Sooner or later every property meets the same guest: three hours late, motorway-tired, rain coming sideways, phone on 15%, children asleep in the back. Your check-in instructions were written for a calm person reading carefully in daylight. They are about to be tested by the opposite.
Write for that arrival and every other arrival gets easier for free.
The five parts of instructions that work
1. The last mile, not the postcode. Satnavs deliver people to postcodes, and rural postcodes cover half a hillside. Write the last 500 metres in human terms: "past the church, second gravel track on the left, blue gate". A what3words link removes the ambiguity entirely.
2. A photo of the actual door. "The key safe is to the left of the door" is one sentence; a photo of the key safe is zero sentences. Photograph the door, the key safe, and anything confusing between the car and the bed.
3. Codes that cannot be misread. Write door codes in digits AND words — "4821 (four eight two one)" — because a 1 and a 7 look alike on a small screen in the dark. If the code changes per stay, say when it starts working.
4. The first three switches. Where the lights come on, where the heating is, where the WiFi details are. A guest who is warm, lit and online within five minutes forgives everything else.
5. What to do when it goes wrong. Key safe jammed, code refused, nobody answers — give the fallback in the instructions, not after the panicked call: "If the code doesn't work, the spare is with Sam next door at number 3, expecting you."
Send it twice, hold it once
Send instructions two days before arrival (when travel plans firm up) and again the morning of. Then keep them somewhere the guest can find during the stay too — the code they used to get in on Friday is the code they will need again after the Saturday walk, and the message thread it lived in has long scrolled away.
This is where a digital guidebook earns its keep: entry details one tap from the front, a map pin, photos, and — if you use QuietStay's protected details — codes that reveal only around the guest's actual stay dates, so the instructions can be shared without the codes living on the open internet. See it with your own property.