The answer: Airbnb's Arrival Guide lets you set a check-in method, attach check-in instructions with photos, videos or QR codes, and add a Directions section for driving and parking. That covers most arrivals - but driving directions stop at the car, and photo attachments are a static gallery guests have to scroll. For old towns and narrow streets, add a photo route: one picture per turn, from the nearest landmark to your door. It works at night, offline, and for guests who don't speak the language.
Airbnb's Arrival Guide is the built-in place where guests look for 'how do I get to the door'. In the listing editor it has three parts: Check-in method, Check-in instructions (where you can attach photos, videos or QR codes), and a Directions area for driving and parking. It's genuinely useful - and for a lot of properties it's also not enough. The last 100 metres, on foot, at night, in a street with no name: that's where the Arrival Guide stops and photo step directions take over.
Find it at Listings → your listing → Listing editor → Arrival guide. Three tools live there. Check-in method: how guests enter - keypad, lockbox, smart lock, or in-person. Check-in instructions: the details, and Airbnb lets you attach photographs, videos or QR codes to them. Directions: a separate area for driving and parking directions. Filled in properly, this kills the most common arrival questions before a guest asks them.
The Directions area assumes the guest drives to your door. In old towns, historic districts and narrow streets, the car stops at the parking lot and the walk begins - unlabelled alleys, pins that drift, doorways that all look alike. A written description ('turn left after the blue gate') fails at night when every gate is grey. And the photos in Check-in instructions form a static gallery: the guest scrolls back and forth, guessing which picture comes next.
The fix is a photo route: one photograph per decision point, from the nearest stable landmark (metro exit, fountain, taxi stand) to your door, with a direction on each step - left, right, straight. Guests compare what they see with a real photo at every turn, so there is no guessing and no language barrier. It works at 2 a.m., with a dying phone, and with zero cell signal. Create a photo route with imhere - walk it once, photograph each turn, and you have a link that works forever.
Use the Arrival Guide for what it's great at, then add the photo route for the gap. 1) Check-in method: pick your entry type and write the code or key location. 2) Check-in instructions: cover getting here (paste your photo route link), getting in, wifi, parking, and house rules in three lines. 3) Directions: fill in driving and parking as Airbnb expects. 4) Send the same content twice automatically - at booking confirmation and 24 hours before arrival - so guests have it in their messages to search.
Airbnb lets you attach QR codes to check-in instructions - use one that opens your photo route. Then print the same code on a card inside the door and in the welcome pack. Guests who never read messages will scan a code that's physically in front of them, and one printed QR serves every booking from now on. The Arrival Guide answers the questions; the photo route answers the ones that only happen at the door. Build your photo route on imhere and stop repeating 'we're the third building on the left'.