Create and publish your first guidebook

From the Welcome guidebooks page to the guest link: building a guidebook, filling it block by block, translating it, then publishing it.

The guidebook is what your guests open before they arrive and keep at hand during the stay: the Wi-Fi, the access, the times, the addresses you recommend. Filled in properly, it replaces most arrival messages — and it stays available when you are not.

This guide builds one end to end: open the Studio, lay out a structure, write blocks into it, then publish a link to send to the guest. Allow about an hour for a first honest guidebook, less if you start from a template.

The path, screen by screen

Open the Guidebooks page
In the menu, under Sales & marketing, open Guidebooks. The Welcome guidebooks page lists all your listings — one card each, with its title, a preview of its description and an Edit guidebook badge. There is nothing to create here: the list follows your listings.
If the screen shows No listings, there are none yet, and it points you to the right step: “Create a listing on a unit to attach a guidebook to it.”
The Welcome guidebooks page: the listing card with its Edit guidebook badge.
Create the guidebook
The Edit guidebook badge opens the Studio full screen. As long as the listing has no guidebook, the Studio shows Guidebook not set up yet and a single button, Create the guidebook. One click is enough: the guidebook is created empty, then the Choose a template gallery opens straight away.
Each template sets a colour mood and a starting structure; Apply installs it. You can also close the gallery and start from a blank page — it stays reachable from the Templates button in the Studio bar. One caution for later: applying a template to a guidebook that already has content asks for a confirmation, Replace content, because the existing structure goes.
The template gallery of the guidebook Studio.
Lay out the structure
The Studio reads in two columns. On the left, Structure: your categories and, under each one, its sections. Add a category and Add a section create them, names are edited in place, order is set by dragging, and an eye hides a section — it then carries the Hidden badge. On the right, the real rendering of the guest guidebook, updating as you write.
Along the top, the Studio bar lines up Generate the full guidebook, Templates, Colors, Settings, Languages & translations and Publishing, with the status badge — Never published to begin with — and the Publish guidebook button.
The guidebook Studio: the structure on the left, the guest rendering on the right, the toolbar on top.
Fill the sections with blocks
A section is filled with blocks. Add a block opens a grid of fourteen core types: Rich text, Image, Gallery, Video, Map / directions, Contacts, Wi-Fi, Amenities, House rules, Recommendations, FAQ, Documents, Buttons / links and Table.
Titles and rich text are written straight into the rendering on the right; the other settings of a block — a map link, a Wi-Fi password, the rows of a table — open in a side panel. Nothing needs saving by hand: the bar goes through “Saving…” then “Saved”.
Image, gallery and document blocks draw from Guidebook media: Upload brings a file in, within the limits stated on screen — “JPG, PNG, WebP or HEIC images — 10 MB max.” and “PDF documents — 10 MB max.”
The Local partners block has nothing to fill in
A fifteenth type, Local partners, only appears in the grid when the partners feature is switched on — which is why the capture below shows fifteen tiles rather than fourteen. It holds no field: it marks the place where your active partners will appear, with content resolved each time the guidebook is opened. With no active partner, that block therefore shows nothing to the guest, even though the Studio does display it. Check it from the guest link.
The Add a block window and its grid of block types.
“Generate the full guidebook” does not add: it replaces
That button in the Studio bar writes a whole guidebook from the listing information, and erases everything the guidebook contained. No merge, no undo. On a guidebook you have already worked on, YStay asks for confirmation first — “Regenerate the whole guidebook?” — and that is the only guard. Use it to start, never to enrich. Nothing is published automatically: the result is a draft to review.
Translate the guidebook
Languages & translations opens the Source language and the target languages. The source language is always served to guests; switching a language on triggers the translation of the blocks, tracked in a coverage table. Switching a language off does not delete its translations: it is simply no longer offered.
The Settings panel is never translated
Settings gathers legacy fields — welcome message, Wi-Fi, check-in and check-out instructions, house manual, contacts. They do reach the guest, in a Practical info section, but always in the source language, whatever languages you have enabled: no translation exists for them. Anything that has to be read in several languages therefore belongs in the blocks, not in that panel.
Publish
Publishing opens the right-hand panel. While nothing is published it shows “No publication yet.” and reminds you: “Publish the guidebook to enable the guest link, the QR code and the PDF.” Publish guidebook then freezes a numbered version — a complete snapshot of the guidebook, carrying only the visible sections and blocks.
The panel then gives the Guest link, an address ending in /g/… that Copy puts on your clipboard, the QR code to print in the property, and the Printable PDF in the chosen PDF language. A Version history fills in below.
The Publishing panel: guest link, QR code, PDF per language and Publish button.
What publishing means
The link and the QR code are permanent: they always point to the latest published version. Your later edits do not go out on their own — the Some changes are not published badge appears in the bar, and Republish lays down a new version. Unpublish cuts access immediately without erasing anything: publishing again brings the guidebook back online — and permanent means permanent, because the token in the /g/… address is never rotated: publishing again restores exactly the same link as before. Unpublishing is therefore no remedy for a leak; if the address has travelled where it should not have, the only real answer is to change what it exposes, starting with the Wi-Fi password.
Check what the guest sees
Open the guest link in another tab. It is the only check that counts: the Studio shows your draft, the link shows the published version. Look there at the blocks that depend on something other than your own text, and at the language switcher if you enabled several.
The guidebook as the guest sees it, opened through the public link.
That link opens the guidebook to whoever holds it
The /g/… address works from the moment you publish, with no date limit at all: it asks for no account and no password, and anyone holding it can read the guidebook. Share it only through the channels you intend. The guest app does bound the display — but far more widely than you would think: YStay shows a stay's guidebook there from seven days before arrival and until ninety days after departure. The Wi-Fi and the access instructions you write into it therefore stay readable three months after the guest has left; and that window bounds the app, never the link.

If the guidebook does not behave as expected

The guest link shows a page-not-found. Four causes give the same screen: never published, unpublished, a suspended account, or a guidebook withdrawn by the platform. YStay deliberately does not tell them apart — a public link must reveal nothing. Check the state under Publishing. That panel, however, knows nothing about a platform withdrawal: it keeps showing the guidebook as online. If everything looks normal there while the link stays not-found, contact support.
A section does not appear for the guest. Only visible items go into the published version: a Hidden section or block is left out, even after republishing.
A media file refuses to be deleted. The screen explains it: “This media is used by the published version of the guidebook: republish without it before deleting.” Remove it from the blocks, republish, then delete.
The PDF does not show your latest corrections. It is rendered “from the latest published version, in the chosen language” — republish first, reopen afterwards.

Take your first reservation and manage your calendar — the stay this guidebook will be handed to.
Connect a lock and give guests access — the access the guidebook announces but does not manage.
Guidebooks — what a guidebook covers, section by section.
Install a TV and pair it with your account — show this guidebook on a screen inside the unit.
List a partner and run their insert — the addresses you recommend, this time on the local-partner side.

Updated on 27 August 2026

Create and publish your first guidebook

The path, screen by screen

Open the Guidebooks page

Create the guidebook

Lay out the structure

Fill the sections with blocks

Translate the guidebook

Publish

Check what the guest sees

If the guidebook does not behave as expected

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