A free digital guest guide for your Airbnb: where to make one, and who will build it for you

Google Docs, Google Sites, Notion and Canva are free, and any of the four gets you something decent in an afternoon. Docs, Sites and Notion give you a link you paste into the chat with the guest. With Canva most people end up exporting a PDF, and a PDF on a phone reads tiny and has to be downloaded before it opens.

The tedious part comes later. You change the WiFi password and have to remember to change it in the guide too. With three properties you have three nearly identical documents, and after enough copying and pasting between them, one day the code from the wrong property slips in.

If you go this way, what it needs is in what to put in your digital guest guide. How to get in comes first, then the WiFi written as text so the guest can copy it.

Airbnb already has a section called the Arrival guide. That’s where you put how to get in, directions, the house manual and the WiFi password. It costs nothing, and the guest sees it in the app after they book. The detailed check-in instructions show up 48 hours before check-in.

It has two limits. Only guests who booked on Airbnb see it, so someone arriving through Booking.com or your own site doesn’t have it. And it lives inside the app, so to find it the guest has to open Airbnb and look up their trip, often from the taxi.

Careful, because Airbnb has another thing that is also called a guidebook. That one is your list of recommended restaurants and places nearby, and it says nothing about your property.

We build digital guides for houses and apartments in Mexico, at no charge, one for each property you have. You send us your Airbnb or Booking.com listing link on WhatsApp, and from what the listing already says we build the first version, with how to check in, the WiFi password, the map, the places you recommend and any extra services you want to charge for.

We send it to you to review, and then you go in and change whatever you don’t like. The guest opens it with a link from any chat, without creating an account or downloading anything, so it works the same for someone who booked on Airbnb as for someone who booked on Booking.com.

Open a real guide →

We build it at no charge because that’s how people get to know us. Some of the people who use it later ask Cleo, our AI operations assistant, to coordinate their cleanings on WhatsApp too. If all you want is the guide, you keep the guide.

If you have one property and nearly all your bookings come through Airbnb, a well-filled Arrival guide on Airbnb is enough. Fill it in completely, with the WiFi password and the steps to get in, in order.

If you have several properties, or you also get bookings through Booking.com or direct, you want a link of your own that you can send to anyone. You can make it yourself in Google Docs if you have a free afternoon per property, or ask us for it.

1. Airbnb Resource Center: Make check-in and checkout easy (what the Arrival guide holds).
2. Airbnb Help Center: Add check-in and checkout instructions to listings (the 48 hours).
3. Airbnb Help Center: Add a guidebook to your listing (the recommendations guidebook).

He wrote and checked this page. Every source is public and linked above.