Before hosts buy any tool, they improvise. The welcome guide usually starts as a printed folder, a Google Doc, a Notion page, or a PDF sent on arrival. All of them work — until they don't. Here's where each one breaks, so you can decide honestly whether a purpose-built guidebook is worth it for you.
The printed folder
Nice to hold, and it needs no phone. But it's out of date the day the WiFi password changes, guests won't carry it out to dinner, and it can't tell them what's open nearby right now. Every edit means reprinting. Fine as a backup; weak as the main guide.
The Google Doc or PDF
Free and easy to edit. But you're sending a link (or a file) to every guest by hand, it looks like a document rather than a welcome, and a long doc on a phone is a lot of pinching and scrolling. Nothing is tappable, there's no map, and there's no way to know if anyone opened it.
The Notion page
A step up: tidy, editable, shareable by link. But guests sometimes hit a login wall or an app prompt, the mobile view can be fiddly, and it's still a page of text — no distance-sorted local map, no QR-by-the-door flow, and it quietly signals “I reused my personal tool” rather than “this was made for you.”
What a purpose-built guidebook adds
The DIY options all miss the same things, and they're the things guests notice:
- One QR code by the door — no link to send per guest, no app to download, no login.
- Tap-to-open house guide and one-tap WiFi copy, built for a phone rather than ported to one.
- A live local map, sorted by walking distance, with directions — something a document simply can't do.
- Edited from your phone and never reprinted, so it's never out of date.
- You can see that guests actually scanned in.
So which should you use?
If you have one rental and rarely change anything, a good Google Doc or Notion page is genuinely fine — don't over-tool it. The case for a purpose-built guidebook gets stronger the more you value the guest experience, the local angle, or simply never sending another WiFi message.
Travellor is that purpose-built option, and the trade-off is low: it's free for your first 7 properties, then €1.99 a property per month, and it sits alongside Hostaway, Guesty and Lodgify rather than replacing anything. Local businesses can list themselves for €9.99 a month.