What to put in a short-term rental welcome book

Start with a phone number. A real one, that a person answers, printed large on the first page.

Everything else in a welcome book is useful. That one entry is the difference between a guest who has a small problem and a guest who has a bad night and writes about it afterward.

The first page

Keep it to what somebody needs in the first ten minutes, standing in a doorway with bags.

The phone number, and who it reaches. The wifi name and password, written so it can be typed without squinting. How to work the front door, including what to do if the code fails. Where the thermostat is. Where the bathroom is, which sounds absurd until you have arrived somewhere at eleven at night.

That is the page. Everything else can be on page two.

The entries that stop the messages

Most host messages are the same handful of questions. Each one you answer in advance is a message that never arrives.

How the heating and air conditioning work, specifically. Not “there is a thermostat” — which mode, what range, and whether anything else needs to be switched on.

Trash and recycling. Which bin, which day, where it goes out.

Parking. Where exactly, how many vehicles, and whether a permit or a space number applies.

Appliance quirks. The dishwasher that needs a firm push, the oven that runs hot, the shower that takes a moment.

Checkout. What you actually want done, in a short list. Vagueness here produces either resentment or a stripped bed you did not need.

The local part guests genuinely use

A short, opinionated list beats a long neutral one.

Where you would get coffee. Where you would eat on a Tuesday. The grocery store closest. The nearest urgent care and the nearest pharmacy, which nobody thinks about until they need one.

Keep it to places you would actually send a friend, and keep it current. An out-of-date recommendation is worse than none, because somebody drives there.

I would also say what the area is genuinely good for and what it is not. Guests respect that and it sets expectations better than enthusiasm does.

What not to put in it

A long document nobody reads.

House rules written in the voice of a legal notice. If a rule matters, it belongs in your listing and your booking terms as well, and the book should state it plainly and briefly.

Anything that reads as a warning about the neighbors.

And personal items, documents or anything you would mind a stranger seeing. A welcome book sits on a counter in a house full of people you have never met.

The physical version still wins

Digital guides are convenient and the paper copy is the one that gets used.

A printed book on the counter is visible, works without a signal, and does not require anyone to find a link in an email from three weeks ago. If you do both, put the phone number on the paper one.

Laminate the first page. It will get wet.

The safety page nobody writes

Short, unglamorous, and the one that matters most on the rare night it matters.

Where the fire extinguisher is. Where the smoke and carbon monoxide detectors are. How to get out of the house if the main door is blocked, particularly from upstairs bedrooms. Where the water shutoff is, and the breaker panel.

Then the local emergency number, the nearest hospital, and the address of the property written out in full. That last one sounds unnecessary until somebody has to say it into a phone at two in the morning in a town they arrived in yesterday.

None of this alarms guests. Hotels put it on the back of the door and nobody thinks twice.

What I actually see

Hosts who write a beautiful guide and bury the phone number on page six.

The guest who needs it is not reading page six. They are standing in the kitchen at ten at night with a problem, deciding whether this is a message-the-host situation or a leave-a-review situation. Make that decision easy.

The other pattern is a book written once and never revisited. The coffee place closed, the trash day changed, the lock was replaced. A welcome book is a living document and it needs looking at a couple of times a year.

If you are the guest rather than the host

The same list is worth asking about before you book rather than after you arrive.

Message the host with three specific questions and screenshot the answers: is the hot tub operational year round, how many does the dining table actually seat, and what time do quiet hours start. “Sleeps 12” and “seats 6” are two different numbers and you find that out at dinner.

Filter by amenity rather than by price, too. On most platforms the amenity filters get you to the right handful of properties far faster than sorting by cost and reading everything.

Write it in the guest’s order, not yours

Hosts organize these books the way they think about the house. Guests read them in the order they hit problems.

So the sequence that works is arrival, settling in, daily use, going out, leaving. Door and wifi first. Heating, hot water and appliances next. Parking, trash and the neighborhood after that. Checkout last.

A table of contents on page two sounds fussy for a short document and it is the thing that turns a book somebody skims into one somebody uses. Number the pages so you can point at one over the phone.

And keep the whole thing short enough that a tired person will actually turn the pages. If it runs past a few sides, the useful parts are hiding.

Where this sits in the bigger picture

If you are running a short-term rental, the welcome book is the cheapest part of the operation and it affects reviews out of proportion to the effort.

The harder questions are regulatory. Whether short-term rentals are allowed in St. George covers the part that decides whether you can operate at all, and it varies by city and sometimes by subdivision.

And if you are exiting, how to sell a short-term rental in St. George covers what changes about that sale compared with a normal one.

What to do next

Write the first page today. Phone number, wifi, door, thermostat, bathroom. That page alone handles most of what goes wrong.

I am Kelsey Earl, a Realtor with Keller Williams South Valley, and I work with owners on both ends of this, including the part where the rules change. Tell me what you are running or considering and I will tell you what to check.

Note: General guidance on hosting practice. Short-term rental rules differ by city, by zone and sometimes by HOA, and they change. Confirm what applies to your specific address before operating.