Welcome book template for holiday rentals

In short. A holiday rental welcome book comes down to seven sections: the welcome note, check-in, wifi and appliances, house rules, your local recommendations, the legal notices and check-out. The full template is further down this page, section by section, with the fields to fill in and a worked example for each. Allow an hour.

Nothing to download and nothing to hand over in exchange: the template is written out here, so copy it or use it as a starting point. It is also more honest than a fixed file, for a reason that becomes obvious in the last section.

What goes into a holiday rental welcome book?

A welcome book brings together everything a guest needs to know in order to get into the property, live there for a few days and leave again without ringing you. It is not a presentation brochure, it is a working document.

The difference shows immediately in use. A welcome book that opens with the history of the house and the view from the terrace is no help at 10 pm, when the guest is hunting for the gate code in the rain. One that opens with the exact address, the code and where the key safe is saves you the call.

That is why the order of the sections is not decorative. It follows the stay: you arrive, you settle in, you live there, you go out, you leave. Here are the seven sections, and the call each one saves you.

Section	What it contains	The call it saves
1. Welcome	Your first name, how to reach you, who to call otherwise	“I can't get hold of you”
2. Getting in	Address, parking, codes, key safe, floor	“I'm outside, what's the code?”
3. Wifi and appliances	Network, password, heating, hot water	“The wifi isn't working”
4. Living here	Bins, recycling, noise, pets, capacity	“When do we put the bins out?”
5. Around you	Your local recommendations, with times and the useful detail	“What do you recommend for tonight?”
6. Legal notices	Registration number, emergency numbers, shut-off points	The dispute, not the call
7. Leaving	Time, keys, what not to do	“Where do we leave the keys?”

The right-hand column is the right way to judge a welcome book. A section that saves no call is of no use, and a question you are asked twice flags a section to rewrite.

The template, section by section

Use the headings as they stand and replace whatever is in square brackets. Delete the lines that do not apply to you: a short, accurate welcome book beats a complete one that is half wrong.

1. Welcome

Three lines are enough. This section puts a face to the property and says how to reach you; it does not recount the renovation.

You need your first name, how to reach you and at what times, then who to contact if you are unreachable, with their number.

Camille welcomes you to la Maison des Glycines. We live ten minutes away: do write if anything isn't right, we would much rather know during your stay than after it. In an emergency, if we don't answer, call Marc on 06 12 34 56 78.

The third line is the one everyone forgets, and it is the one that counts on a Sunday evening.

2. Getting in

By far the most-read section. It has to let people in without ringing you, even at midnight, even with no signal.

• The exact address
• Where to park
• Where to collect the keys
• The codes: gate, door, key safe
• The floor and the flat number
• The earliest possible check-in time
• What to do in the event of a late arrival

The blue gate at 14 rue des Lilas. Code 4512A, then the door at the far left of the courtyard. The key safe is fixed under the letterbox, code 3080. Check-in from 4 pm and up to midnight without letting us know. Free on-street parking, easier after 7 pm.

Write the codes out in full, never “the usual code”. And check them before every season: a code that has been changed and not updated is the number one cause of calls at check-in.

3. Wifi and appliances

• The network name, exactly as it appears
• The password, capitals included
• The heating: where the thermostat is, how to set it
• Hot water
• The washing machine and dishwasher: where the products are, which programme
• The television
• Anything that doesn't work well or needs a knack

Network: Glycines_5G. Password: Bienvenue2026 (with a capital B). The thermostat is in the hallway, set to 19°. The hot water takes two minutes to come through in the bathroom, that's normal. The window in the small bedroom closes if you lift the handle.

The last line is the one that saves you the most calls, and almost nobody writes it. A guest who has been warned adapts; a guest taken by surprise puts it in their review.

4. Living in the property

• The bins: where, and which day they go out
• Recycling
• Pets
• Smoking
• Noise, and from what time
• The maximum number of people
• What isn't done here

The bins go out on Tuesday evening, the yellow bin every other Tuesday. The bin store is at the back of the courtyard, on the right. The neighbours upstairs start work early: no music after 10 pm, please. Pets are welcome, just not on the sofas.

Word these rules as sentences rather than blunt prohibitions. “The bins go out on Tuesday evening, the bin store is at the back of the courtyard” sticks better than “put the bins out on Tuesday”.

5. Around you

Name the bakery, with the distance and what to get there, say where to do the shopping, give a restaurant and a place for a drink, the walk you recommend, what to do if it rains, and what not to miss, with the time to go.

Boulangerie Fournier, 200 metres to the right: their walnut bread is gone before 9 am. The market is on Saturday morning on place Carnot. For dinner, chez Antoine, book the day before, there are twelve covers. And if you only have time for one walk, the sentier des Douaniers at sunset.

Two or three places you go to yourself are worth more than fifteen copied out of a guidebook. Your guest already has the internet; what they don't have is your opinion. It is also the section that turns up quoted in reviews.

6. The legal notices

These are covered in the next section, because they are not a matter of comfort but of law.

7. Leaving

Write the check-out time, where to leave the keys, what to switch off, close and empty, what the guest does not need to do, and how to leave a review.

Check-out before 10 am. The keys go back in the safe, code 3080. Close the windows and leave the heating at 15°. No need to wash the bedding or vacuum, we take care of that. If you enjoyed your stay, a word on the platform helps us a great deal.

The second-to-last line is reassuring and, incidentally, stops a well-meaning guest from dismantling your bed.

What the law requires you to display

Up to date as at 31 August 2026. Two things not to confuse: what the law requires of you as a landlord, and what it is useful to put in the welcome book.

The legal obligation applies to the listing, not to the welcome book. And it operates on two levels, depending on your local authority.

Everywhere, the declaration to the town hall. It is compulsory for any furnished tourist accommodation, classified or not, unless it is your main residence. It is made using form cerfa no. 14004, under article L. 324-1-1 of the French tourism code, and failing to do so carries a fine of up to 450 €.

In municipalities that have voted on change of use, an additional registration number. This is a 13-character identifier, issued by the municipality's online service, which must appear in your listings. Here all furnished accommodation is concerned, main residences included, and failure to register exposes you to a civil fine of up to 5 000 € (article D. 324-1-1 of the tourism code).

The distinction matters: many hosts believe registration is universal when in fact it depends on a municipal decision. Check with your town hall. Sources: Direction générale des Entreprises and service-public.gouv.fr, consulted on 31 August 2026.

The welcome book, for its part, is where the guest finds what they need on site. The registration number belongs there in the interests of transparency, along with the furnished tourist accommodation rating if you have one, emergency numbers, where the smoke alarm and the fire extinguisher are, and where to shut off the water, the electricity and the gas. None of that should have to be hunted for at the moment it is needed.

One point deserves to be spelled out, and it is almost always missing: 112, reachable from any mobile in Europe. A foreign guest knows neither 15 nor 18. Forty per cent of StyQR welcome books are consulted in a language other than French.

Short-term rental regulations have changed a great deal since the Le Meur act (law no. 2024-1039 of 19 November 2024), particularly regarding the declaration to the town hall and the generalisation of registration. The rules vary from one municipality to the next: check yours before you set your welcome book in stone, as this is the information that goes out of date fastest. We keep French short-term rental regulations up to date, along with the detail of the compulsory declaration for furnished tourist accommodation.

The most common mistakes

Four flaws crop up in most of the welcome books we are shown, and none of them comes down to a lack of care.

Starting with an introduction about yourself. A guest opening the welcome book is looking for one specific piece of information, often urgently. A page of introduction before the gate code is a page they scroll past in irritation. Access first, introductions afterwards.

Writing headings instead of answers. “Practical information” says nothing. “The bins go out on Tuesday evening, the bin store is at the back of the courtyard on the right” answers. A welcome book is judged on the number of questions it closes, not on the number of headings it opens.

Copying out a tourist guide. Fifteen museums listed without comment are worth less than two places you go to yourself.

Never updating it. This is the costliest, and the most frequent. A printed welcome book is out of date at the first change of code, price or opening time, and correcting it means redoing it. Many hosts end up leaving it alone altogether, and the welcome book becomes a source of errors rather than a service.

If you let on Airbnb, these four points come with expectations specific to the platform, set out in our Airbnb welcome book example.

How long does it take to fill in?

Allow an hour for the first version, assuming you have the codes and the information to hand. What takes time is not the layout, it is tracking down the bin collection day and the exact wifi password.

One approach that works: fill in sections 2, 3 and 4 first, in the property, phone in hand. Those are the three that head off most of the calls. The welcome note and the local recommendations can be written at leisure afterwards.

Don't aim for completeness first time round. A welcome book fills out stay after stay, as guests ask you questions: every question asked twice is a line to add.

Word, PDF or digital: what the format changes

The template above works in any format. The choice is made elsewhere, on three concrete questions.

	Printed or PDF	Digital welcome book
The gate code changes	You have to redo it and reprint	Corrected in a minute, everyone sees the current version
A guest doesn't read French	They photograph it and translate, or they write to you	Displayed in their phone's language
You want to know what's missing	No idea	You can see which sections are being consulted

These limits are down to the format, not to the quality of what you write. It is also why this article does not offer you a file to download: a fixed document would reproduce precisely the problem it claims to solve.

At StyQR, the welcome book is shared via a permanent QR code, displayed in the property or pasted into your check-in message. It is translated into 14 languages and displays in the language of the guest's phone. The trial lasts 14 days, no bank card required.

The free, ready-to-complete template: the 14-day trial

If you came looking for a “free welcome book template”, you have just read it: it is above, and it cost you nothing. But a template on a page still has to be copied out. The ready-to-complete version, with the seven sections already in place, the map of local recommendations and translation, is the StyQR welcome book itself, and it is free for 14 days, no bank card, with every feature included.

In practice: you create your account, you give the address of the property, and the assistant fills in a first version from your listing or from an existing PDF. You read it through, you correct it, you share the link with your next guest. If you go no further after 14 days, nothing is charged. It is the same welcome book our hosts pay for, not a cut-down version; the prices that follow are on the rental pricing page.

And if you would rather read before you act, the white paper on welcoming guests is sent free by email: preparing the arrival, supporting the stay, getting the departure right, keeping in touch. It is written from what our hosts and our support team report back, and it complements this template on what the document itself cannot convey: tone and timing.

Frequently asked questions

Is a welcome book compulsory?
The document itself is not. However, several pieces of information it contains must be made known to the guest, and the welcome book is the simplest way of doing that.

Should you print it or send it before arrival?
Both, if possible. The “Getting in” section is needed before arrival, while the guest is still in the car. The rest is needed on site. That is the main argument in favour of a welcome book that can be consulted on a phone.

What difference does a welcome book for a gîte make compared with a flat?
The structure doesn't change, only the weight of each section. For a gîte, access and outdoor equipment take up more room; for a flat, it is the communal areas, the lift and the building rules.

How many pages should a welcome book be?
As many as it takes to answer the questions, and not one more. Six to ten pages cover most properties. Beyond fifteen, nobody reads.

Can you make your welcome book on Canva?
Yes, and the result is often attractive. You will simply run into the three limits in the table above, since the file produced is still a PDF.

Should you translate your welcome book?
As soon as you host foreign guests, yes, at least the “Getting in” and “Legal notices” sections. Those are the ones where a misunderstanding is expensive.