How to create a digital welcome book: what to put in it and how to keep it current

It's the online version of the folder left in the property: a page guests open on their phone, through a link or a QR code, with no app to install. It holds what a host would explain in person: how to get in, how everything works, and where to eat well.

The difference from paper comes down to one word: updates. A correction made once is visible to every guest, including those already there. No more outdated copies lying around in a room.

Some tools cover everything (arrival, wifi, house rules, paid extras), others focus on one part. HerePicks, for example, only handles good local places. To choose, see our welcome book comparison.

Three kinds of information are enough to start: the practical side, your recommendations and getting around. Everything else can wait. An overloaded welcome book misses its goal, not because it lacks information, but because it has too much, badly sorted.

Practical information

• The wifi code and where the router is.
• Check-in and check-out times, and how to return the keys.
• How the equipment that raises questions works: heating, hob, coffee machine.
• Waste sorting and collection days.
• The number to call if there's a problem, and emergency numbers.

This practical information isn't part of HerePicks, which only covers local recommendations: it stays in your arrival message, on a sheet in the property or in the tool you already use.

Your local recommendations

Two or three places per category (restaurant, café, walk, sight), not twenty, each with a line saying why you like it. It's the part that sets you apart from a tourist guide, and the one guests keep coming back to throughout their stay. All the details are in our guide to the local spots to recommend. To prepare them, our free template gives you a list ready to fill in.

Getting around

Parking, the nearest bus or tram stop, the station, and the walking distance to the centre. In Switzerland, several regions give guests a card that includes public transport: if yours does, say so clearly, as many travellers find out too late.

What to leave out

Long histories of the property, recommendations copied from a tourist guide, rules written in capital letters. A tired guest arriving reads the essentials and nothing else; anything that doesn't help them have a good stay just wastes their time.

By need, in the order guests come across them: arriving, settling in, eating and going out, getting around, leaving. An alphabetical or thematic order forces them to search.

1. Arriving: access, keys, wifi.
2. Settling in: equipment, the rules that really matter.
3. Eating and going out: your places.
4. Getting around: transport, parking.
5. Leaving: times, keys, what to leave behind.

Put the most requested information at the top of each part and keep sentences short. Nobody reads a ten-line paragraph on a phone screen. A guest who has just arrived wants the wifi and breakfast time, not the history of the house.

It depends on how often your information changes. If it hardly ever moves, paper can be enough; as soon as a place closes or changes its hours more than once a year, digital saves time and avoids mistakes.

Paper still has real strengths: it needs no phone or signal, and some guests prefer to leaf through it. Nothing stops you combining the two: a sheet for the essentials (wifi, emergencies) and a QR code for everything that changes, starting with your recommendations.

More than the first print run, because the cost mostly comes afterwards: every correction, every reprint, every copy to replace.

What people rarely count

• The time to find the file, correct it and reprint it.
• The price of each new print run and lamination.
• The time to replace the copy in every room or property.
• The impression an outdated place gives until the new version is ready.

The calculation to make

Add it up over a year: the number of corrections, times the time spent and the printing cost, times the number of copies. Compare that with a digital tool's subscription, or even its free plan. For a single property with stable places, paper is often the cheapest; with several properties or frequent changes, the time saved soon wins.

With three things: your logo, your main colour and a welcome message written in your own voice. The rest, custom fonts or animations, matters far less than clarity.

A welcome book in your colours, without a third-party tool's branding, reinforces the idea that the care comes from you, just like the decor or a personal welcome. No need for a designer or a full brand guide: a logo and a colour are enough for the guide to look like your place rather than a template.

The welcome message deserves a few minutes: two or three sentences, a word about what you love in your area, and your first name. It's often the first thing guests read.

Avoid stock phrases ("We wish you a pleasant stay in our establishment"): they read like a set of rules. A simple, first-person tone immediately makes guests feel welcomed by someone.

The underlying need is the same everywhere: up-to-date practical information, sincere recommendations, simple access. Only the priority changes, depending on whether someone is on site or not.

• Hotel: reception answers questions, but not at all hours; the welcome book takes over in the evening and keeps your image consistent. See the hotel guest directory.
• Short-term rental: with nobody on site, the welcome book does all the welcoming, from arrival to recommendations. See the holiday rental welcome book and the Airbnb case.
• Campsite: lots of pitches, sometimes weak signal; a QR code where people pass avoids depending on the connection at the pitch. See the campsite welcome book.
• Bed and breakfast: the relationship with the host is the strength; the welcome book avoids repeating the same tips and leaves more room for conversation. See the B&B welcome book.
• Property manager: one welcome book per property, kept up to date without reprinting. See the page for property managers.

By correcting as you go and doing a review each season. That's where most welcome books fail: a restaurant closes, opening hours change, and nobody reprints the folder until the following year. The result: a guest following an outdated recommendation, and a bad impression that cost nothing to avoid.

• Fix things as soon as a guest points out a change.
• Do a full review at the start of each season.
• Date your updates, so you know what has aged.
• Ask your guests what they missed.

An online format makes these corrections almost free: a few seconds, and everyone sees the right version. People still have to find the welcome book, though: our guide to the welcome QR code explains where to put it and what to write next to it. And if nobody is on site when guests arrive, see self check-in too.