Airbnb Welcome Book Template for Hosts!
There are all kinds of ways to impress your guests when they’re staying at your Airbnb rental properties, and one of the easiest ways to show them you’ve gone the extra mile is by giving them a welcome book upon their arrival.
An Airbnb welcome book template should include a welcome letter, a local map, a list of things to do or places to eat in the city, and any extra goodies. You can also include a reminder of the house rules, and be sure to leave contact numbers for you and the city’s emergency services.
This article will go over everything you should include in a welcome book in more detail. We’ll also discuss the importance of providing such a guide. Finally, we’ll include a brief outline of a template you can use to make your welcome book!
Why You Should Provide Guests With a Welcome Book
Providing your guests with an in-depth welcome book is all about them. It’s 100% for their convenience.
However, it can also be one of those small, inexpensive things you do that reflects well on you and your brand. This, in turn, could lead to higher star ratings and a quicker path to Superhost status.
Superhost Status
There are several qualifications you must meet to become a Superhost. The first of those require that you complete at least ten bookings or have at least three reservations whose stay dates total more than 100 nights. Besides marketing your listing, sharing it on social media, having great prices, and getting the word out, there’s not much you can do to control this when you first start.
However, the other three requirements are totally within your control. They are:
That you maintain a 90% or higher response rate to guest inquiries.
That you have a cancellation rate of 1% or less (not including extenuating circumstances).
That you’ve kept at least a 4.8-star rating over the past 365-day period.
If you can meet those three requirements and have the required number of completed trips or reservations, you can become a Superhost. There are numerous advantages to achieving Superhost status. These include but aren’t limited to:
The ability to attract more guests: One of Airbnb’s numerous filters that guests can enable when looking for rental properties is the “Superhost Only” filter. It allows guests to see only those available listings whose property owners are Superhosts. When you become a Superhost, your listing will appear in these searches, as well as non-filtered searches, meaning more people see it overall.
Increased potential for earnings: The more people see your listing, the more people should book your listing. That means more money for you. Additionally, being a Superhost means guests can trust you and your property. You can use this to your advantage and may even be able to increase your nightly rates a little.
Special rewards from Airbnb: Airbnb also offers special rewards and incentives for Superhosts. All Airbnb hosts earn a bonus when they refer new hosts to the platform. Superhosts, though, receive that bonus plus 20% more! Airbnb also awards travel coupons to hosts who retain their Superhost status four quarters in a row.
All that is why you want to become a Superhost and maintain the status for as long as possible. But what does that have to do with a welcome book?
Extra Conveniences Lead to Higher Ratings
A welcome book is one of those small things you can do that costs you very little but significantly impacts your guests. They see it as something kind that you did to make their stays a little more comfortable and convenient.
They’ll remember those small kindnesses when it’s time to rate their visits to your property and may even keep it around for the next time they book a trip to your area – keeping your property top of mind.
They’ll also be good word of mouth for you in the future.
People talk, and if guests had a great experience with you, they’d talk about you the next time a friend says they’re looking for a place to stay in X location. That can lead to more reservations that you might not have otherwise had.
So, take the time to make a comprehensive welcome book for your guests. You won’t regret doing it.
How To Make the Welcome Book
When it comes to making the book physically, you have a few options for putting it together. You first have to decide if you want to pay someone to make the welcome book for you or if you want to do it yourself.
Next, you have to determine whether you wish to make a single, stay-at-the-property book or if you’re willing to print multiples so that guests can keep theirs.
Professional Brochures
If you want to spend the money to pay a professional printing service to print your guides, you can go that route. You can design the template like a brochure and order a large case or two of them. This way, each guest gets to keep his or her booklet and carry it around while traveling.
Avalon Printing has a great article about its blog's eight different brochure folds. As you can see from the post, the larger brochures, such as the double parallel fold, roll fold, and accordion fold, can hold up to eight brochure-sized pages of information. That allows you to fit a lot more on there than you realize.
Professional Photo Books
Another option is to design your template like a photo book. Most places that make photo books—Shutterfly, Walmart Photo, Snapfish, etc.—allow you to add text to them. This means you can make a professional photo book that acts as your welcome book. You design the entire thing, and the company takes care of printing and binding it.
However, these companies can’t include copyrighted photos, so if you pull pictures off the web to add to them, make sure they’re available for common use. If you go this route, you’ll probably only want to make one or two books, and guests won’t be able to take them with them when they leave.
Printing from Home for Guests To Keep
You could also print your welcome book from home. You can buy a pack of colorful folders, such as these Amazon Basics Heavy Duty Plastic Folders, and stuff all your info into the left-hand pocket. You can fill the right-hand side with coupons, discounts, and other usable items from local shops, restaurants, and attractions.
Printing from Home, Welcome Book Stays in the House
Finally, you can print your welcome book from home, and if you don’t want to make new ones every time a new guest stays with you, you can laminate and bind the pages yourself. If you don’t have a way to laminate, you can buy a COSMOS 4 Page 8 View Transparent Restaurant Menu Cover and put your printed pages inside.
Most guests should understand upon seeing them that they’re not supposed to take them out of the rental property. However, if you’re worried they may not understand, add a note at the bottom that says, “Please do not remove from [YOUR PROPERTY’S NAME] Airbnb Rental.”
Things To Include in the Welcome Book
We’ve talked about how to make your welcome book, now let’s talk about what kinds of things you should add to it.
Mostly, you’ll want to give your guests info on what they can do, where they can eat, and how they can get around while staying at your listing. However, you can also use it to refresh them on the house rules and provide them with your contact information and contact info for any emergency services in the area.
As for attractions, these are the kinds of things guests are usually interested in knowing about:
Local restaurants
Local chain restaurants
Mass merchandise stores in the area
Specialty shops
Local artisans
Art galleries
Museums
Nightlife
Family-friendly activities
Local gas stations
“Hole in the wall” specialties that are the best-kept secrets in your town
For the most part, you should keep your suggestions to places that are no more than an hour away, preferably within 30 minutes.
However, if you’re within a couple of hours of huge landmarks like the Statue of Liberty, the Grand Canyon, the Capitol Building, or other similar things, it’s also okay to add those into your welcome book.
A Local Area “Guide” & House History
A good rule of thumb is to imagine you’re going somewhere you’ve never been before – a new town in a completely unfamiliar state or country. What would you want to know about the place you’re staying? What would you like to know about the area? What kinds of things would you be interested in learning within driving distance of your rented home or hotel?
If you’d want to know about something, provide that information to your guests. If your property has historical, cultural, or “supernatural” relevance, you could also include some fun facts about it, including:
When it was built
Who built it
Why it was built (if it started as a church, school, bank, etc.)
Anything interesting that happened there
Any “ghostly” sightings
Any notable neighbors (movie and television stars, artists, politicians, etc.)
Any notable previous owners
Finally, if any local restaurants, nightlife spots, or attractions offer coupons or specials, grab a handful and stick them with the guide.
Tips for an Excellent Welcome Book
Before we jump into the template, we wanted to provide a few final miscellaneous tips you should remember when creating your welcome book.
Don’t Forget Your Contact Info.
You can put all kinds of great stuff in your welcome book. The more exciting your city is, the more attractions you can pack into the book. However, don’t fill it with all this fantastic stuff and forget to add your contact information. Hosts should always have their contact information in a prominent place in case of emergency.
Guests have access to you via the Airbnb messaging system, and you may have even exchanged phone numbers, but that’s easy to forget in a crisis. The welcome book is the ideal place to add it, just in case.
Keep the Welcome Book Up to Date
Whether you’re printing them professionally or from home, don’t print too many because you may need to replace them every few months. Things change, restaurants move across town, attractions close down, and pandemics happen out of nowhere!
Phone numbers and addresses also change quickly. For that reason, you’ll want to update your welcome book every few months.
Don’t Forget the Extras.
If you want to make a real impression on your guests, be sure to add plenty of extra goodies to their welcome books. Here are some things you might consider:
A local map
Coupons to local restaurants
Coupons for popular fast-food chains (from the weekly circular)
Brochures for local attractions
Business cards for local artisans
A business card for your Airbnb listing containing vital contact information
A “quick card” with all emergency numbers
If you have a popular listing that visitors often use, talk to some local businesses and see if they want to enter into a partnership with you. They can provide your guests with coupons or discounts in exchange for you sending the guests their way.
Conclusion
That concludes our free template for the Airbnb Welcome Book. Feel free to use it as-is or tweak it to suit your specific needs better.
Either way, hopefully, it’ll help give you an idea of the kinds of things people like to see in welcome books. If you live in a metropolitan area where people don’t always have cars, you may also want to include a page on public transportation options in the city.
