The Text Before Check-In That Sets Expectations

Most low scores are not complaints about the flat. They are mismatches between what the guest pictured and what they found. One message before arrival closes most of that gap.

Last updated: November 2, 2026

Read enough four-star reviews and a pattern shows up. The flat was fine. The host was fine. Something else was off: the stairs, the entrance, the parking, the noise at six in the morning. The guest isn't describing a fault. They're describing the distance between the place they imagined and the place they walked into. Four lines the day before arrival shrink that distance.

Key Takeaways

• A mismatch isn't a complaint. Guests forgive what they were warned about and mark down what surprised them.
• Four lines do the work. The way in, the one surprise, the thing that works differently, and how to reach you.
• Say it the day before, not the hour before. A message at 3pm for a 4pm arrival is a notification, not a briefing.
• Leave the rules out. They're already in the listing. Repeating them at the door reads as suspicion.
• Read the reply as data. A question about something you covered means the line wasn't clear. Silence usually means it landed.

Where the mismatch usually starts

It starts with the photos, and it isn't the photos' fault. You shot the room on the best morning of the year, with the window open and the light coming in from behind the camera. The guest books that room and arrives on a wet Tuesday in November, at half past nine at night, via a back entrance that has never been photographed by anyone.

Four things produce most of the gap, and none of them is fixable with better pictures.

The entrance is the first. Guests picture a front door and get a service door beside the bins, or a lobby that's locked after eight, or an intercom with nine buttons and no names. The second is height. Three flights with a suitcase is a different arrival from a lift, and a guest who wasn't told will mention it in the review as if it were your fault, because from their side it is.

The third is sound. A flat above a bar, under a family with a toddler, or beside a lift shaft is a normal flat with a normal amount of noise. A guest who expected silence hears every footstep. The fourth is parking: whether there is any, where it is, and whether the bay behind the building that looks private is actually private.

None of these is a defect. All of them are surprises, and a surprise is what a guest writes about when the rest of the stay was pleasant but unremarkable.

Four lines to send the day before

The way in. The street, the door, the floor, the bell, and what to do if nobody answers. Be specific enough that someone arriving in the dark with two bags and a dying phone can follow it without messaging you. If the door is set back from the road or the number is on the other wing, say so.

The one thing that surprises people. Not a list of every quirk — the single thing you'd mention to a friend. "Third floor, no lift." "The entrance is round the back, past the bins." "There's a bar on the corner, and it's lively until about midnight on Fridays." One line, stated plainly, without apology.

The thing that works differently from what they'd assume. The boiler switch by the door rather than on the boiler. The hot water that takes a minute. The window in the small room that doesn't open. The bin store code. These are the twenty seconds of confusion that turn into a message at eleven at night, and they're the easiest thing in the world to prevent.

How to reach you, and when you sleep. A name, not a company. The channel to use, and an honest window. "Message me here until eleven, and after that only if it's urgent — I'll see it." Guests don't mind that you sleep. They mind not knowing whether you're reachable.

Send it the day before, in the morning if you can. That gives the guest time to read it on a train, forward it to the friend they're travelling with, and ask a question while there's still time for an answer.

Send it inside the platform thread for the stay, not by text message. The thread is attached to the booking, it carries a timestamp, and the guest already has the app open. A text message is a fallback for the last hour, not the main channel.

On language, one practical point. Write the message once and let the settings do the work: the language follows the store, and there are six to choose from — English, simplified and traditional Chinese, Japanese, Thai and Malay. Korean isn't one of them yet, so a Korean-speaking guest gets the English version. If that's likely, add a short line in English at the top saying so, and keep the four lines simple enough to survive translation.

What to leave out

The rules. Check-out time, quiet hours, no parties, the bin day. They're in the listing, and the guest agreed to them at booking. Repeating the whole set in a message three hours before arrival reads as an accusation dressed up as information.

The upsell. An early check-in offer, a late check-out price, a transfer, a welcome basket. There's a time to sell those, and it isn't the moment when the guest is working out which door to stand at.

The apology in advance. "Sorry the building is old." "Sorry about the stairs." An apology before anything has gone wrong tells the guest to look for the problem. State the fact and move on. "Third floor, no lift" is information. "So sorry, it's a walk-up" is an invitation to be annoyed.

The long story. Why you chose the flat, what the neighbourhood used to be like, the three restaurants you love. Guests read the arrival message on a phone, often standing up, often in a hurry. Four lines get read. Four paragraphs get skimmed for the door code and deleted.

And leave out anything you can't honour. A promise of "any time after noon" that you can't actually support turns a calm arrival into a negotiation at the door, and the guest will hold you to the sentence rather than the booking.

Reading the reply as a signal

Most guests won't reply, and that's fine. Silence after an arrival message usually means the four lines answered the questions they had. Don't chase it.

A question about something you already covered is the useful kind of reply, even though it feels like a failure. It means the line existed but didn't land: buried in a paragraph, written in a way that assumed context, or sent in a language the guest reads slowly. Rewrite that line for the next stay.

A question about something new is a real need, and it's usually the thing that would have become the complaint. Somebody asking whether they can park a van has just told you the parking paragraph was the one that mattered.

A two-word "thanks!" is a good sign. A reply that asks you to resend the details, or that arrives with three questions in one line, tells you the message was too long. That's worth knowing before the review, not after.

Write the message once, at the start of the season, then edit it per booking. Two sentences usually need to change: the arrival window and anything specific to that guest's stay. Keep a note of which version went out, too. If three guests in a row ask about parking, the message isn't the problem — the listing is, and that's a different fix in a different place.

localsbnb.com keeps the Airbnb thread for an upcoming stay in one inbox, so the message you send and the reply you get sit together with the booking rather than in a phone's message history. When a guest says "nobody told me about the stairs", that thread is the answer, and it's either there or it isn't.

FAQ

Should the arrival message go through the platform or by text?

Through the platform thread. It stays attached to the booking, it's timestamped, and it doesn't depend on a phone number you may not have. Text is a fallback for the last hour, not the main channel.

How long should it be?

Four short lines, under about a hundred words. If it needs scrolling on a phone, it's a document rather than a briefing, and the guest will skip to the door code.

Will this lift my rating?

It removes one common cause of a low score, which is being surprised by something nobody mentioned. It doesn't promise a score. Plenty of other things decide that, and most of them happen during the stay.

Four lines, sent the day before, in a language the guest reads comfortably. localsbnb.com holds the arrival thread next to the booking it belongs to, which is where a guest's "nobody told me" either finds an answer or doesn't.

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This article is general guidance for hosts and isn't legal, tax or insurance advice. Messaging rules, translation options and review policies differ by platform and change over time. Confirm the current terms of the platform you use before you rely on any of them.