Airbnb’s own automated message can send your check-in instructions 48 hours before arrival. The part that goes wrong is not the timing — it is the text itself. Most check-in messages are written by someone who already knows the building, for a reader who has never seen it. This is a template that fixes that, plus the handful of mistakes that turn a clear message into a guest standing on the street re-reading it for the fourth time.
The template
Copy this, fill in the brackets, and send it as your check-in message or paste it into your guide.
Hi [guest name], looking forward to hosting you!
ADDRESS
[Full street address, exactly as it should be typed into a maps app —
not the neighborhood name or a landmark.]
WHAT TO LOOK FOR
[What the building looks like from the street: color, number, any sign.
Which entrance, if there is more than one.]
GETTING IN
[Step by step, in the order you'd actually do them: which door, where
the lockbox or lock is, the code, which way to turn the key or dial.
If the code sometimes needs a second try, say so — a guest who expects
that doesn't panic.]
IF SOMETHING DOESN'T WORK
[Your number, and when it's fine to use it — "call anytime after you've
tried twice" beats "contact me if there's an issue."]
PARKING
[Where, whether it's free, what to avoid. Say "no parking" plainly if
that's the truth — a guest circling the block is worse than one who
knew to take the train.]
WI-FI
[Network name and password. Spell it out if it could be misread — call
out a capital I versus lowercase l, zero versus letter O.]
CHECK-IN TIME
[The actual time, and what to do if they'll arrive earlier or later.]
That is the whole message. Nothing in it is clever — it is just written in the order a stranger actually needs it, standing outside your building with a phone.
What goes wrong in most check-in messages
The address is a neighborhood, not an address. “We’re in the old town, near the main square” is useless to a navigation app. Give the address a map can resolve, then describe the building on top of it.
The lock is explained once, not as a sequence. “There’s a keypad, the code is 4471” skips the part where the guest doesn’t know which numbers to press first, whether to wait for a light or a beep, or what to do if nothing happens. Write it as steps, including the step where it doesn’t work the first time — because for a lot of smart locks, it doesn’t, and a guest who was warned tries again instead of messaging you.
Local terms nobody explains. “Ring the intercom for flat 3B” assumes the guest knows what an intercom looks like in your country, or that flats are numbered the way yours are. Read your own instructions as if you had never been to your city.
No fallback. Every check-in message should answer “what if this doesn’t work,” because it is the question guests actually have standing at the door, and it is the one most hosts leave out because the code always works for them.
Sent once, findable never again. A message sent 48 hours before arrival is buried under booking confirmations and other messages by the time the guest is standing outside with a bag in each hand. Wherever it ends up — a pinned message, a printed card, a link in the confirmation — it needs to survive until the exact moment it’s needed, not just the moment it was sent.
Beyond check-in
Check-in is the first question, not the only one. The same guest who needed the door explained will ask about the Wi-Fi within the hour, and something about the flat by day two — see what guests ask most in a vacation rental for the rest of that order, or the full welcome book template if you’re writing the whole thing at once rather than just the arrival message.
This is also why we built Askello the way we did: paste your check-in instructions and the rest of your guide once, and instead of guests scrolling back through old messages to find the door code, they scan a QR code and ask — in their own language, answered only from what you actually wrote. You can see it from the guest’s side on the sample guide, and the FAQ covers the rest.