A digital welcome book: how one document cuts half your guest questions

You know the feeling: the phone buzzes at 22:30 and the message says "How do I turn on the induction hob?", "Where is the router?", "What time is checkout?" One question is nothing. But multiply it by every booking in the season, add calls in the middle of dinner and messages a guest is impatiently waiting on, and suddenly running an apartment turns out to be mostly answering the same things over and over.

The solution is simpler than you think and needs no app and no expensive system. It is a digital guide to the apartment, known in English as a welcome book. One document that answers the guest's questions before they can ask them. Done well, it can cut messages during a stay by half and, more importantly, genuinely raise your ratings.

What a welcome book is and why it works

A welcome book gathers in one place everything a guest needs in order to feel confident in your apartment: how to get in, how to operate the appliances, where to eat, what to see and how to check out. It used to be a folder of printouts on the table. Today it is more often a PDF or a page on your own site that the guest reaches through a link or a QR code stuck to the fridge.

Why does it work? Because a guest with clear instructions feels no stress. And stress is the most common source of lower ratings. Someone who spends ten minutes trying to work out how to connect the television and finally calls you will remember that moment. Someone who found the answer in three seconds will remember that "everything was thought through". The same situation, two different endings.

Guests rarely lower a rating for missing information as such. They lower it for the feeling of being lost that the missing information caused.

What should be inside

The point is not to write a novel. The point is to anticipate the real questions and answer them specifically. Here are the sections that work in practice:

1. Getting in and the first steps

• The exact address with a map pin and a note about access ("entrance from the courtyard, not the main street").
• Where to park and whether a ticket is needed in the zone.
• How to get in: the lock code, where the key box is, or the number of the person meeting them.
• Floor, flat number, how the entryphone works.

2. Appliance instructions

This is the section that cuts the most phone calls. Describe briefly and in plain language how to use the devices that are not obvious:

• Wifi: network name and password, clearly, in large type. It is the first thing every guest looks for.
• Induction hob, oven, dishwasher, washing machine, especially if they have unusual controls.
• Heating and air conditioning: how to set the temperature, where the thermostat is.
• The television and any streaming apps.

3. House rules in a nutshell

Do not copy the whole set of rules here, there is a separate document for that. List only what affects daily comfort: quiet hours, waste sorting and where to take it, the smoking ban, rules on pets. Keep it short and free of lecturing.

4. Local recommendations

This is where you gain an advantage no booking platform can give. A guest can find a restaurant online, but they do not know which one is actually good. Recommend three or four tried and tested places for breakfast, lunch and coffee, and add the nearest shop open late, a pharmacy and a cash machine. It creates the impression that you treat the guest as a friend rather than a booking number.

5. Checking out

• The checkout time and what to do with the keys.
• What you expect before they leave: take out the rubbish, put the dishes in the dishwasher, close the windows.
• How to say goodbye, and a gentle request for a review.

Paper or digital?

Both is best, but if you have to choose, go digital. The digital version has three advantages. First, you update it in a minute: the wifi password changed, or your favourite restaurant closed for the winter, and you fix it in one place. Second, it does not wear out or go missing. Third, the guest has it on their phone throughout the stay, including when they are out and looking for something to do in the evening.

The simplest way to do it is a page on your own apartment website, reached by a printed and framed QR code somewhere visible, on the fridge or by the door. The guest scans it and has everything to hand. If you take bookings through your own site, the guide naturally becomes part of it and, along the way, reminds the guest where to book their next stay commission-free.

Three mistakes that spoil a good guide

1. A wall of text. Nobody reads blocks of ten sentences. Short paragraphs, lists, bold for the key terms. Guests scan, they do not read cover to cover.
2. Out-of-date information. An old wifi password or a recommended restaurant that no longer exists is worse than no information at all, because it undermines trust in everything else. Review the guide once a season.
3. A bureaucratic tone. "It is forbidden", "one must strictly" is the language of a parking ticket, not hospitality. Write as you would say it to a friend who has come for the weekend.

What it does to the numbers

A welcome book is not cosmetic. It is a tool that works on three fronts at once. It reduces the number of messages during a stay, so you get your time and your peace back. It raises ratings, because the guest feels looked after, and a higher average rating means a better position in results and higher occupancy. And it builds a relationship, so the guest comes back more readily and recommends you, ideally through your own channel with no commission to hand over.

An hour spent on a decent guide pays for itself within the first few bookings, in phone calls avoided and in reviews that end with "everything was perfectly prepared". Sentences like that are what sell the next nights.