Airbnb self check-in instructions: a template that works at the door

Self check-in instructions are read in the worst conditions of the whole stay: on a phone, outside, in the dark, possibly in the rain, often at 4% battery, sometimes after a flight. Everything about how to write them follows from that one picture.

It means the address comes first and complete, the code sits beside the thing it opens, and nothing important lives in paragraph four. It also means the instructions should not be a message sent three days ago that the guest now has to excavate from a chat thread while standing on the step — put them somewhere that reopens in two taps. Airbnb’s own check-in instructions section on your listing is one (it surfaces in the guest’s trip before arrival and takes photos); a guest page, if you keep one, is another. The chat thread is the one place they shouldn’t live.

Seven things, in the order the guest needs them:

• ·The full address, with the unit — including the things maps get wrong: which entrance, which tower, what the building looks like from the street.
• ·How to arrive — where to park, or which stop to get off at, in one line.
• ·How to get in — the code and exactly what it opens. If there are two doors, two codes, say which is which.
• ·What “in” looks like — floor, turn left or right, door colour or number.
• ·The Wi-Fi — name and password, immediately after entry. It is the first thing most guests do inside.
• ·Check-in time — and what happens if they arrive early.
• ·A backup — your phone number and one sentence about what to do if the code fails. The guest who needs this line really needs it.

One rule: everything in brackets gets replaced — the quoted lines inside them are examples to imitate, not to keep. Fill them in, delete the entry-method lines you don’t use, and read it once as a stranger before sending.

No backup at all? A $30 spare-key lockbox is the cheapest line in this template. And a photo of the entrance and the lockbox beats a paragraph — Airbnb’s check-in instructions take photos, or attach them to the day-before message.

Not at booking. A code sent weeks ahead gets screenshotted, forwarded and forgotten, and if you rotate codes between guests it will also be wrong by the time it’s used. The instructions can go out early; the code itself should appear on the day of arrival, once the place is cleaned and the code is real. Doing it by hand? Send the code in a short message that morning, near the top — and if your lockbox code never changes, that’s fine too: the timing matters less than the guest finding it at the door.

If your lock supports per-stay codes, generate one per booking and the timing problem mostly disappears — a leaked code from March opens nothing in May.

• ·Two doors, one code given. Building code and unit code are different things; say both, labelled.
• ·“The lockbox is by the door” — there are four doors and two lockboxes. Describe the one that's yours, or photograph it.
• ·Instructions written from inside the unit instead of from the street: they say what to do, never what the guest is actually looking at. Walk your own approach once, phone in hand.
• ·The code in a chat message from last Tuesday. At the door, nobody scrolls well.
• ·No backup line. One stuck lockbox at midnight costs more goodwill than every other line here earns.