Hosts usually put WiFi and house rules in a guestbook because those are the questions they get tired of answering. I wanted to see what guests actually open, so I pulled four months of traffic from HelloGuestbook properties, plus what hosts have written in those books.
From late April through early September, guests opened 894 guestbooks. That is 14,045 unique visitors and 27,342 page views. The rest of this piece follows the stay: getting in, getting online, then going out.
Check-in is the page hosts write first
The most common custom page is check-in. Of 810 custom pages, 200 are about getting in the door. House rules show up 53 times. Parking shows up 33 times. Restaurants and beaches sit just behind that.
Guests arrive tired, often after dark. The lockbox, the gate code, which door, where the car goes. A printed book is already inside. A digital guestbook opens on the street, before they park.
WiFi is the next thing they ask for
Once they are in, the next message is almost always the network name and password. More than 8 in 10 published guestbooks have a WiFi section. Hosts treat it as part of the welcome, the same way they treat the key.
Make the name and password easy to read. Caps and lowercase trip people up, and that is when the frustrated message comes back to you. In HelloGuestbook the WiFi page shows the network and password clearly, with a QR code guests can scan so they do not have to type it at all.
Keep WiFi near the top of the book so they are not hunting through house rules to find it.
Then they look for somewhere to go
Restaurant and beach pages are the next titles hosts add after parking. That is the rest of the stay: coffee in the morning, a swim, somewhere to eat that is not the first result on Maps.
Hosts put those answers in the writing. Four in ten published guestbooks have at least one link inside a custom page. Among those, the median is 10 links. What they point at:
- 264 Google Maps links
- 500 other sites: menus, local spots, parking, tourism pages
- 44 Instagram
- 19 YouTube
- 15 Facebook
A restaurant page with a Maps link and a menu URL does the job. Guests already know how to open those.
Some hosts use the dedicated link cards instead, or as well. Counting both, nearly half of published books point guests somewhere outside the guestbook.
The built-in map is a Pro feature. Hosts who fill theirs in usually drop 5 to 10 pins: a café, parking, a beach, a grocery. Same job as the Google Maps links, on a page that stays in the guestbook.
How much should you put in a guestbook?
Text
Books split into two camps. Just over half of the books with custom pages have exactly one. About a third have five or more.
That single page is doing one of two jobs. Either the host had one thing worth writing down, or the whole stay is stacked into one long scroll. The second one is worth fixing.
A guest hunting for the door code at 11pm should not be scrolling past your coffee recommendations to find it. Give each thing its own page: check-in, house rules, parking, the local guide. Then the titles do the work, and a guest lands on the right answer in one tap instead of reading a wall of text on a phone.
Pages run about 200 words. Two or three paragraphs, one topic. Much longer and it is probably two pages.
Photos
More than 100 pages include a photo. Two kinds show up.
Practical ones: where the keybox is, which door, how the AC remote is laid out. A guest who does not share your language can still match the picture to the wall in front of them.
The place itself: the beach, the backyard, the view from the terrace. That is information too, and it makes the book feel like yours.
Use them, but not on everything. A page of pictures is as hard to scan as a wall of text, and most instructions do not need one. But if you find yourself writing three sentences to describe something a photo shows at a glance, use the photo.
Putting it together
That is a full book: clear enough to scan on the sidewalk, specific enough that a guest can settle in and go out without texting you. You can add trash day or the washing machine later. You do not need a novel, and you do not need to wait until someone asks.
If you are filling yours in this week:
- Check-in: how to get in, with a photo of the entrance if the door is easy to miss
- WiFi: network name and password easy to read, plus a QR code so nobody has to retype capital letters
- House rules: what is allowed, quiet hours, pets, smoking, anything that should not be a surprise
- Parking: where to put the car, whether it costs money, and how not to get a ticket
- Local guide: a few places you would send a friend, with photos, Maps or menu links, and a handful of pins on the map if you are on Pro
You can build all five of these in an evening. HelloGuestbook is free for your first guidebook, no card needed.
What paper cannot tell you
A printed binder sits on the table. You never know if anyone opened it. A digital book can tell you, and that is the real difference: which pages get traffic, and where your next edit is worth making. Everything in this article comes from that data. I am building the same view into the host dashboard now, so you can read it for your own book instead of reading mine.
It also means the book can keep getting easier for guests. A link before arrival, a QR code for WiFi, a map they can tap. I build HelloGuestbook around that: stays with fewer dead ends, and guides that stay available on the phone they already have.
What this dataset covers
These numbers come from HelloGuestbook guestbook traffic and from what hosts have put in their books. The traffic side uses cookieless, privacy-focused analytics: no advertising cookies, no guest accounts.
Two populations show up here. Traffic and section numbers come from published guestbooks only. The writing numbers, page counts, links and photos, include books that are still being built, since a half-finished book still shows what a host reaches for first.
Nothing here identifies a single book or host. I counted patterns across all of them, not what anyone in particular wrote.
This cut covers April 28 to September 3, 2026. When a new stretch of data is worth publishing, I will update this page.
Last updated: September 3, 2026
Frequently Asked Questions
What should be the first page in an Airbnb guestbook?
Check-in instructions. It is the most common custom page in this dataset, and it is the one guests need on the way in.
Do guests use digital guestbooks?
On these properties, yes. 14,045 unique visitors opened 894 guestbooks in four months, for 27,342 page views. A printed book cannot tell you that at all.
How detailed should a guestbook be?
Cover the stay: check-in, WiFi, rules, parking, and a short local guide with photos and links, each on its own page rather than one long scroll. Pages here run about 200 words, and many include an image. Five to ten map pins is what the filled-in maps look like. That is enough without turning the book into a binder.
Is a local map worth adding?
Yes, if you are on Pro. Hosts who use it pin a handful of places guests can actually go. If you are not on Pro, the same recommendations work as pages with Google Maps and menu links. That is already how most hosts here do it.
Should I add links?
Hosts already do, mostly inside the pages. Four in ten published books have inline links, typically about 10, and Google Maps is the common one. A menu or Instagram on a recommendation page is useful. You do not need a separate link card for every URL.
Is a digital guestbook worth it over a printed one?
Yes. Guests can open it before they are inside, you can fix a wrong door code in ten seconds instead of reprinting, and the format keeps improving for the next stay.
