Check-In Instructions Guests Actually Read

Guests don't read instructions at the door. They read the one line that matches the problem in front of them, so the page has to be built for skimming under stress.

Last updated: October 25, 2026

Nobody reads check-in instructions from the top. They arrive, they look up, and something is already slightly wrong: the door doesn't look like the photo, the hallway is darker than expected, the key isn't where they thought. Then they scroll. Whatever your page says in its first three lines will be read; the rest is read only if the first three fail.

Key Takeaways

• The page is read standing up, in the dark, on a phone at 8 per cent. That's the format, not a worst case.
• Three lines do the work: which door, one number in bold, what to do if neither matches.
• House rules and appliance notes aren't instructions. Move them to a second page instead of editing them down.
• Identify the door, not the building. "The grey door beside the pharmacy" beats a street address.
• Test it on someone who's never been. Watch where they stop, not what they say.

Written for a person at a door

Picture the reader properly. They're outside, it's dark, they're holding a bag in one hand and a phone in the other at 8 per cent battery. They have the address. What they don't have is any reason to read a paragraph about how much you love the neighbourhood.

That picture sets four rules. No preamble before the useful line. Short lines rather than sentences. Concrete nouns instead of adjectives. And the most likely problem answered before the least likely one. The guest isn't reading in your order. They're jumping to theirs.

The most common failure is a page written in the order the host thinks about the unit: welcome, house rules, wifi, bins, then, at the bottom, how to get in. The guest who can't get in never reaches the bottom. Getting in goes first, always, even if it reads oddly to you.

Assume the guest has a screenshot, not your message. Most people photograph or screenshot the arrival details before they travel, and what survives the flight is one screen of text. If the door line needs a second screen, half your guests are working from the half that didn't travel. That's the real argument for keeping the whole thing short.

The three lines that do the work

The first line identifies the door in a way a stranger can act on. Not the street address, which they already have. Not "the main entrance", which every building has. Something visible: the colour of the door, what's next to it, what's across from it. If there are two entrances, say which one, and say what the wrong one looks like so they know they've found it.

The second line is one phone number, in bold, with a name attached. Not a switchboard, not an email address, not "contact us". One number that a person answers, and a note about when. If that number is only answered during office hours, say so, because a guest calling at 11pm and getting voicemail will assume the whole arrival has failed.

The third line covers the mismatch: what to do if the door they found doesn't match the description, or the key isn't where the message said. One sentence, pointing back at the number in line two. That sentence is what turns a panicked message into a phone call you can answer in thirty seconds.

If a person meets the guest rather than a key box doing it, that belongs in line one, with a name and where they'll be standing. "Ana will be outside the grey door from 15:00" answers three questions at once: who, where, and whether the guest is early. A guest who knows someone is coming waits. A guest who doesn't know starts improvising.

What to move out of the way

Everything that isn't arrival information goes somewhere else, and "somewhere else" usually means a second page or a second message, sent once the guest is inside. House rules, bin days, appliance quirks, the wifi password, the checkout checklist: all of it is useful, none of it belongs between a guest and the door.

One photo is worth keeping, provided it's the right photo: the door as it looks from the street at night, taken from where a car would stop. Not the interior, not the view. Guests recognise a picture faster than a sentence, and a bad photo of the correct door still works better than a good description of it.

Be careful with the wifi password in particular. It's the most requested item after arrival and the least useful before it. Put it where the guest will be when they need it, and repeat it once in the arrival message if you like, but don't let it push the door line down the page.

There's a second kind of clutter that's harder to see: hedged language. "You should be able to find the entrance near the corner" tells the guest that you aren't sure either. Either you know where the entrance is or you need to go and look. Instructions lose their authority the moment they sound like guesses.

Language is the third thing to move aside, and it's the one hosts notice last. Many guests will read your message in a second language, and idioms are the first thing to break. "Head round the back" survives; "you can't miss it" doesn't, because a guest who has missed it now feels stupid as well as lost. Plain nouns, numbers and colours travel. Figures of speech don't.

Testing it with someone who's never been

The test costs one coffee. Send the message to someone who has never been to the building, ideally someone who'll arrive by the same route: a friend, a neighbour, the person who cleans. Ask them to get to the door using only the text. Then watch.

What you're watching for is the pause. Where do they stop reading and start looking around? That pause marks the line that isn't doing its job. It's almost never the line you expected. Sometimes it's a floor number that's off by one between the message and the lift. Sometimes it's a door that's described by a colour the paint has since changed.

Then run the test once more at night, from a car, with the message open on a phone. If the door can't be identified from that position, the first line needs rewriting, and everything below it is decoration.

Change one line per test, not five. If you rewrite the whole page and the guest still pauses, you've learned nothing about which line was wrong. One fix, one walk, and keep a note of the date you changed it, so a message that worked in June doesn't get quietly un-fixed in August by someone who never saw the pause.

FAQ

How long should the arrival message be?

Short enough that the door line is visible without scrolling, which usually means under a hundred words. Anything past that is either a second page or a paragraph you haven't decided to cut yet. House rules and bin days belong in that second page, sent after arrival.

Should it live in the listing or in a message?

One line in the listing, the whole thing in a message sent the day before. Guests read the listing weeks early and the message on the day. localsbnb.com keeps the booking and its messages visible in the same backend, so the version you sent is the version you can find again when a guest calls from the street.

What if the building has two entrances?

Say which one, and describe the other so the guest recognises it as the wrong one. Two entrances described badly is worse than one described well, because the guest now has two chances to stand in the wrong place.

Write the page once, test it on one person, and it stops generating messages. localsbnb.com is where the arrival thread sits beside the booking it belongs to, which is what makes that one rewrite hold for every guest after it.

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This article is general guidance for hosts and isn't legal, tax or insurance advice. What a host must disclose before arrival, what a building requires of visitors and what local rules say about guest registration differ by jurisdiction and change over time. Confirm the current requirements with the competent authority and the current terms of each platform you use before you send the next version.