By the Unity Stays directors, Marcus Chong & Gadir Al-Khatib · Last updated 12 August 2026
In short: Write a guest guide as short answers to the questions guests actually ask — access, wifi, heating, parking, bins, appliances and check-out — using photographs of your specific controls rather than paragraphs. Put it in three places: sent before arrival, printed in the property, and in the platform's check-in instructions, and update it whenever anything changes.
Start with the questions you already get
Do not write a brochure. Write the answers to the messages you have actually received, in the order guests ask them.
For most properties that is: how do I get in, what is the wifi, how does the heating work, where do I park, where are the bins, how do I use the hob, and what time do I leave.
If you have not run the property yet, those seven are a good starting list, because they are the same everywhere.
What belongs in it
Practical, specific and short. Nobody reads a guest guide for pleasure — they read it while standing in a kitchen wondering why the oven will not turn on.
- Access — the code, with photographs of the door and the key safe or lock
- Wifi name and password, printed large enough to type from across the room
- Heating and hot water, with a photograph of the actual controls in this property
- Appliances — hob, oven, washing machine, dishwasher, with the settings that work
- Parking, specifically, including permits and where not to park
- Bins and recycling, including which day, which is the most common neighbour complaint
- Check-out — time, what to do with keys, what you want left how
- Emergencies — stopcock, fuse box, and the out-of-hours number
- House rules, restated plainly
- Local basics — nearest shop, pharmacy, cash machine, station
Photographs beat paragraphs
A photograph of your specific thermostat with an arrow on it works. Three sentences describing a thermostat do not, because the guest is holding a different mental model of what a thermostat looks like.
The same applies to the key safe, the bin store, the parking bay and the hob controls. Take the photograph in the property rather than using a manufacturer's image, because the guest is looking at yours.
This is also the fastest way to write it: walk the property, photograph anything a stranger would hesitate over, and write a line under each.
Where to put it
In three places, because guests look in different ones.
Sent before arrival, as a message they can forward — this is the one that prevents the arrival problems. In the property, printed, somewhere obvious, because phone batteries die and signal fails. And on the platform, in the check-in instructions field.
The printed copy matters more than people expect. A guest locked out with a flat phone cannot read a digital guide, and that is precisely when they need it.
Keep it current
A guide describing a boiler you replaced last year is worse than no guide, because it teaches guests not to trust it.
Review it whenever something changes — an appliance, the bin day, the parking arrangement, the access method. Two minutes each time beats a rewrite every two years.
Guest guide creation is part of our onboarding, along with in-property information points, and we update it when the property changes rather than when someone complains.