Airbnb check-in instructions template
Every check-in message has one job: tell a tired guest, standing outside with a suitcase, exactly how to get inside. Everything else can wait.
- Numbered step-by-step door instructions
- What to do if the code doesn't work
- Early and late arrival line included
Edit this template
Click any line to rewrite it. Add headings, bullets, or checkboxes, drag to reorder, and delete what you do not need.
Add an entry method
Check-in instructions
Tips
- 1Put the door code in step one, not paragraph three. That's the single detail a guest is actually scanning for.
- 2Print a copy for the actual door too. A text message helps once, a sign posted where a guest is standing helps every single stay.
- 3If your code changes between guests, double-check it's updated here before you send this.
When you need Check-in instructions
Check-in is the highest-stress moment of a stay and the one where a host is least available. The guest is tired, possibly late, possibly in the dark, standing outside a building they have never seen with a phone that is running low. Anything ambiguous in your instructions gets discovered at exactly that moment.
Most check-in messages fail the same way: they try to say everything at once. Wi-Fi, parking, house rules, trash day, all in one block sent the morning of arrival. Guests skim for the one thing they need right now and the rest is lost. This template separates what is needed to physically get inside from everything that can wait.
Where it goes
Send it as a message the day before arrival, so the guest has it before they travel rather than while they are travelling. Then print the door-entry portion and post it at the actual door, because the guest who did not read the message is exactly the guest standing outside needing it. The message and the sign are a pair, not alternatives.
Common mistakes
Burying the code
If the door code or key location is not in the first sentence, it is in the wrong place. Everything else in the message is secondary to getting through the door.
Mixing warmth into the steps
An excited line about their adventure between step two and step three is where guests lose the thread. Keep warmth at the opening and closing; keep the middle purely instructional.
Assuming the entrance is obvious
If there is more than one door, a side gate, or a building entrance that is not the front, say which one. A guest arriving from an unexpected direction is the one most likely to need this.
No fallback
Codes fail, lockboxes jam, batteries die. One line saying what to do and a number to call turns a crisis into an inconvenience.
Printing this is fine. Coho turns it into a page guests actually open.
Coho’s Guest Welcome Book puts everything a guest needs, this included, on one link or QR code that never changes. No app or account for your guest, ever.
Set up your guest welcome bookQuestions hosts ask first
Other free templates
Same deal on all of them: edit, print, download. No email, no account.
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