The last morning, without the last-minute message

How it works

Add a check-out section and write the things you would like done before guests leave. One line each, in the order that makes sense.

The guest sees them as a list with a box beside each one. They tick as they go. Nothing is submitted and there is no button to press at the end — the ticks save themselves.

The ticks stay put

This sounds like a small thing and is not.

The ticks are saved against the booking on our side, not in the guest’s browser. So a guest who ticks two items, closes the page, and comes back twenty minutes later finds their two ticks still there. So does a guest who starts on their phone and finishes on the tablet propped on the kitchen counter.

Lists that forget get abandoned halfway. This one does not forget.

Put it where they will see it on the day

A check-out section lifts itself to the top of the guide on the day the guest leaves. That is switched on the moment you create one, and you can turn it off if you would rather it stayed put.

The rest of the stay, it sits quietly with everything else — nobody wants check-out instructions on the first evening. On the last morning it is the first thing in the guide, which is the one moment it is worth interrupting for.

That single setting replaces the reminder message most hosts send the night before.

Keep it short and realistic

The temptation is to write everything you wish guests would do. Resist it.

Guests will run the dishwasher, close the windows, turn off the heating and leave the keys where you asked. They will not strip four beds to hotel standard or carry rubbish to a communal bin two streets away, and asking them to reads as a chore list at the exact moment they are deciding how they felt about the stay.

A realistic four-item list gets done. An ambitious ten-item list gets ignored, and then you have neither the tasks done nor the goodwill.

Things worth including: the ones with real consequences, like windows in a flat that floods, or the heating in an empty place in winter. Things worth leaving off: anything your cleaner is coming to do anyway.

A video, if it helps

You can put a short video at the top of the section, from YouTube or Vimeo or uploaded directly.

Most check-out lists do not need one. It earns its place when something is genuinely fiddly — a shutter that has to be locked in a particular order, an alarm that needs setting, a gate that only closes if you lift it.

Where else it can appear

The check-out list is one of the sections you can put on the printed card in the flat, which covers the guest whose phone is dead on the last morning.

Keep it separate from your cleaner’s list, though. Your cleaner gets their own link with their own tasks — descale the kettle, check the bulbs, photograph the meter — and none of that belongs in front of a guest.

What this costs

The check-out checklist is one of the Pro section types, along with video, photo galleries and local recommendations. Everything a guest needs to arrive — check-in steps, door codes, WiFi, house rules — is on the free plan.