Your guidebook: from underused to optimised in four step by step prompts

Some see guidebooks as old fashioned, others see them as a utility, but to me they are up there with the most important tools we have in our armory for making memorable stays, gaining top notch reviews, extending trip length, ensuring repeat guests and straight up winning bookings.

Below, you will find four prompts to take you step by step through upgrades to your guidebook. Whether this is a brand new build for you, or revamping something existing, there is plenty of inspiration. There are options for each level for you to tackle, so you can choose your challenge.

Whether you are using an interactive online version or create yours via Canva or Word, the focus is here improving the content: any of those formats can work. It very much depends what’s best for your ideal guset. One prerequisite though, you need to be able to send out your guidebook to people before their stay - and that will become key when we move to using our guidebooks to sell.

Personally, I choose Word and then create a pdf to share. I like that I can edit easily and that the whole document is one page. I find presentation on Canva harder, but you might not. I recommend using what works best for you.

Below, there’s a contents page to get you thinking. At the top of this page are the links to each of the four training pages you will be working through. At the very bottom of each training page, you’ll find some simple tech support videos to help with maximising the potential of Word as a tool.