The in-room guest directory: what to include, in which languages, in print or on screen

A hotel guest directory is the in-room guide that answers the questions a guest would otherwise call the desk about. Put it in the guest's order: welcome, essentials, how to get help, outlets and hours, safety, house rules, the area. Choose languages from your own guest mix, keep safety printed, and date every version.

A guest arrives at 23:00, cannot find the Wi-Fi password, and calls the desk from the room phone. The answer was in the folder on the desk, on a page nobody had touched since the router was replaced. If that sounds like your hotel, this article will help you rebuild the directory from scratch: what goes in it, in what order, in which languages, and which parts belong on paper and which on a screen.

Why does an in-room guest directory still matter?#

It is the first place a guest looks when the desk is closed, busy or simply far away, and every question it fails to answer becomes a call, a queue or a line in a review.

Think of the directory as a filter, not a brochure. The desk answers the same ten questions all day, and each one the directory answers properly removes one call. A guest will not call at 02:00 to ask for a small thing; they will wait, guess, or remember it later in a review. That is the quiet cost of a thin or outdated book.

Accuracy matters as much as coverage. A directory that is visibly out of date teaches the guest to distrust all of it, including the page about the fire exit. It protects staff too: a written rule is easier to apply consistently than a rule someone half-remembers from training. And unlike an OTA listing or a review page, the directory is one of the few guest-facing documents the hotel fully controls. A clear, calm page reads as a hotel that knows what it is doing, and it starts working in the first ten minutes from the door to the room.

What should the guest directory contain? A checklist in the guest's order#

Build the contents in the order a guest meets them, from arrival to departure, not in the order of hotel departments. A guest does not care that breakfast belongs to food and beverage and the safe belongs to technical services; they care that both answers are on the page they open first.

The order is the design#

Start with a short welcome: the hotel's name, a greeting of a few lines, and a named person to ask for. No marketing copy. Then the essentials, because they are asked most: the Wi-Fi network and password, breakfast hours and place, checkout time and how to extend it, air conditioning, the safe, the television, and how to dial the desk. Follow with how to get help, outlets and hours, safety, house rules, and finally the area.

Which languages should the directory be in?#

Choose languages from your own guest mix, not from a list of world languages; the registration records you already keep at check-in tell you the order. Count the nationalities of your last twelve months of guests and write the top three or four first.

Ministry border statistics describe arrivals to Türkiye, not arrivals to your hotel; they are a starting point, never your answer. A hotel in a ski town and a hotel on the south coast can share a country and still need different language sets. For a fuller method, see a language plan built from your guest mix.

Translate the safety page and the essentials page first; a welcome note in a sixth language can wait. Machine translation is acceptable for a greeting and risky for evacuation instructions, so have a native speaker read the safety text before it is printed. Keep one language per page or one column per language, never interleaved lines a guest has to untangle. Pictograms carry the fire exit, the pool rules and the quiet hours without any language at all, and a short phrase list at the desk serves the fifth and sixth language better than a badly translated book.

Print, TV screen or QR code: which format for which part?#

Print wins for safety and for anything a guest reads without a phone; screens win for prices and hours that change; QR codes win for length. A printed folder survives a power cut, a flat battery and a guest who does not want to install anything, while a QR code can hold the full compendium, the spa menu and the area guide, and one edit reaches every room.

A QR code is still a barrier for an older guest, a guest without mobile data, or a guest whose phone is charging across the room. A laminated card by the door carries the five answers guests ask for most, in the place they look first. An in-room television channel suits a welcome message and outlet hours, but guests rarely browse it for information, and it is slow and costly to update. Whatever the format, the room number and the fire exit route must exist on paper.

Do food and drink prices need a printed list?#

A QR code is allowed, but it does not replace the price list: since the 11 October 2025 amendment to the Price Tag Regulation, food and beverage businesses may show prices by QR code and must still give the list when a customer asks, according to the Resmî Gazete amendment of 30 January 2026, No. 33153 (opens in a new tab).

Article 8 of the Price Tag Regulation (Official Gazette 28 June 2014, No. 29044), amended on 11 October 2025 (No. 33044) and 30 January 2026 (No. 33153), sets these rules for restaurants, cafés, patisseries and similar food and beverage businesses. Any fee charged under any name beyond the listed prices must appear in the tariff and price list. Since 30 January 2026, those businesses may not ask consumers for any extra payment called a service charge, table charge, cover charge or similar; the ban applies without prejudice to Article 51 of Labour Law No. 4857.

Two questions were not verified: whether the rules reach a hotel outlet that serves only resident guests, and whether a room-service menu falls under the same rules. Confirm your own case with an accountant or legal adviser before you print. The practical rule that survives every reading: keep a printed list behind the counter and hand it over without argument when asked.

How do you keep the directory current?#

Give one person the file, put a date on every version, and log every change, or the book will describe a hotel that no longer exists. Name one owner, usually front office or guest relations, and a named deputy for the weeks they are away.

Print a version date and version number on the back page; a guest who sees last year's date trusts nothing inside. Keep a one-page change log: what changed, who changed it, when. Tie the review to events that always change something: a router replacement, a menu change, a seasonal closing, a new outlet. Remove pages rather than crossing lines out, because a struck-through line reads as an accident. Keep the source text in one editable file so the printed book, the QR page and the app all come from the same words.

What can move from the book to a guest app?#

Anything that changes often, and nothing a guest needs in an emergency: the bill, requests, outlet bookings and offers belong online, while the fire exit stays on the door. A browser-based guest app opens from a link or a QR code, with no app store and no installation step, which is what makes it different from a native app the guest will not download for two nights.

Requests, spa bookings, room service and the bill are the parts guests use most, and they change daily. Offers before arrival and during the stay belong where they can be edited, and an accepted offer goes straight onto the guest's bill. The printed card stays for safety, the Wi-Fi password and the desk number, because those must work when nothing else does. A hotel that moves everything online and leaves nothing printed has moved the problem, not solved it. If you are weighing the formats, see QR page, web app or app-store app.

AI Otel's guest app is built: every hotel gets its own guest app, installed from the browser with no app store, with the bill, room service, spa bookings, requests and offers in one place. You can read more about the guest app on the AI Otel site.

What to do next#

Take the directory you have now into a room you have not seen, follow it as a guest would, and note every place it is wrong. Then rewrite it in the guest's order, put a date on the back page, choose languages from your own registration records, and decide which pages move to a browser link while the safety page stays on paper. If you want to see what a browser-based guest app could carry for your hotel, request a briefing.