Free digital welcome book: which options, and which limits?

A welcome book you share by link or QR code without paying a subscription. There are three families of free options, with different strengths and limits.

• Tools built into platforms: Airbnb's house manual and recommendations, for example.
• General-purpose tools: Google My Maps, a PDF made with Canva or a shared document.
• Free plans of dedicated tools: a limited version of welcome book software.

Free doesn't mean costless: the time to create it, and above all the time to keep it current, are the real criteria. A free welcome book that's wrong after six months costs messages, lost guests and sometimes a review.

Think too about what the welcome book says about you: well presented, up to date and in the guest's language, it shows your hospitality before they even arrive, whether it's free or not.

If all your guests book on Airbnb, they're a good start: you write the house manual and recommendations there, with nothing to install. Their main limit is simple: they only serve Airbnb bookings.

• A guest who came through Booking or booked directly can't see them.
• The information lives in the platform's app, not on a QR code you put in the accommodation.
• If you change platform or add one, everything has to be redone elsewhere.

If you rent on several platforms, the page on the Airbnb digital guidebook explains how a single link serves every guest.

They're free, familiar and easy to use. Each does one thing well, and another badly.

To compare these formats in more detail, along with WhatsApp and the QR code, see our guide PDF, Google Maps, WhatsApp or QR code. And to prepare your list before choosing a tool, start from our free local recommendations template.

These tools have one thing in common: none of them knows where your accommodation is. Guests see neither the distance nor the walking time, and have to open each place one by one in their maps app.

A limited version of the full software, or just a trial. Some tools advertise a free plan for one welcome book, such as StayTap; others, such as Touch Stay, work on a subscription with a free trial. Conditions change: check them on each tool's website before you start.

At HerePicks, the Discovery plan is free, with no credit card and no time limit. It includes:

• one property and one guide;
• up to ten recommendations;
• the QR code and the public guide, translated automatically into French, English, German and Italian;
• a "Made with HerePicks" mention at the bottom of the guide.

HerePicks focuses on local recommendations, not wifi or house rules: it's a recommendations guide, to combine with your arrival instructions. Every step of creating one, with screenshots, is in our step-by-step guide to creating a guide.

Before choosing, also check what happens when you go beyond the free plan: do your places stay visible, can you get your content back, is the subscription free of commitment?

Yes, and many hosts do: Airbnb's tools for Airbnb guests, a PDF for the others, a Google My Maps map for the places. The risk is that the three versions end up contradicting each other.

• Keep a single source for each piece of information: places in one spot, arrival instructions in another.
• Note where each version lives, so you can fix them all the day a place closes.
• Send the same link to every guest, whatever the platform: that's what avoids duplicates.

A simple compromise: your arrival instructions in the message or on the platform, and your local spots in a single online guide, shared by link and QR code.

When the time spent working around its limits exceeds the price of a subscription. A few signs don't lie:

• You want to recommend more than ten places, or prepare a summer guide and a winter guide.
• You manage several properties, each with its own places.
• You want your logo, your colours, and no mention of a third-party tool.
• You'd like to know which places your guests actually look at.
• You spend more time redoing your PDF than welcoming your guests.

If none of these apply to you, a well-kept free option beats a poorly filled paid tool. Details of the paid plans are on the pricing page.

Start from your guests, not from the tool. Four questions are enough:

1. Where do they book? A single platform, or several and direct?
2. Which languages do they speak? A welcome book in one language leaves some of them out.
3. How often do your places change? A frozen format ages fast.
4. Where will they read it? On their phone, in the street: the format must be readable on a small screen.

To compare dedicated tools, free or not, the page on choosing a digital welcome book sets out the criteria that matter.