Airbnb house rules template
Rules you decide once, calmly, and write down travel a lot better than rules you make up on the spot while a guest is asking to bend one.
- Quiet hours, guest limit, and pet policy lines
- Smoking, parties, and damage policy already written
- Six lines, short enough to actually get read
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House rules
Tips
- 1Six or seven lines, not fifteen. If you find yourself writing a rule for a situation that's never actually happened, cut it and add it later if it ever does.
- 2Decide your actual position on pets, extra guests, and late checkout before your first booking, not in the middle of a message thread with a guest asking to bend one.
- 3Whatever you decide, hold to it consistently. A rule you enforce for one guest and wave off for the next teaches guests that all of your rules are negotiable.
When you need House rules
Somewhere between no rules at all and a list that reads like a lease, there is a version guests actually follow. Most listings land closer to the lease. The problem is not that guests disrespect rules; it is that a wall of them, most covering situations that will never arise at your property, buries the two or three that genuinely matter.
You need this written down before your first booking rather than after your first bad experience. Rules improvised mid-conversation, while a guest is already asking to bend one, are how hosts end up either resentful because they said yes when they meant no, or inconsistent because they said yes to one guest and no to the next.
Where it goes
Two places, saying the same thing. In your Airbnb listing's house rules field, where it sets expectations before booking and gives you something to point at if a rule is broken. And on a short printed card or your welcome page in the property, where a guest sees it during the stay rather than only at the moment of booking.
Common mistakes
Writing rules for things that never happen
If you are adding a rule for a situation that has not come up at your property, cut it. You can add it later if it ever does. Every unnecessary rule dilutes the ones that matter.
Restating Airbnb's policies
No illegal activity, no unauthorised parties. Airbnb already covers these and guests already know them. Repeating them costs attention and buys nothing.
Vague quantities
A reasonable number of guests means nothing enforceable. Write the number. The same goes for quiet hours: give the actual times, not evenings.
Enforcing inconsistently
Waiving a rule for one guest and holding it for the next teaches guests that everything you wrote is negotiable, including the rules you actually care about.
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