Short-term rental host playbook

The moment you sign up, your dashboard Home shows a card called Your guide book page with a Download button. It is a printable page with a QR code that opens your page on Big Island Activities, and the commission notice is already printed on it. You do not add anything.

Put it in the welcome book, and a second copy by the door or on the fridge. Print inside your unit is the one channel with no platform rules at all, and it is where guests are when they decide what to do tomorrow.

Your Guest Guide is your own page on Big Island Activities: the site's Big Island catalog with your name on it, live from the minute you sign up. Open Guest Guide in your dashboard to choose a page style, add a headline, put your property name and logo on it under Co-branding, and swap the tours, up to 20 at a time. The commission notice on the page is set for you from the approved wording, so there is nothing to write.

If you already run a digital guide (TouchStay, Hostfully, or a PMS guest portal), add your Big Island Activities link inside it under things to do and keep that guide as your main link. The next step tells you which message line fits each case.

Airbnb and VRBO both block outside links in messages before a booking is confirmed, and both accept a link about the stay afterwards. So the line goes in your booking-confirmed message or with your check-in details, never earlier. Your dashboard has exactly two lines for this, under Share, on the Guest Messages screen. Pick the one that is true for you and copy it as it is:

Send this after the booking is confirmed. Airbnb and VRBO both block outside links in messages before that, and both accept a link about the stay afterwards. Check your own platform rules before you schedule it. Pointing at your guide inside a scheduled check-in message is fine. Scheduling a message that sends the tour link itself to every guest is not, and it is against your partner agreement.

The tours and the commission notice live on the destination, so the message stays a plain pointer. Add a recommendation to it and it stops being one, and it then needs a notice of its own. Keep it as written.

If you have a direct-booking site, a blog, or a guest newsletter, that is your strongest channel and the only one with no platform rules. Add your link, or the QR code from your Share page, and put one of the notices from the next step right next to it. For an email or a text, the Share page also has a ready-to-send line:

Any time you name a tour in your own words, in a message, a caption, or a note in the welcome book, say that you earn a commission right there, next to what you wrote. Not on another page, and not only in your profile. The printed page, the QR card, and your Guest Guide already carry the notice, so this only comes up when you write something yourself.

These are the approved wordings. Use one as it is:

Each of these is either a platform rule, a law, or your partner agreement. None of them is a judgment call.

In week one, watch clicks, not bookings. Your dashboard's Activity screen shows every click on your link, and clicks are the number that tells you the link is where people can find it. A guest who scans the page in your unit on Tuesday might book on Thursday for a tour the following week.

Your first payout is realistically six to ten weeks after your first click, and here is why. The commission is earned when the tour is completed, not when it is booked. Payouts go out on the 21st of the month after the tour ran, via PayPal, and only once your balance is at least $50; anything under that rolls forward to the next month. So a tour booked early one month and taken later that month pays on the 21st of the following month. Add your PayPal details under Payments any time before then.

You earn 8% of the booking total, before taxes and fees, on every tracked booking that completes. A booking that is cancelled or refunded does not pay, and if it is reversed after a payout the amount comes off the next one.