A TV welcome screen for a vacation rental greets your guests by name, shows the wifi with a code their phone reads to join it, and answers what they would otherwise message you about: check-out, the trash, the spare towels, the best coffee nearby. It is a free board on the TV that is already in the room, and it runs without you.
Most of the messages a host sends are the same four facts, typed again. A board puts them where a guest looks in the first five minutes without being asked to.
Start with the wifi
It is the first thing every guest wants and the most annoying thing to send by message. The board shows the network name and password in large type with a QR code beside them — a guest points their camera at the TV and is on the network before they have taken their coat off. No app, no password typed wrong three times, no message from you at eleven at night.
The things you are tired of repeating
- A welcome by name, with check-in and check-out underneath. "Welcome, Sarah" tells a tired guest they have the right door, and check-out reads as a countdown: "Check-out in 3 days", then "Check-out tomorrow at 11:00 am". Someone who has just flown in reads that correctly; "11am Tuesday" they don't always. Their name comes off the screen once check-out has passed.
- House notes, one fact a line with a small icon beside each. Trash goes out Thursday, the thermostat is in the hall, the third stair creaks. A few short notes, not a laminated binder nobody opens.
- Your favorite places nearby, the coffee, the bakery and the beach you would send a friend to, with how far each one is. A place with a map link gets a code for directions, and another code puts the whole list on their phone to take out the door.
- The weather, which sounds trivial until you remember your guests are deciding what to do today and do not know the area.
- A clock, in local time, for the guest who has arrived from three time zones away.
- A picture, if you want the place to feel yours — your own logo sits in the corner on Pro.
On Pro and the Event Pass the whole board can sit on a photo of the place itself, the view from the deck or the porch at dusk, dimmed just enough that every word on it stays easy to read. A bright photo is dimmed a little more by itself.
It has to run without you
This is the part that matters for a rental, and it is why a board is not just a photo on a screensaver.
Pair the TV once with a short code and it comes back to the board every time it wakes up — no address for a guest to lose, no browser history with your link in it. Set the hours it shows so the screen is black overnight instead of glowing at whoever is sleeping on the sofa bed. The layout drifts a fraction of a percent every few minutes so nothing burns into the panel over a season of guests. And when you change something from your phone, the TV picks it up on its own within a minute.
When something changes mid-stay
"The hot tub is closed today." "The cleaner comes at ten." Put up an alert from your phone and it runs across the bottom of the board, or over the whole of it for something nobody should miss, for 15 minutes, an hour or until you take it down. It reaches the TV within a minute, wherever you are, and the rest of the board is untouched when it comes down.
Between guests
A board is a page at a long, unguessable address, not a listing anyone can search for. It is never indexed and never linked from anywhere public. If you want more than that — a shared building, a screen visible from a window — you can put a viewer password on it, and a TV you paired yourself skips the password so it never strands the screen behind a login nobody can type into.
You can also change the wifi password between stays and the board updates itself. The old code stops working the moment you save.
The welcome changes with the guest: type the next first name and the day they leave from your phone. The welcome and the wifi both start with "Hide after the event" switched on, so if you give the board's event the dates of the stay, they come off the screen between guests as well.
On Pro, let the board do that part for you. Paste your listing's calendar link once (Airbnb and VRBO both export one, and other booking sites and property managers often do too) and the board follows your bookings: the wifi and the welcome come on a little before each check-in and go off a little after each check-out, counting down to the right day, with nobody touching it. Airbnb's and VRBO's calendars don't include guests' names, so you add a first name to a stay if you want one, and the board forgets it within two days of check-out.
More than one property
Each place gets its own board with its own wifi, its own notes and its own link. Pro includes 2 live boards and $2 a month for each one after that, so a third and fourth property are a few dollars rather than a new subscription each. Seats are separate: a cleaner or a co-host can be given one board to look at and nothing else, and read-only viewers are free.
Free is 1 live board and 1 seat, which is enough to try the whole idea on one property before paying anything.
A board worth copying
Pick "Guest welcome" when you make the board and it arrives laid out like this. Across the top, the welcome by name, with the clock and the weather beside it. Underneath, three tiles side by side: the wifi, your house notes and your favorite places nearby. That is six tiles, and it answers most of what you would otherwise be typing. On a screen turned on its side the welcome still leads and the rest stack beneath it, the clock and the weather beside your places at the bottom.
Picked from the list, nothing arrives filled in with somebody else's example: each tile that needs your words says so on the screen until you add them. Copy the board above instead and it arrives with its example words for you to replace, paused, and turning it on asks first while any are left. If all the TV needs to say is the wifi, "Just the wifi" is one big code and the time. The layouts guide shows the other starting points, and the setup guide covers getting it onto the screen and fitting it to the edges.