Best Airbnb Guidebook Creation Services

Part of running a successful Airbnb is ensuring that your guests are comfortable and well-acquainted with your home and the surrounding neighbourhood. A comprehensive Airbnb guidebook can ensure that your guests know how to check in, understand your home or building’s rules, and can use your home’s appliances without any difficulties. It’s also a great first step towards automating your home to make Airbnb hosting a bit easier. By providing some recommendations of nearby sights to see and restaurants to visit, you’ll ensure that guests enjoy their stay and possibly rebook in the future.

While Airbnb has its own Guidebooks feature to highlight spots and shops to visit in your city, lots of hosts want a home-specific and feature-rich guidebook they can provide their guests. Below is an overview that looks at the features and pricing of three different guidebook creation services.

Touch Stay

Touch Stay is a service that simplifies the creation of digital guest welcome books, making it easy for hosts to create a gorgeous guidebook with an intuitive interface. Hosts can easily share their Touch Stay guidebook with guests by sending them a link, and the guidebooks maintain their sleek presentation and full functionality whether opened on mobile phones, tablets, or PC. There’s no need for guests to download an app or sign up for anything to access a host’s guidebook, and Touch Stay provide a sample guidebook if you want to see the style and functionality for yourself.

Touch Stay’s guidebooks feature a built-in map, allowing hosts to populate it with recommended shops, restaurants, and sightseeing spots guests can visit. Hosts can take advantage of Google Places and TripAdvisor integrations, and the guidebooks have Google Translate built-in so guests from foreign countries can read your guidebook in their native language. Touch Stay’s guidebooks can be saved as a PDF or be printed, so that guests can still access your guidebook even when they are offline.  

Touch Stay offers a 14-day free trial and allows you to immediately create and share a guidebook without having to enter your payment information. Your first property’s guidebook is priced at $6.99 per month or $70 per year, with the first two months free if you choose to be billed annually. Additional properties are priced at $35 per year or $3.49 per month, with different pricing schemes for property managers depending on the size of their portfolio.

Houseguide

Houseguide is another service that allows you to create a digital guidebook for guests, and emphasises their easy direct video integration in their guidebooks. This allows you to make quick videos that show a guest how to operate your coffee machine or find where you hid the spare key. Like Touch Stay, hosts can share their guidebook with guests by sending them a single link to open, with Houseguide’s guidebooks fully functional on mobile phones, tablets, or PCs. Houseguide also has Uber and Lyft integration, allowing your guests to book a ride to your recommended spots from the guidebook. There’s even a handy “Drive Me Home” button in the guidebook that lets guests easily book an Uber or Lyft to take them back home.

Similar to Touch Stay, Houseguide has TripAdvisor integration and allows hosts to share their guidebooks with guests by simply sending a link that requires no signup or hassle for guests. Houseguide also emphasises the quick loading times of their guidebooks, pushing for their digital guides to load almost instantly on guests’ devices. You can explore one of Houseguide’s sample guidebooks here.

Houseguide is entirely free and features a customizable shop for hosts. Hosts can upload up to 20 videos, include unlimited house features and rules, and a printed version of your house guide.

Hostfully

Unlike Touch Stay and Houseguide, Hostfully is a comprehensive property management platform that has a variety of features along with a guidebook platform to create digital and offline guidebooks.

Aimed towards superhosts and property managers, Hostfully’s guidebook platform equips hosts with a suite of powerful tools to create the perfect guidebook. Among these is the recommendation builder, which provides hosts with Google-suggested locations depending on the property’s location. These suggestions feature Google maps integrations, support for videos and rich text, and multi-language functionality in eight different languages. Just like Houseguide and Touch Stay, sharing Hostfully’s guidebooks with guests is as easy as sending them a link and requires no signups or app downloads from the guest.

Hostfully offers a free and a paid version of their guidebook platform, with both versions working on all devices and offering printable PDF and offline versions. For $9.99 a month ($7.99 a month if billed annually), hosts are given a variety of customisation options, premium print templates, and the option to remove sponsored recommendations. While the $7.99 a month plan allows for only one guidebook, it offers multi-language support and the ability to personalise your guidebook with your own branding and logo. Hostfully also offers various business payment plans that allow for multiple guidebooks.

About Keycafe

Keycafe is a technology company modernizing business key management with a cloud-connected SmartBox and accompanying key management software.

In addition to a global Public Network of over 1000 locations for Airbnb users, Keycafe’s Enterprise Solution enables businesses in any industry to manage key access for staff and customers.