A proper welcome guide solves three things at once:

• It saves you time. Hosts with a structured welcome guide report a 40–60% drop in arrival-day messages.
• It improves your reviews. A common reason guests give 4 stars instead of 5 is "lack of info on arrival." A guide eliminates this.
• It positions you as a Superhost — even before you officially become one. Care shows.

What every great welcome guide must contain

Here's the structure that works. Eight sections, in this order. Nothing more, nothing less — a 40-page guide is worse than no guide at all.

1. A warm greeting (but not a corny one)

Three or four sentences. Welcome your guests, thank them for choosing your place, and mention one specific thing that makes it special — the neighborhood, the view, the building's history. That's it.

What to avoid: clichés like "We're thrilled to welcome you to our charming home." Everyone writes this. Nobody reads it.

Write like you'd talk to a friend who's crashing at your place. That's the tone that gets remembered.

2. Clear check-in instructions

This is the section guests read first — often standing outside your door in the rain, phone in one hand, suitcase in the other. Be surgical:

• The exact address with a landmark ("next to the bakery", "across from the park")
• Building entry code or buzzer info
• Floor number, apartment number, and whether the elevator works
• Where to find the keys (lockbox code, doorman, etc.)
• Check-in and check-out times
• Your phone number for genuine emergencies

3. The WiFi — in its own section

This is the single most-consulted piece of information in your entire guide. Give it its own section, make it big, make it obvious.

Pro tip: include a WiFi QR code (free to generate on qr-code-monkey.com) so guests connect instantly without retyping a 16-character password. Especially useful for guests with foreign keyboards — special characters like @, !, or accented letters cause more failed logins than you'd think.

4. How appliances work

You don't need a user manual. But for anything that isn't obvious, give a hand: how the heating works, that weird induction stove button, where the clean towels are, how the coffee machine operates.

One thing that works every time: take photos of your appliances and add an arrow pointing to the relevant button. One photo saves a dozen messages.

5. House rules — phrased like a human

Your rules exist for a reason. But phrasing changes everything.

Instead of: "No noise after 10 PM." Try: "Please keep things quiet after 10 PM — our neighbors are early risers."

Same rule. Completely different feel. Your guests are adults. Treat them like adults.

6. Local recommendations

This is where you stand out from every other Airbnb in a one-kilometer radius.

Your guests can find restaurants on Google. They can't know that the café around the corner makes the best croissants in the city, or that the little wine shop does free Saturday tastings.

Give 4–5 addresses maximum, organized by type:

• One spot for breakfast
• Two restaurants (one casual, one for a special occasion)
• One for evening drinks
• One local secret — a hidden viewpoint, a Sunday market, a bookstore no one knows about

That last one — the unfindable gem — is gold. It's exactly what guests mention in reviews: "Our host pointed us to places we'd never have found on our own."

7. Daily practical info

The closest grocery store. The pharmacy. The ATM. Trash pickup days and where to leave bags.

Not glamorous. But it's the difference between a smooth stay and a guest leaving a bag of trash to ferment in the kitchen because they didn't know what to do with it.

8. Check-out procedure

Be explicit:

• The check-out time
• Where to leave the keys
• What you expect: turn off lights, close windows, lock the door
• What you don't expect: strip the bed, do the dishes, vacuum (unless you genuinely mean it)

That last point is underestimated. Guests never know where their responsibility ends. Being explicit removes guilt and lets them leave feeling good — which means they leave a better review.

Format: paper, PDF, or digital?

Three options, each with real trade-offs.

Printed booklet

Classic, tactile, sitting on the coffee table when guests walk in. Higher-end properties especially benefit from a well-designed printed booklet. The downside: it ages badly, it's in one language only, and updating it means reprinting everything.

PDF sent by email

Practical because it arrives before the guest does — they've already read the access code before stepping off the train. The downside: it gets buried in their inbox, and emailing access codes is a security concern (the document travels and gets forwarded).

Digital guide accessible by QR code

The modern solution — and honestly where everything is heading. You print one elegantly designed QR code, your guests scan it, they access an always-updated guide in their own language, with a WiFi password they can copy with one tap.

The key advantage: you update content once and every language version syncs automatically. No reprinting. No re-sending. No outdated access codes floating around in email threads.

This is exactly what we built Welkome to do. Fill in your property info in 3 minutes, our AI writes warm personalized welcome copy, and your guests scan a QR code to access it in their language. Free to start, no credit card needed.

Download the free template

The template below covers all eight sections above. It's a fully editable document — fill it in, print it, or use it as a reference for your digital guide.

By submitting, you'll get the document and our weekly newsletter for Airbnb hosts. Unsubscribe in one click.

Frequently asked questions

Should I create a different guide for each property?

Yes, always. If you have multiple properties, each one deserves its own guide. The WiFi is different, the local recommendations are different, the property's quirks even more so. Using the same guide for everything shows immediately.

How many languages do I need?

At minimum, your local language and English. If you regularly host Italians, Germans, or Spanish speakers, add those too. Building a multilingual guide manually is a nightmare — this is where a digital tool pays for itself immediately.

What if guests don't know how to scan a QR code?

This concern is almost always overestimated. QR codes have become universal since Covid: restaurants, invoices, parking, public transport. Even guests over 70 scan confidently now. And for the rare case, you can always have a printed backup.

How long does it take to create a welcome guide?

Starting from scratch, writing everything yourself: 4–6 hours for something genuinely good. Using an AI tool that generates the content from your property info: 15–30 minutes. The gap is real.

Wrapping up

A well-crafted welcome guide is probably the highest-ROI thing you can do for your Airbnb. A few hours to build it once, and it works for you with every single reservation — reducing your workload and nudging your reviews upward.

Download the template, fill it in, and see the difference after your next arrival.

Good hosting.