A digital guest guide for your B&B: the house information guests actually need

Every guest house has one: the folder with plastic sleeves. The wifi code at the front in a font from ten years ago, then a manual for a television that is no longer in the room, and at the very back a leaflet for a restaurant that closed last year.

And still, at ten in the evening, you get that same message: "Sorry to bother you — what was the wifi code again?"

That is not laziness on the guest's part. It is simply how people behave. They are sitting on the edge of the bed with a phone in hand, and the folder is three metres away next to the kettle. Put the answer on the phone and it gets read. Put it on paper and you get a phone call.

What a digital guest guide actually is

No app, no extra login, no download. Just one web page per booking, with a link the guest receives in the confirmation email and again a few days before arrival. They tap, they read, done. No password, no account.

What makes it different from an ordinary page on your website is that this page knows who is coming: which room or unit, which dates, what time they may check in. That lets you show things a general page cannot — the door code that only becomes valid on the day of arrival, for instance.

The ten questions that actually get asked

It is tempting to write down everything you know about your house and your region. Don't. A forty-screen guest guide gets ignored just as thoroughly as the folder by the kettle.

Look instead at your own message history over the past few months. In practically every small property, the same questions come back:

1. Wifi — network name and password, literally copyable. Not as an image, because you cannot copy anything out of one.
2. Arrival and keys — where exactly the entrance is, how to get in, what to do if they are later than agreed.
3. Parking — quietly the question that causes guests the most stress. Be concrete: street name, paid or not, which hours, and where definitely not.
4. Check-in and check-out times — including what is possible when the train only gets in at night.
5. Breakfast — where, what time, how to flag an allergy or an early departure.
6. Heating, air conditioning, hot water — the classic thermostat nobody understands. Two sentences and a photo of the dial.
7. House rules that genuinely matter — smoking, pets, extra visitors, noise after a certain hour. Short and pleasantly phrased.
8. Waste and departure — what you expect at check-out. Being vague here costs you cleaning hours and stars.
9. Who to contact when something breaks — one number, and a note that a leak or a broken key warrants a call rather than an email.
10. Three to five local tips — not a tourist leaflet, but what you would do yourself. The bakery that is open on Mondays. The walk that takes exactly one hour.

That is enough. Everything you add dilutes the rest.

Timing is half the win

A single link at the moment of booking is too early: someone books in March for August and has no interest whatsoever in the bin collection schedule.

What does work is a simple rhythm: the link in the confirmation (so it sits in the inbox), and the same link again two to three days before arrival, when people actually start planning. That second message is when your arrival and parking information sticks.

Hosts who send their messages over WhatsApp see the effect even more clearly — a link in a WhatsApp message is opened almost every time, an email far less reliably. How to send those messages automatically is covered in automating guest communication and WhatsApp for your guests.

Language is not a detail

A German guest reading Dutch instructions for the thermostat simply calls. A French-speaking guest who does not understand your house rules will not follow them — not out of stubbornness, but because they never read them.

If your system already knows the guest's language from the booking, let the page open in that language. For a small property in the Benelux, four languages cover almost everything: Dutch, French, English, German. For the area tips a decent translation is fine; for house rules and arrival instructions it pays to read those four versions through carefully once.

Maintenance: one source, once a quarter

The reason paper folders go stale is that they exist in five places at once: in the room, in your confirmation email, on your website, in your OTA profile, and in your housekeeper's head. Change the check-out time and you update three of them and forget two.

So keep one source and point everything at that same page. Put twenty minutes in your calendar once a quarter to walk through it: are the opening hours still right, does that restaurant still exist, is the door code still the same. That is less work than rewriting everything once a year.

It is allowed to earn something too

A guest guide is close to free extra revenue, as long as you do not turn it into a sales page. Two or three discreet options are plenty: a late check-out, breakfast added for someone who did not book it, a bottle of wine on arrival, an extra clean during a longer stay.

The difference with a marketing email is that the guest is already in the right frame of mind here: they are planning their stay. More on what works and what does not in earning more per booking.

What you get back

Do not expect a dramatic turnaround; expect quiet. The pattern across small properties is fairly consistent: the late-evening wifi and parking questions largely disappear, check-ins run more smoothly because people know where to go, and your cleaning team finds the rooms as agreed because the departure instructions were actually read.

There is a second effect that shows up in reviews: guests who feel well prepared write about "smooth communication" more often — one of the phrases future guests find most convincing.

Where BedFlow PMS fits in

In BedFlow PMS that guest page belongs to the booking itself, not to your website. Every booking gets its own link, in the guest's language, carrying that booking's details — room, dates, arrival information, practical house info.

You paste that link into your message templates: the confirmation email, the message a few days before arrival, your WhatsApp template. You maintain the content in one place, and every guest — including those from Booking.com or Airbnb — sees the same current version. How to set up the templates and the guest page is covered in the documentation.

In short

Replace the folder by the kettle with one web page per booking. Stick to the ten questions that genuinely get asked, send the link twice (at booking and just before arrival), show it in the guest's language, maintain it in one place, and add two or three extras your guest can actually use.

Want to see how that works with your own bookings? BedFlow PMS is free to try for 30 days, no credit card required — and the pricing is right there on the site.