What a good house guide answers before a guest asks

Across 5,821 guest nights, guests have asked us the same questions at every house. Where do I park. What's the Wi-Fi. Which remote runs the TV. When is trash day. The house changes. The questions don't.

That's good news, because it means most of them can be answered before anyone types them. The house guide is how. It's the single thing guests compliment most in the homes we run, and it's the reason the owners of those homes don't get a text at 9 pm about the TV.

Here are the 10 a good guide answers, in the order guests need them.

Before the trip

These come up the week before arrival, usually while someone is packing.

1. What time can we check in, and check out. Both times, on the first screen, not buried under the house rules.
2. Where do we park, and how many cars. With a photo of the driveway if there's any way to get it wrong.
3. What's provided and what to bring. Sheets, towels, coffee, dish soap, a hair dryer, beach towels or not. Nobody wants to pack a hair dryer they didn't need, or arrive without one they did.
4. Where's the nearest grocery store. Name and drive time. Guests ask this one more than anything else on the list.

We send this part as a planning guide the week of the booking. By the time guests leave home, these 4 are done.

Arriving

The first 10 minutes at the house decide the tone of the stay. Everything here needs to work without a message.

5. How do we get in. Which door, and what to do if the code doesn't take. The code itself goes out separately the day before check-in, by message. It never lives in the guide.
6. What's the Wi-Fi network and password. On the first screen of the stay guide, and on a card by the router too.
7. Where's the thermostat, and how does it work. A photo of the one in your house, not a stock picture of the brand.

During the stay

Most of these get asked on night 1 or 2, almost always between 8 and 10 pm.

8. Which remote does what. The TV, the soundbar, the streaming box, and how to get to Netflix in 3 taps. Photograph the remotes. Label the photo.
9. Where's the trash, when is pickup, and what do we do with it. Which bins, which day, and whether guests roll them to the curb. Trash is the number 1 thing cleaners complain about and the number 1 thing guests get wrong, and both are because nobody told them.

The hot tub, the grill and the appliance with a quirk are right behind these two. "Set it to 102, it takes about 20 minutes to climb" ends a message thread before it starts, and so does "the dishwasher door needs a firm push."

Leaving

10. What do we do before we go. Strip the beds or don't, start the dishwasher, take the trash out, lock up. 4 or 5 items, not 15. Cleaners have a job. Guests shouldn't be doing half of it.

What doesn't go in it

Door codes, lockbox codes, alarm codes, the Wi-Fi admin login. Anything you'd regret if a screenshot of the guide ended up on the internet. Codes for things guests need, like a pool gate, are fine on the page for that thing.

Anything copied from another house. We've inherited guides that named the wrong town for the grocery store and described a hot tub the home didn't have. Guests notice, and once they catch one wrong fact they stop trusting the rest.

Why it's a web page and not a binder

A binder on the counter is read by nobody. A PDF in a welcome email is read once, on a phone, 3 weeks before the trip. A web page is open on the guest's phone at 9 pm when the TV won't turn on, and it says the same thing to every guest because you fixed the wording once.

That last part is the one owners underestimate. A guide is never finished. The oven gets replaced, the trash day moves, the streaming box changes. In the homes we run, every answer lives in one place and the guide rebuilds itself when a fact changes, so no guest ever reads last year's instructions. If you're writing your own, keep it somewhere you can edit in a minute, and put the date you last checked it at the bottom.

If you're writing yours this weekend

Walk the house with your phone. Every time you've answered a question twice, that's a line in the guide. Photograph the thermostat, the remotes, the trash bins and the driveway. Ask your cleaner to read it; they know the quirks you've stopped noticing. Then stay in it yourself for a night, if you can, and see what you reach for that isn't written down.

The test is simple. The guide is good when the messages stop.