This guide introduces the Guest Guide and shows how it helps you create a modern, seamless guest experience from booking to departure. It gives you an overview of its key features and how it replaces traditional guest folders with a simple, digital solution.
What is the Guest Guide?
The traditional guest folder is quickly becoming a thing of the past. That’s why we introduced the Guest Guide—a modern, online guest experience designed to support your guests from the moment they book.
With the Guest Guide, you can:
- Share arrival and check-in information
- Offer online check-in
- Showcase your property with videos and visuals
- Provide helpful resources throughout the guest’s stay
In short, it allows you to guide and engage your guests every step of the way.
Why a Web App Instead of a Native App?
The Guest Guide is a web application—not a downloadable app. Why?
Through extensive testing, we found that guests are unlikely to download native apps for short stays. It adds friction, and even the most beautifully designed app is ineffective if it’s never used.
Instead, we provide a simple, accessible solution: a personalized link to each guest’s booking page
How It Works
You can send your guests a direct link to their Guest Guide by including the placeholder [guestAppLink] in your messages.
💡 Tip: Use [apartmentNameLong] to automatically display the full name of the accommodation in your communication.
Multilingual Experience
The Guest Guide is automatically displayed in the guest’s preferred language. If no language is specified, it defaults to your system’s primary language.
You can also easily translate your custom content using the built-in translation feature.
What’s Included?
The Guest Guide comes with several standard elements, such as:
- Welcome message
- Area map
- Tour and activity suggestions
- Weather information
- Review option
You can also fully customize your guide by adding your own content sections.
To create new content:
Experience → Guest Guide → Content → Create
This is your space to get creative and tailor the experience to your guests.
💡 Pro Tip: Write your base content in English, then add translations for other languages to ensure consistency.
What’s Already Available
We’ve continuously improved the Guest Guide with features like:
- Multiple Guest Guides for different accommodations 💪🏼
- Message placeholders 💪🏼
- Upselling options (e.g. late checkout, bike tours, breakfast) 💪🏼
- Element sorting 💪🏼
- Activation/deactivation of standard elements 💪🏼
- Additional templates 💪🏼
- Integration with Chekin.io for automated reporting (optional) 💪🏼
What’s Next?
We’re always working on improvements, including:
- Enhanced review integrations (e.g. Airbnb, Booking.com)
- More customization options
Have ideas or suggestions? We’d love to hear them.
Comments
10 comments
Does the review button only come up if guests have booked through Airbnb or Booking.com?
The name of the property in the guest app should be the same as "marketing name" on the website.
I agree with Agne Butvilaite that the the name of the property in the guest app should be the same as "marketing name" on the website.
Thanks for your feedback!
The property name which appears on the Guest App should be set in your account's settings - booking tool - property name. You can definitely enter there a longer marketing name, such as the Website's marketing name. We recommend a name which is not longer than 40 characters.
Regarding the review button, it is available for all bookings but it is not yet connected to the booking portals reviews. We will have more news about this feature in the future.
BR,
Marianne
Thanks, Marianne.
One more adjustment to the Guest App. The weather is not visible when the guest's language is not English (for example Lithuanian). I think that if there is no translation for the weather in that language, English should be shown.
Hi,
It would be great if a different language could actually be selected from a dropdown. If we already did the work to translate the pages, why not have the option to select the other languages (just like on the web site)? Many of our guests are multi lingual and the booking language may not necessarily be the preferred one.
Thank you for your consideration.
Christian
Great features. Would be good to get a little more control in the editor, like the ability to add HTML, but it's pretty flexible as is.
On reviews - it would be good to be able hide the internal reviews module if it was an airbnb booking. A bit like how you can when organising messages.
Would love an easier way to customize the guestbook for each property. Having to add in duplicate sections with custom content (wifi password, security camera info, "about the area," etc.) and then assigning those to a single property feels inefficient, and makes it way too easy to accidentally overwrite a section for existing properties when trying to customize for a new one. It also means those sections wind up with property-based designations in their headings, because otherwise every duplicate "about the area" section looks the same in the backend.
I think it would be better if the guest guide could be a standard, duplicable template with the same info in each, subject to tweaks, that would be assigned to a property, with automated name fields for each guest who stays in that property.
Also, we need to be able to change the header image on a per-property basis! I have properties in multiple cities, and I can't do a skyline image for each like I would like.
Hi Jamie
Thank-you for taking the time to reach out to us with this suggestion. We are always improving our software, so your feedback is appreciated.
I have added your request to our Feedback Board for our Product Team's consideration. While I can't assure you we will add this functionality in the near future, please know it has been passed on.
Kind regards
Caitriona from Smoobu
How do I order the individual section pieces I'm adding in?
For example, my Checkout Instructions appear up top, way before the WiFi and Parking/Check in instructions. That doesn't make a lot of sense of course as the Guest isn't going to need the Checkout instructions until much later, and wants to read those last.
Am I missing something?
cheers
Jon
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