Your B&B booking confirmation: what it must contain (and what to leave out)

Of all the messages a B&B sends, there is one that almost every guest opens, keeps and looks up again later: the booking confirmation. It is read on the day of booking, again the week before departure, and very often once more in the car, looking for the address or the time the door opens. In other words, it is the most important piece of text in your entire guest communication.

And yet, at many properties it is either a bare automatic email with a booking number, or the opposite: half a novel with the complete house rules, the history of the building and the opening hours of three nearby restaurants. Both versions produce the same questions on WhatsApp two days before arrival.

This article is about confirming a direct booking, through your own website, phone or email. Bookings via Booking.com or Airbnb work differently; we come back to that below.

What is a confirmation actually for?

A good confirmation does three things, in this order:

1. Reassure. The guest has just transferred money or typed a card number into the site of a small business they do not know. The first sentence has to make clear: it worked, this is locked in, you are welcome.
2. Record what was agreed. Dates, room, number of people, price, what is and is not included, and the cancellation terms. This is your evidence if a discussion arises later, and at the same time the guest's reference document.
3. Provide what the guest needs to set off. Address, arrival time, how to reach you. Nothing more.

Anything that does not fall under one of those three does not belong in the confirmation. That is the whole art.

What must be in it

Check your own confirmation against this list. Anything missing is a question you will get sooner or later anyway.

• The guest's name and a booking number. The number is not for the guest but for you: when they call or email later, one search finds everything.
• Arrival and departure dates, written out in full. Write "Friday 24 October 2026", not "24/10". A misread date is the most common reason a guest turns up on the wrong day.
• The number of nights. Sounds redundant, but it catches mistakes: whoever reads "2 nights" under "Friday to Sunday" knows immediately there is no third night.
• Room or room type and number of people, including children and extra beds if agreed.
• The total price, and what it includes. Breakfast included or not, tourist tax listed separately or included, any cleaning fee or pet surcharge. One line per item is enough.
• What has been paid and what is still due. Deposit received, balance on arrival or in advance, and by when. Also say how: card, bank transfer, payment link. Leave this out and you are guaranteed the question "do we still owe anything?".
• The cancellation terms, briefly. Not the full text, just the essence: free until when, what happens after. Link to your terms and conditions for the rest.
• Address and arrival times. The full address with a map link. The check-in window, and what the guest should do if they are earlier or later.
• How to reach you. One phone or WhatsApp number and one email address. Not a list of five channels.
• Your business details. Name, address and VAT or company number in the footer. Business guests need it, and it makes the email instantly more credible.

What to leave out (or send later)

It happens with the best intentions: the guest has booked, so you give them everything at once. Except nobody reads how the coffee machine works on the day they book. Three weeks later, when that information becomes relevant, it is buried in a long email.

Does not belong in the confirmation:

• The full house rules and the wifi password. Those belong in a message a few days before arrival, or in a digital guest guide the guest consults on site.
• Tips about the region. Nice, but a separate email a week beforehand works better and actually gets read.
• Upsells. A bottle of cava in the room or a late checkout sells better in the pre-arrival message, when the guest is getting in the mood. In the confirmation it reads as a sales pitch.
• Requests for reviews. Asking for a review before someone has even arrived gives the wrong impression.
• The key code or lock combination. For security reasons: send that shortly before arrival, and only to guests who have actually paid.

A short confirmation containing everything that must be there, followed by a second, more practical message just before arrival: that is the split that produces the fewest questions in practice.

A sample you can copy

Adapt the tone to your own house, but feel free to copy the structure word for word.

Subject: Your booking is confirmed, [B&B name], 24 to 26 October 2026

Dear [first name],

Thank you, your booking is confirmed. We look forward to welcoming you.

Your stay Arrival: Friday 24 October 2026, check-in between 4 pm and 8 pm Departure: Sunday 26 October 2026, check-out before 11 am Room: [room name], 2 people, 2 nights Booking number: [number]

Price 2 nights × € [rate] = € [subtotal] Breakfast: included Tourist tax: € [amount] Total: € [total] Deposit received: € [amount]. The balance of € [amount] is payable on arrival (card or cash).

Cancellation Free of charge until [date]. After that, [X]% of the total is due. The full terms are here.

Address [Street and number, postcode and town], [map link] Arriving earlier or later than the window above? Let us know and we will find a solution.

A few days before your arrival we will send you another message with practical information about access, parking and breakfast.

See you soon, [First name], [B&B name] [phone or WhatsApp] · [email]

[Company name] · [address] · [VAT number]

The subject line deserves extra attention. "Booking confirmed" means nothing when someone searches their mailbox three weeks later. Your B&B's name plus the dates in the subject make the email findable.

When the booking comes through Booking.com or Airbnb

For a platform booking, the platform sends its own confirmation, and it is usually complete: dates, price, terms. A second formal confirmation from you would be confusing, especially if your amounts are presented differently from the platform's.

What does make sense: a short welcome message through the platform's messaging function, within a day of the booking. Thank them for booking, confirm the arrival window, and say that practical information will follow before arrival. That is their first impression of you as a person, and for Booking.com guests it is often the only way to know there is a real human on the other side.

Be careful with contact details in that message: the platforms filter and sometimes prohibit sharing phone numbers and email addresses before arrival. Stick to what their rules allow, and read what you can and cannot say when a guest wants to book directly.

Send it automatically, but not anonymously

A confirmation you type by hand is one that leaves on Monday after a busy Saturday. Meanwhile the guest has emailed twice to ask whether everything is in order. So the confirmation must go out automatically, within a minute of the booking, with every figure taken straight from the booking itself. That is exactly where a manual email goes wrong: a mistyped amount or last week's arrival date.

Automatic does not mean impersonal. The difference is in the text around the figures: a greeting with the first name, one sentence that sounds like you, a signature with a name. In BedFlow PMS the confirmation is a template you write once in your own words, with the booking details as merge fields; it is sent automatically for every direct booking, in the guest's language, and the email stays attached to the booking so you can see later exactly what was sent.

Also useful: send yourself a copy (or let the system do it). You see what the guest sees, and you notice immediately when a surcharge is missing or a date comes through wrong.

When the confirmation changes

A guest calls to add a night, changes room, or arrives with three instead of two. The original confirmation is now wrong, and the guest has no way of knowing. After every change to a booking, send a new confirmation with "updated" in the subject and the new total. That avoids the discussion at check-out about "but my email said a different amount".

In short

• The confirmation is your most-read message: short, complete and findable.
• Must be in it: dates in full, room and people, price with what it includes, paid and still due, cancellation essentials, address and arrival window, one contact, your business details.
• Not in it: house rules, wifi, regional tips, upsells and key codes. Those go in a separate message just before arrival.
• For platform bookings: no second confirmation, but a short welcome message.
• Send automatically with figures from the booking, and again after every change.

Want the confirmation to leave by itself for every direct booking, in your words and in the guest's language? Try BedFlow PMS free for 30 days; all plans and prices are on one page, with no surprises.