You spent a weekend writing the perfect guest guide: the best coffee spot, which way the thermostat turns, where the extra blankets live. Now you want guests to actually open it, and the guest guide link is the problem. It's a long, encoded string that works fine in a booking message and falls apart the moment you try to put it on a fridge magnet, a laminated card by the door, or a welcome note.

The fix is a short link with a readable ending. It takes about a minute.

Why guide links don't survive the trip off the screen

Airbnb hosts have been asking for this for a while. One host in Airbnb's community forum asked how to share a Guidebook with a shorter URL, noting the links are "really, really long." The example link in that thread is a .../s/guidebooks?refinement_paths%5B%5D=%2Fguidebooks... string with a long ID at the end, and the thread's replies are workarounds: use a third-party shortener, or set up a redirect on your own website. (Airbnb's Guidebook link format may well have changed since that thread was posted, so don't assume the exact structure shown there is still current - the underlying complaint, that the link is too long to print, isn't going anywhere.)

Dedicated guidebook tools have the same shape. Touch Stay's help page on sharing guides, for example, suggests shortening your Quick Share Link with a link-shortening service if you want something shorter to print (exact wording on their help page may have been updated since, but the advice itself is the point).

So the long link is a known annoyance, and the standard advice is "shorten it." Here's how to do that so it actually reads well on paper.

The 60-second fix

  1. Copy your guide link from Airbnb, Touch Stay, or whichever tool holds your house manual.
  2. Paste it into squish.to. No account needed.
  3. Pick your own ending instead of the random one, like squish.to/maple-cottage-guide.
  4. Open it on your phone and make sure it lands on the guide.
  5. Print it on the fridge magnet, the welcome card, and the check-in message.

The short link is a signpost. Guests type something easy, and squish.to sends them to the same guide.

Pick a slug a tired guest can type

Think about who's reading it: someone who just drove four hours, is standing in a kitchen they've never seen, and wants to know the WiFi and where to park. The same "say it, spell it, type it" test from our post on building a short link you can say out loud applies:

  • Use the property name guests already know. squish.to/maple-cottage-guide beats squish.to/mc1.
  • Keep it to two or three words. It has to fit on a magnet.
  • Skip look-alike characters. Avoid the letter O next to the number 0, and l, I, and 1 together.
  • Add one detail that's yours. A street name or nickname keeps it from colliding with someone else's beach-house-guide.
  • Say it out loud once to make sure the words don't run together into something unintended.

I'd stick to lowercase words and hyphens - squish.to custom slugs run 3-30 characters, using letters, numbers, and hyphens (no underscores), and they're case-sensitive, so lowercase is the safe default rather than something to double-check later.

One link for every unit, or one per unit?

If you manage more than one place, give each property its own readable slug (maple-cottage-guide, lakeside-loft-guide) rather than one generic link. It's clearer for guests, and since every squish.to link gets its own stats page - total opens, a 14-day trend, and recent opens with source and country - separate slugs let you compare properties at a glance instead of guessing from one combined number.

Where to put it

The places people actually look, roughly in order:

  • The fridge or entry-table card, next to a QR code.
  • Your automated check-in message, so it's one tap away before they arrive.
  • The inside of the front door, for the "how do I lock this?" moment.
  • The welcome note, for guests who like paper.

A QR code is great for a guest standing next to the card with a phone. The short link is what works in a printed message, a text, or a phone call with a guest who'd rather type. Do both.

Two things to know before you print

The short link points to your guide; it doesn't control who can open the guide. If your guide is only visible to guests with a booking on the platform, a short link won't change that, and guests may still need to be signed in or use the link you send them - the exact visibility rules for a guest without an Airbnb account aren't something we can confirm here, so check your own guide's sharing settings directly rather than assuming. If your guide is public, anyone with the link can read it, so keep door codes and other private details in the booking message rather than the guide.

Test the link after any change on the platform. If you rebuild the guide or the platform gives you a new guide link, the short link still points to the old one. A squish.to link's destination can't be edited after it's created - it's create-only, with no accounts and no edit step - so the safe habit is to re-test the short link before each busy season and make a new one if the platform's link has changed.

Quick checklist

  • Guide link copied from the platform and opened once on a phone.
  • Short link created with a readable slug and tested.
  • Short link printed next to a QR code on the fridge card and the welcome note.
  • Same link in the automated check-in message.
  • Slug said out loud once.

Ready to make yours? Squish your guest guide link and put something on the fridge that guests can read.