Airbnb checkout instructions: what to ask, and what guests actually do

Airbnb shows your checkout instructions to guests before they book, not after. So a list of ten chores is a listing problem before it is a cleaning problem. Five items, sent the evening before, is the version that gets followed. Write yours in the check-in and checkout instructions generator, and use this page for what to put in them.

Most hosts write checkout instructions the way they write a chore list for a teenager. The guest reads it as a verdict on how much they were trusted, does three of the ten things, and mentions it in the review.

What the Airbnb checkout instructions field actually is

It lives in the listing editor, under the arrival guide, next to the check-in method and the house manual.

Two details on Airbnb's help page for check-in and checkout instructions change how you should write it.

The first is timing. Detailed check-in instructions stay hidden until 48 hours before arrival. Checkout instructions do not. They are available to guests before booking, which means they are part of what a guest weighs while deciding, alongside your photos and your cancellation policy.

The second is shape. Airbnb gives you six presets rather than a blank box: return keys, lock up, turn things off, throw trash away, gather used towels, and additional requests. The free-text part is capped at 140 characters.

That cap is a gift. A field that refuses to hold a paragraph is a field that cannot hold a grievance.

The five things worth asking for

Airbnb's own presets are the right five, and the reason is not politeness. Each one saves the cleaner time that the cleaner cannot make up later.

Return the keys. Say where, in the same words you used on arrival. A lockbox with a scrambled code, a drawer, a neighbor. Keys that leave the property in a coat pocket cost you a locksmith and the next check-in.

Bag the trash and take it out. This is the one item with a real deadline attached, because a bag left inside a closed unit in August is a different job by Thursday.

Leave used towels in one place. The bathroom floor is fine. What matters is that the cleaner can count them without a search, since a missing towel found at the end of a turnover is a second trip.

Turn off the AC, the heat and the lights. A thermostat left at 65 through an empty week is the most expensive thing on this list.

Close the windows and lock the door. Obvious to you. Not obvious to a guest who has spent four days with a door that locks itself.

Five requests, all of them things a guest can do in under three minutes with a suitcase already at the door.

What not to ask for

Strip the beds. Run the dishwasher and put the dishes away. Vacuum. Wipe the counters. Take the recycling to the center on the other side of town.

Every item on that list is something the cleaner will redo anyway, either because the standard is higher or because the cleaner cannot verify what the guest did. Asking for it buys you nothing and costs you the line in the review that starts with "for the price, I did not expect to be".

There is one exception worth making explicitly. If you want the beds left alone, say so. A guest trained by four other hosts will strip them unasked, and your cleaner loses the count.

An Airbnb checkout message you can copy

Send this the evening before, as a message. The listing field holds the short version; the message holds the version with the actual times in it.

Hi [Guest first name], checkout is [Check-out time] tomorrow.

Before you go: Put the keys back in the lockbox and scramble the code. Bag the trash and leave it [where]. Leave used towels in the bathroom. Turn off the AC and the lights. Close the windows and lock the door.

That is everything. Please do not strip the beds, my cleaner prefers to do it.

Safe travels, and thank you for taking care of the place. [Your first name], [phone]

Five requests, one exception, one sentence of thanks. The generator builds it from the same details you already typed for the arrival message, in one language or in both at once.

When to send it

The evening before checkout. Not the morning of.

A guest with a 10 AM checkout and a 7 AM message is already packing, already thinking about the airport, and in no position to find a recycling bin. The night before, they have time and nothing to do with it.

Say the time in the message even though it is on their reservation. Nobody reopens a booking confirmation to check.

Scheduling it once is better than remembering it forty times a year, and our guide to Airbnb message templates and scheduled messages covers the triggers worth setting up.

The cleaner is the other reader

Your checkout instructions and your cleaner's checklist are two halves of one handover, and most turnover problems live in the gap between them.

If you ask guests to leave towels in the bathroom, the cleaner's checklist should say count towels in the bathroom. If you ask them to take the trash out, the checklist should say check that the bin is empty, not empty the bin. Where the two lists disagree, the guest wins, because the guest goes first.

Build the second half with the cleaning checklist generator, and see our guide to Airbnb cleaning fees and what to charge for what that turnover actually costs.

Where checkout instructions belong, and where they do not

Four places, and they do not all hold the same text.

1. The Airbnb checkout field, in the arrival guide. Short, preset-driven, visible before booking.
2. The scheduled message the evening before. The same five items with the real time in them.
3. The welcome book on the counter, on its last page, where a guest looking for the trash room will actually find it.
4. The house manual field, in the same operational block as the door code.

None of them is the place for a rule. A late checkout fee, an occupancy limit, a no-party clause: those are house rules, and they only bind a guest who accepted them at booking, in the listing. A request dressed up as a rule is neither one nor the other.

Hosts with several properties find this out the hard way. Write the five items once and reuse them everywhere, which is how most independent hosts running two to twenty units end up working.

Frequently asked questions