Airbnb house rules should cover the seven standard areas in the listing editor (overnight guests, quiet hours, events, pets, smoking, commercial photography, lock-up at checkout) plus a few reasonable requests. AI then condenses that list into a pre-arrival message of about 100 words that repeats the listing's rules and adds none.
The last clause is the one most hosts miss. Airbnb's policy on reasonable house rules and requests, which applies to reservations booked on or after 20 November 2026, says hosts may not communicate new rules or requests after booking, including by message, signs in the home or in person. An AI asked to "write friendly house rules" will happily invent chores, fines and a late-checkout penalty, all of which the policy rules out. So the job splits three ways: you decide the rules, the listing carries them, and the AI only shortens and warms them.
What Airbnb's rules editor asks for now
Airbnb's hosting advice on important changes to house rules, dated 20 October 2026, says hosts can choose from seven standard rules and add reasonable requests in one place in the Listing editor. Both pages are likely to be edited again, so read the live versions before you publish. As of October 2026 the standard rules and a filled-in example for a two-bedroom flat look like this:
| Standard rule | What you set | Example setting |
|---|---|---|
| Maximum overnight guests | A number | 4 |
| Quiet hours | A start and end time | 10 pm to 8 am |
| Events | Allowed or not | Not allowed |
| Pets | Allowed or not, and how many | Not allowed |
| Smoking, including vaping and e-cigarettes | Allowed or not | Not allowed |
| Commercial photography and filming | Allowed or not | Not allowed |
| Lock up at checkout | Required or not, with optional details on where to return keys | Required; key goes back in the lockbox |
Everything else you might want to say is either a request, which must be reasonable and can apply during the stay or before checkout, or plain information. Airbnb's guidance says most guests want to avoid unexpected chores, and its pages set no limit on how many requests you can add. Each extra line is still another thing for a guest to skim past, so a short list beats a long one.
Sorting every rule into a house rule, a request or information
Two facts from Airbnb's pages drive the sort. Guests are required to follow house rules, but only encouraged to follow requests. And anything outside the seven standard areas can only ever be a request. So work down three questions. Is it one of the seven areas? Then set it as a standard rule. Is it something a reasonable guest would find fair, with no cleaning-type effort? Then it is a request. Is it how something works? Then it is information for the house manual.
| What you want to say | Where it goes | Why |
|---|---|---|
| No parties | Events: not allowed | A standard rule, so guests are required to follow it |
| The flat sleeps four | Maximum overnight guests: 4 | A standard rule with a number |
| Please take your shoes off at the door | A request during the stay | Not a standard area; Airbnb uses it as an example of a request |
| Please keep day visitors to two at a time | A request during the stay | Airbnb lists limiting daytime visitors as a request |
| Please gather used towels in the bathroom | A request before checkout | Airbnb's own example of an acceptable request |
| Please turn the heating and lights off when you leave | A request during the stay | Airbnb's example of an acceptable utility request is turning the air conditioning off when leaving |
| Return the key to the lockbox | Lock up at checkout: required | A standard rule, with the key details added |
| Bins go out on Tuesday evening; the wifi is Flat-2 | The house manual | Information, not behaviour; see the tutorial on building an Airbnb house manual from your own notes |
Lines an AI will write that Airbnb's policy rules out
Ask a chat assistant for "friendly house rules" and it drafts from thousands of listings written before the policy existed. The table lists the usual offenders, the problem the policy gives each, and a rewrite that fits.
| Line the AI drafts | The problem | A rewrite that fits |
|---|---|---|
| Strip the beds and start the washing machine before you leave | A chore a cleaner would normally do | Please gather used towels in the bathroom |
| A $100 fee applies for any breach of these rules | The policy bars fines and other penalties | Delete it. Report a breach to Airbnb instead |
| The terrace is closed after 9 pm | Restricts a feature the listing advertises | Quiet hours 10 pm to 8 am, which cover the terrace |
| Do not use the air conditioning between 10 am and 4 pm | Asks guests to avoid a listed amenity | Please turn the air conditioning off when you leave |
| Send a photo of your passport before arrival | The policy does not allow soliciting personal information such as a government ID, bar a few exceptions | Delete it |
| Guests must sign our rental agreement on arrival | Separate contracts are allowed only for limited reasons | Delete it, unless one of Airbnb's limited reasons applies (a monthly stay of 28 nights or more, for example); then upload it under Contracts in your listing settings |
| Please leave us a five-star review | Airbnb's review policy bars pressuring a review | Delete it |
| Checkout is 10 am sharp, with a $25 late fee | A penalty in all but name | State the checkout time in the listing; treat paid late checkout as an optional extra, not a penalty |
Airbnb says a request that does not meet the policy is highlighted in the Listing editor, and the host receives an email with tips and a chance to appeal. If the issue stays unresolved, guests may see an alert on the listing such as "includes cleaning requests", and persistent violations can bring a notice on the listing and reduced visibility in search. The policy also lets Airbnb grant exceptions in context: its own examples are limiting shower time during drought restrictions and animal-proof bins in bear country. If your property has a real special circumstance, say so plainly in the listing and keep it specific.
The late-checkout row deserves one more sentence. An optional paid extra that a guest chooses is different from a charge for being late, and the tutorial on Airbnb upselling, early check-in and late checkout shows how to word the first without sliding into the second.
Quiet hours, visitors and party risk
Three settings do most of the work against a party booking: Events (not allowed), Maximum overnight guests, and Quiet hours. A request closes the gap the three leave, which is a gathering of twelve who never stay overnight. Airbnb gives limiting daytime visitors as an example of an acceptable request, so write one you could defend as reasonable, with a number: "Please keep day visitors to two at a time."
Quiet hours need two details beyond the times. Say whether they cover the outdoor space, since a terrace or garden is part of the property, and make the times match any rules of your building. If a building or a local authority sets its own noise rules or fines, Airbnb's pages let you give notice of those in the listing, but they do not let you add fines of your own.
During a stay, Airbnb's advice is to send a friendly reminder as a quick reply, and a reminder that restates the listing's rule is safe. Illustrative wording:
Hi [first name], a quick note: a neighbour mentioned some noise from the terrace. Quiet hours are 10 pm to 8 am, as in the listing. Thanks for helping keep things friendly. [your name]
Damage wording without fines or deposits
Hosts often want a damage clause because they have been burned before. Airbnb's pages limit what such a clause can say. Airbnb's ground rules for home guests say guests should tell the host about damage beyond normal wear and tear as soon as possible, and are expected to pay reasonable reimbursement requests. Hosts ask for that money through the Resolution Centre. Airbnb's pricing and payment policy says most hosts cannot charge a security deposit or a card hold for incidentals, and that damage is handled through AirCover for Hosts, whose host damage protection Airbnb describes as not being an insurance policy. A fine or "damage charge" written into your rules would fall under the ban on penalties.
What remains is one honest request that works with the process rather than around it:
Please tell us as soon as you can if anything is broken or damaged. Accidents happen, and it is much easier to fix when we hear early.
That sentence sits in the requests list and costs the guest nothing. It invites an early message, and a dated message is the first piece of evidence any later claim needs. Airbnb's Host damage protection page gives you 14 days from the guest's checkout to file a reimbursement request in the Resolution Centre. Photograph the property at every changeover, and see the tutorial on gathering evidence and drafting an Airbnb damage claim for the claim itself.
If an AI tool drafted your damage clause, ask it to clean up after itself:
Rewrite this clause so it contains no fine, fee, deposit, card hold, threat or deadline.
It may only ask guests to tell the host promptly if something is broken.
Keep it under 30 words and friendly.
CLAUSE: [paste here]One rule at three temperatures
Tone is the other thing hosts get wrong, typically after a bad stay, when the capital letters come out. Ask the model for three versions of one rule, then choose.
Rewrite this rule three ways: stern, neutral and warm.
Keep the meaning identical. Add no penalty, fee, deadline or new condition.
One sentence each.
RULE: Quiet hours are 10 pm to 8 am.| Tone | Illustrative wording | How a guest reads it |
|---|---|---|
| Stern | No noise after 10 pm. Breaches will be reported. | A threat before they have arrived |
| Neutral | Quiet hours are 10 pm to 8 am. | A fact |
| Warm | Quiet hours are 10 pm to 8 am, because the walls are thin and neighbours are close. | A reason they can respect |
I would pick the third. A rule with a reason attached reads as less arbitrary than a bare one, and the exercise also shows which rules you cannot explain, which are the ones to delete. Keep requests polite and short: start with "Please", name one action, and stop.
From the rule list to a pre-arrival message
A pre-arrival message has one job: remind a guest of a few rules they have already seen, in a tone that makes them glad they booked. Airbnb's own advice is that messaging is another way to clarify expectations, and that the full rules also show in the guest's Trips tab and in its reservation reminders. So the message can be short. Give the model three things: the rules exactly as they appear in the listing, the facts of the booking, and a ban list.
Write a pre-arrival message from a short-term rental host to a guest, 90 to 120 words, friendly and plain, British English.
RULES AND REQUESTS EXACTLY AS THEY APPEAR IN MY LISTING
Maximum overnight guests: 4
Quiet hours: 10 pm to 8 am
Events: not allowed
Pets: not allowed
Smoking, vaping and e-cigarettes: not allowed
Commercial photography and filming: not allowed
Lock up at checkout: required; return the key to the lockbox
Requests: please take shoes off at the door; please keep day visitors to two at a time; please gather used towels in the bathroom before checkout; please turn off the heating and lights when you leave.
CONSTRAINTS
1. Use only the rules and requests above. Do not add any rule, request, fee, penalty, deadline, chore or mention of reviews.
2. Mention at most four items, and say the full list is in the listing and the Trips tab.
3. Open with arrival, not rules. No capital letters for emphasis. Do not use "must".
4. End by inviting questions.
BOOKING: four guests, arriving Friday, three nights.What a lazy prompt produces
The constraints matter because the obvious request, "write a friendly message telling guests the house rules", goes wrong in predictable ways. A typical draft, illustrative but familiar:
Hi [first name]! We can't wait to host you on Friday. Just a few house rules to keep everyone happy: quiet hours are 10 pm to 8 am, no parties, no smoking (a $100 cleaning fee applies if we smell smoke), and please strip the beds and take the rubbish out to the bins before you go. Checkout is 10 am sharp, so please be out on time. We'd also love a five-star review if you enjoy your stay! Check-in details will arrive in your Trips tab, and the wifi is in the manual. Let me know if you have any questions. [your name]
Five problems sit in those 100 or so words. The $100 smoke fee is a penalty and a fee that appears in no rule. "Strip the beds" and "take the rubbish out" are chores. "Sharp" turns the checkout time into a threat. The five-star request is pressure on a review. And "just a few house rules" sounds as if rules are being introduced now rather than recalled.
What the full prompt produces
With the constraints and the exact rule list, the same model returns something like this:
Hi [first name], we're looking forward to hosting you on Friday. Your check-in details will be in your Trips tab, and I'll message again on the day. A few things worth knowing before you travel: quiet hours run from 10 pm to 8 am, the flat sleeps four overnight guests, and no events are allowed. If anyone is joining you during the day, please keep day visitors to two at a time. The full house rules and requests are in the listing and your Trips tab. Any questions before you travel, just reply here. [your name]
That runs to about 100 words and carries four of the eleven lines on the list. Every sentence traces back to the listing, and nothing in it is new.
One rule list, four bookings, four different emphases
The rules never change from guest to guest. What changes is which three or four you remind them of, and the choice should come from the booking itself (party size, length of stay, what the guest told you), never from guesses about who the people are.
| Booking | Lead with | Leave to the full list |
|---|---|---|
| Four guests, Friday to Monday | Quiet hours, the overnight limit, the day-visitor request | Photography, pets |
| Four guests, two nights, weekend | Events, quiet hours, the overnight limit, day visitors | Towels, heating |
| Two guests, ten nights, said they will be working | Quiet hours, lock-up at checkout, heating and lights off when leaving | Events, day visitors |
| Two guests and one dog, in a flat whose pets rule allows one | The pets rule with its number, then quiet hours | Photography, towels |
Give the model the booking line in the prompt and let it choose among the listed rules, then check that its choice is one you would have made. Never let a variation turn into a different rule for a different kind of guest. If a rule matters, it is in the listing and applies to everyone.
Scheduling the message inside Airbnb
You do not have to send it by hand. Airbnb's help page on scheduled quick replies describes the route: Messages, Settings, Manage quick replies, then Create. You name the template, write the message, choose the listings and set when it sends. Its examples include a thank-you shortly after booking, a check-in reminder a couple of days before the trip and a checkout reminder on the morning before the stay ends.
Three details from that page deserve a look before you switch anything on:
- Detail shortcuts. Templates can fill in guest and listing information through what Airbnb calls details, and the page's own examples include house rules and requests, wifi name and password, and check-in details. If the matching information is not filled in on the listing, the detail shows as unavailable in the message, so open the listing and check every field first.
- Last-minute bookings. By default some scheduled messages are skipped for last-minute bookings and short stays. A toggle for those bookings changes it, so decide which behaviour you want.
- Time zone and control. Scheduled quick replies send in the listing's time zone, and you can skip, edit or send any of them early.
Write the message with AI and keep the guest's first name as a placeholder, then swap your own bracketed placeholders for Airbnb's detail shortcuts by hand. The model does not know the shortcut names. If you prefer, put the short summary of three or four rules in your own words and let Airbnb's house rules and requests detail supply the full list, so the message can never drift from the listing. Check how the filled-in detail reads before you rely on it.
A pre-arrival message is one step in a longer run of messages. The tutorial on nine Airbnb message templates from booking to checkout covers the rest of the set, so this one can stay about the rules.
A rule-by-rule check before anything is sent
Even a good prompt can smuggle something in. Before a message goes out, or before you schedule it, match each sentence to a line in the listing.
| Sentence in the draft | Where it comes from in the listing | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Quiet hours run from 10 pm to 8 am | The Quiet hours setting | Keep |
| The flat sleeps four overnight guests | Maximum overnight guests: 4 | Keep |
| No events are allowed | Events: not allowed | Keep |
| Please keep day visitors to two at a time | The request of that name | Keep |
| Checkout is at 10 am | The checkout time field | Keep, once you have confirmed the field says 10 am |
| Please strip the beds before you go | Nowhere | Delete: a chore and a new request |
You can hand the same job to a second chat. Use a fresh one, so nothing carries over from the conversation that wrote the draft:
Below are a host's listing rules and a draft message to a guest.
List every rule, request, fee, penalty, chore, deadline or mention of reviews in the message that is not in the listing rules. Quote each one.
If there are none, say "none". Add nothing else.
LISTING RULES: [paste here]
DRAFT MESSAGE: [paste here]The check takes two minutes. The failure it prevents is a message that a guest's own screenshot, or Airbnb, can show adding a rule after booking. Run it every time you change a rule too, across every template you use: the pre-arrival message, the check-in day message and any quick-reply reminders.
When a guest breaks a rule, and when you change one
Airbnb's pages say guests are required to follow house rules and only encouraged to follow requests, that a host can contact Airbnb for next steps, and that a host can cancel without fees or other consequences if a guest breaks a house rule during the stay or says beforehand that they intend to. They add that guests who violate policies may be suspended or removed. Cancelling is a serious step, so contact Airbnb first, keep screenshots and photos, and avoid threatening to cancel in a message you have not thought through.
For a first breach, use the calm reminder shown earlier: restate the listing's rule, add no penalty, thank the guest. Notice what the difference between rules and requests means in practice. If a guest keeps their shoes on, that is a request, and the realistic response is to let it go. If they hold an event, that is a house rule, and the reminder, a call to Airbnb and the other steps above are on the table. When the problem becomes a complaint about your property rather than the guest's conduct, the reply formula in the tutorial on calm replies to Airbnb guest complaints applies.
Changing a rule later works the other way round. Airbnb's help article says changes apply only to future reservations, not pending or confirmed ones. If you tighten a rule today, current and already-confirmed guests are not bound by it. Update the listing, record the date in your own log so you know which bookings fall under which version, and let the new wording govern bookings made afterwards. If the point is information rather than behaviour, such as which windows neighbours overlook, the house manual is the place for it.
The listing description is the last place to check. Airbnb's policy asks that rules and requests be consistent with the rest of the listing page, so if your description mentions any of them, the wording has to match the rules section exactly, and the simplest way to guarantee that is not to restate them. The tutorial on writing the Airbnb listing description with AI covers the description itself.
Questions hosts ask about Airbnb house rules
Can I add a house rule after someone has booked?
Airbnb's help article says rule changes apply only to future reservations, not pending or confirmed ones, and its policy for bookings made on or after 20 November 2026 says hosts may not communicate new rules or requests after booking. For the current guest, stay within the rules they saw. Update the listing for the next guests.
Can I fine guests or take a deposit if they break a rule?
No. Airbnb's policy says hosts may not impose fines or other penalties, and its pricing and payment policy says most hosts cannot take a security deposit or card hold. Damage goes through AirCover for Hosts and the Resolution Centre. A host may cancel without fees if a guest breaks a house rule during the stay.
Do guests see the house rules before they book?
Airbnb says house rules now appear more prominently on listings so guests can read them before booking, and guests can find them again in the Trips tab and in Airbnb's reservation reminders. Guests must follow house rules and are encouraged to follow requests. Your pre-arrival message is a reminder, not the place where rules are introduced.
Should I repeat the rules in my listing description?
It is safer not to. Airbnb says all rules and requests belong in the House rules and requests section, and its policy requires them to be consistent with the rest of the listing page. A rule restated in the description can drift out of step. Let the rules section carry them and keep the description about the home.
Can I ask guests to reply that they have read the rules?
There is no need. Following the host's house rules is one of the two core ground rules Airbnb sets for every guest, and its policy says hosts generally may not ask guests to sign separate contracts. End your pre-arrival message by inviting questions instead, which keeps it friendly and does not look like a form.
Further reads
- Airbnb Cleaning Schedule: Coordinate Cleaners and Changeovers — Plan changeovers around what guests may and may not be asked to do.
- How to Automate Airbnb Messages: Test the AI Before You Switch It On — Test AI-written messages before any of them send themselves.
- Can Airbnb Hosts Use AI to Reply to Guests? What Airbnb Allows — What Airbnb allows when hosts use AI to reply to guests.
- How B&B Owners Can Automate Airbnb and Booking.com Messages — Automate booking messages for a small B&B or holiday let.
- How to Respond to Airbnb Reviews With AI: Glowing, Mixed, Bad — Reply to reviews that mention your rules, calmly.
- Airbnb No-Show Wants a Refund: Reply Scripts Drafted With AI — Scripts for the guest who never arrives and wants a refund.
- Best AI for Airbnb Hosts: Lodgify, Hospitable, Guesty, HostBuddy — Compare host tools that can send these messages for you.
- ChatGPT for Short-Term Rentals: 10 Host Jobs and the Prompts to Use — Ten host jobs from listing text to cleaning briefs, each with a prompt, a copy-ready sample and the checks to run before a guest sees it.
- Hostel Software: Can AI Handle Guest Messages in Several Languages? — Test AI on check-in times, quiet hours and house rules in five languages with a native checker, then store the approved versions in your hostel software.
- AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.
Sources: Airbnb's hosting advice on important changes to house rules (20 October 2026), its Community policy on reasonable house rules and requests, its ground rules for home guests, pricing and payment transparency policy, and Help Centre articles on adding house rules and requests, on scheduled quick replies, on Host damage protection, on limits to host-imposed contracts and on requesting or sending money in the Resolution Centre; all read in October 2026.