Airbnb House Manual Template: What to Include (+ Example)

A house manual that only guests see is doing half its job. The best ones are also the document you hand your cleaner before a same-day turnover, the one your co-host opens when a guest calls at midnight about the water heater, and the one that keeps the washing machine instructions out of a text thread you've already had six times this month.

What is an Airbnb house manual?

An Airbnb house manual is a written reference covering check-in, house rules, appliance operation and emergency procedures for a short-term rental — written for guests, but detailed enough that a cleaner or co-host could run the property from it too.

It's the operational version of the document, not just the friendly one. That's the detail competitors miss when they treat it as a prettier version of a welcome letter. A house manual isn't a brochure and it isn't a legal document either — it's closer to the handover notes you'd leave a house-sitter, minus the dog-feeding schedule.

What should an Airbnb house manual include?

At minimum, seven things: check-in and access, house rules, appliance operation, utility and maintenance quirks, emergency contacts, checkout steps, and supply locations. A house manual earns its name when it covers everything needed to keep the property running without you, not just what's pleasant for a guest to read:

• Check-in and access — lockbox code, smart lock steps, or keybox location, with a photo if the entrance is confusing
• House rules you'd enforce — quiet hours, guest limits, smoking, pets, parties
• Appliance operation — the ones that aren't obvious: boiler, AC unit, washer, induction hob
• Utility and maintenance quirks — fuse box location, water shutoff, trash collection day, which outlets trip the circuit
• Emergency contacts — nearest hospital or pharmacy, your number, and when it's actually worth calling it
• Checkout steps — time, keys, trash, towels
• Supply locations — where the cleaner finds extra linens, cleaning products, or the spare lightbulbs

Most templates stop after the first three. The last two — maintenance quirks and supply locations — are the ones that turn a guest document into a document a cleaner or co-host can actually work from, which is the whole point of calling it a manual instead of a welcome note.

How do I add a house manual to my Airbnb listing?

Airbnb already builds a house manual field into every listing. In Listings, open the listing, click Arrival guide, then House manual, make your edits, and save — only guests with a confirmed reservation can see what you write there, and it's intended for small day-to-day details: how the hot water heater works, where the extra blankets are kept.

It's a fine place to start, and it costs nothing. Where it falls short is capacity and reach: the field is small, it only reaches guests after booking, and your cleaner or co-host can't open it the way they'd open a shared document or link. Most hosts who rely on it alone end up re-explaining the same three things by text anyway — which is the gap a standalone house manual, printed or digital, is built to close.

What's the difference between a house manual and a welcome book?

Nothing in the document itself — the two terms describe the same information with a different audience in mind. A welcome book is written to be charming for a guest arriving after a long flight; a house manual is written to be useful for anyone running the property while you're not there, including you at 11pm trying to remember which fuse controls the kitchen.

We cover the guest-facing version in more detail in our welcome book guide — worth reading if you want the friendlier framing of this same content. This post stays on the operational side: what changes when the audience includes a cleaner or a co-host, not just a guest.

How do you write house rules guests actually follow?

Guests follow a house rule when they understand why it exists, not just that it exists. "No parties" gets ignored by someone who thinks their four friends over for dinner doesn't count; "no parties — we're on a residential street and the neighbors have called the owner before" gets taken seriously, because it explains what's actually at stake.

The same fix works for every rule in the manual, not just the ones about noise. "Please don't smoke indoors" is a request nobody wrote on purpose. "No smoking inside — the smoke alarm is directly above the bed and it will go off" is the same rule, and it's the one that actually gets followed, because it tells guests what happens if they don't.

Should a house manual be digital, printed, or both?

Both, but for different people and different reasons. Printed is what a guest sees taped to the inside of a cabinet door; digital is the version you, your cleaner, and your co-host all open from the same link, which matters because it's the one that's actually current.

The real argument for digital isn't convenience, it's consistency. The moment your trash collection day changes or a new lock code gets set, a printed page is wrong until someone reprints it — and a cleaner working from last month's copy is the reason a guest finds the bins still out on the wrong morning. A digital manual, updated once, is correct for the guest checking in tonight and the cleaner coming in tomorrow. The same logic holds whether the booking came through Airbnb, Vrbo or Booking.com — the manual lives with the property, not the platform.

Can the same house manual work for guests, cleaners, and co-hosts?

Yes, as long as it's organized by audience instead of written as one long document aimed at nobody in particular. A short guest-facing section up top — check-in, WiFi, house rules, checkout — covers what a guest needs within their first five minutes. A short operational appendix underneath covers what only a cleaner or co-host needs: supply locations, the maintenance contact, which smart lock app to use if the batteries die.

A QR code by the door is the simplest way to make this work in practice: guests scan it for the short version, and anyone with the direct link — your cleaner, your co-host, a maintenance contractor — gets the full document, appendix included. It's one source of truth with two entry points, not two separate manuals to keep updated.

How do you make a house manual sound like a local, not a hotel?

Swap the generic line for the specific one, every time it's tempting to default to hotel language. Guests chose a short-term rental over a hotel room for a reason, and a house manual that reads like a hotel compendium — "please contact the front desk for assistance" — quietly tells them they picked wrong.

Compare the two versions of the same instruction:

"Guests are requested to dispose of waste in the designated receptacles provided."

"Bins are the two green ones by the side gate — collection's Tuesday morning, so anything out by Monday night is fine."

The second version is shorter, it's more useful, and it sounds like it was written by a person who actually lives near that gate. That's the whole differentiation: a hotel's instructions could belong to any hotel; a good house manual could only belong to your specific apartment, on your specific street, written by someone who knows it.

How do I create an Airbnb house manual template?

Start from a structure instead of a blank page, then fill in what's true for your property, not a placeholder. A working build order:

1. Check-in: lock type and access steps, with a photo of the actual entrance
2. House rules you'd genuinely enforce, each with the reason attached
3. Appliances a first-time visitor wouldn't recognize
4. Utility and maintenance quirks — fuse box, water shutoff, trash day
5. Emergency contacts and when it's worth using them
6. Checkout steps: time, keys, trash
7. A short operational appendix: supply locations, cleaner and co-host notes
8. Your contact details, including WhatsApp if that's how you'd rather be reached

Once it's filled in, read it twice — once as a guest who's never been to your building, and once as a cleaner who's never been inside the apartment. Anything either of them would have to guess at is the line to fix first.

Hosts searched some version of "airbnb house manual" close to 500 times a month in the US alone, according to Google Keyword Planner — which suggests most are still piecing this together from scratch rather than starting from a structure. If you'd rather not start from a blank page, bemyguest turns this exact structure into something you fill in once per property, guest-facing section and operational appendix included.

Browse the rest of the guest guide series for check-in templates and appliance guides, read the welcome book guide for the guest-facing version of this same document, or head back to the blog for everything else.