The house manual is the cheapest member of staff you will ever hire

Every question a guest has to ask is a small failure of preparation, and in Nairobi the questions are specific: how the water heater works, what happens when the power goes, whether the tap water is drinkable, how to get a taxi, what the guard needs. A house manual that answers those before they are asked does the work of a concierge for the price of printing it.

Make it findable and short

• Printed and left on the counter, not only a link in the platform app. A guest with no data, a flat phone or an unfamiliar app will not find a digital manual
• A single page for the essentials, visible from where they drop their bags. The rest can be a folder
• Written plainly, in short lines. Nobody reads paragraphs at midnight
• Photographs for anything unusual, the water heater switch particularly. One photograph replaces four sentences
• Not laminated in twelve pages. A long manual is an unread manual and it makes the apartment feel governed

Every question a guest has to ask is a small failure of preparation, and the same six questions come up in every Nairobi apartment.

The page that matters

1. Wifi name and password, in large type. The first thing anybody looks for
2. How to get hot water, including where the switch is and how long it takes. The most common Nairobi question by a distance. See hot water and guest expectations
3. What happens in a power cut, what stays on, and where the lamp is. See backup power
4. Drinking water, stated plainly: do not drink the tap, bottled is provided, here is where to buy more
5. Who to call, with a name and a number, and roughly how quickly they answer
6. Checkout time and what to do, in three lines. Not a list of chores

The Nairobi specifics

• Getting around. Which ride hailing apps work, a trusted driver’s number, and rough costs to the airport, the city centre and the nearest mall. Guests have no idea what a fair price is and this saves them from a bad first experience
• The building. The guard’s number, how the visitor book works, where the bins go, whether the lift needs a fob, where to park
• Security, stated calmly. The habits any resident follows, without dramatising the city. Guests appreciate practical advice and resent being frightened
• Groceries and pharmacy, nearest and best, with walking or driving time
• Three or four places to eat you would actually recommend. Three is advice, forty is a directory
• What the weather does, because visitors are always surprised by how cold a Nairobi evening gets and where the extra blanket is
• Emergency numbers and the nearest hospital, which takes one line and matters enormously on the rare occasion it is needed

Keep it true

A manual that describes a router that was replaced or a restaurant that closed is worse than none, because it teaches the guest to stop trusting it.

• Review it every few months, and after any change to the apartment
• Update it whenever a guest asks something it should have answered. That question is data
• Check the phone numbers still work, particularly the guard’s
• Keep one master version across your units and vary only the local section, so a change is made once

How Goldstay handles it

Every managed unit has a printed single page on the counter and a fuller folder, both maintained from one master. When a guest asks something the manual should have answered, it goes into the manual, which is why the questions get rarer over time.

Handing the operation over is the other option: here is how our Nairobi short-stay management works.

Related reading: making self check in work and consumables and what to leave.