Most messages from guests are the same: what's the Wi-Fi password, how do I get there from the airport, how do I turn on the heating, where do I put the trash. Answering them by hand is work you do over and over, usually in the evening and usually in English. The guest portal is a page where all of that lives — and where the guest finds it before they ask.

What belongs in the portal

• Arrival. The exact address, how to find the entrance, where the keybox is and its code, the earliest possible check-in. Directions from the airport and the train station with the specific line and fare.
• The apartment. Wi-Fi, heating and air conditioning (with a picture of the remote), the washing machine, the range hood, where the iron is, what to do if the power goes out. The things every other guest asks about.
• House rules. Trash and recycling, quiet hours, smoking, check-out time and what to do with the keys.
• The neighborhood. A few places you'd send a friend. Not twenty restaurants from Google, but the three you actually go to.
• Contact. Who to turn to and when — and what's genuinely urgent.
• Departure. What to do before leaving, by when, where the keys go.

What doesn't belong there

• Nothing that should stay private in the public part. The door code and Wi-Fi belong behind the check-in, not in the listing or in an automated message you can't take back. In a platform message thread it also gets lost.
• Upselling on every screen. An offer of late check-out or a taxi has its place, but a portal that is mostly a catalog of add-on services is one the guest will close.
• Long texts. The guest reads the portal on their phone, in the elevator, with a suitcase. Short paragraphs, pictures where words aren't enough.
• Outdated information. A restaurant that closed, a code that changed, a bus line that no longer runs. A portal set up last year isn't set up. Go through it once a season.

Why in the guest's language

A guest from Germany reads the portal in German, a guest from Italy in Italian. It's not about politeness; it's that an Italian family won't read heating instructions in English — they'll message you instead. The portal should speak as many languages as your guests do — in Ubyo there are 27 languages to choose from and a portal can have up to 12 at once, with Czech or English as the default for everyone else.

You write the texts in Czech and add the translated versions chapter by chapter; the guest sees any untranslated chapter in the default language, so the portal works even while it's a work in progress.

How the portal relates to check-in

The portal opens for the guest once they've completed the check-in. That's the reason guests fill in the check-in: behind the form is the door code. It's not a condition beyond what the law requires — you need the ID details by law, and without them you can't accommodate the guest. Making access to the accommodation conditional on anything else, such as a review, is against platform rules.

What changed in day-to-day operations

Guest messages have shrunk to the ones that make sense: something isn't working, they need something extra. The rest they read. And when something changes — a new code, a new restaurant — I change it once, not in ten message templates.