Why Every Airbnb Host Needs a Pre-Arrival Survey: 4 Questions That Pay

A pre-arrival survey is a short form you send a guest after they book and before they arrive. Ours asks four questions and takes about two minutes. Across 957 pre-arrival surveys we collected between December 2025 and September 2026, it produced a phone number from every single guest and a written special request from 66 percent of them.

We manage short-term rentals in San Diego and Lake Tahoe. We call this the pre-booking survey internally because it goes out the moment a booking lands. Publicly it is a pre-arrival survey, and it is four core questions plus one optional icebreaker. We call the set the 4-Question Pre-Arrival Survey: why they are coming, what they will do, how to reach them, and what would make the stay special.

Why can't you trust the phone number Airbnb gives you?

Because Airbnb decides when you get it and how long it lasts. Airbnb's Help Center states that "a guest's phone number becomes available only after their reservation is confirmed," and that "guests in certain locations may have a temporary phone number assigned by Airbnb that becomes active at confirmation and expires 2 days after checkout."

Read that second sentence again as an operator. The number you have on file can stop working two days after the guest leaves. If a guest locks themselves out at 11 PM, you are dialing a number that Airbnb controls and can retire.

Asking for the number yourself fixes this in one field. We ask how we can contact the guest in an emergency, and we make the field required. All 957 guests gave us a number.

A required field buys you an answer, not always a working one. Of those 957 numbers, 940 came in with ten or more digits and 17 came in too short to dial. That is a 98 percent usable rate, which is high enough to rely on and low enough that you should still glance at the field.

You collected the number, so you control it, and it still works after checkout. That is the difference between a guest relationship you own and one you rent.

What does "what brings you here" tell you before check-in?

It tells you which stay you are preparing for, and it costs the guest one tap. We ask why the guest is coming and give six answers. Across 957 surveys the distribution was consistent. Every share in this article is a share of completed surveys, not of every guest who booked.

Why they are coming	Guests (of 957)
Just visiting	351
Celebrating	279
Family gathering	225
I live here, staycation	44
Work gathering	42
Hosting an event or party	16

Three answers cover 855 of 957 guests, or 89 percent. Those three change the setup, not the risk profile. A celebration means the property should look like someone knew. A family gathering means you check the crib, the high chair and the parking, because a family of nine arriving to four parking spaces becomes a message at 9 PM.

One note if you read this alongside our post-stay survey. That form asks a similar question with a different set of answers, so the two distributions are not directly comparable.

The bottom two answers are the ones worth a phone call. Sixteen guests told us in advance they were hosting an event or a party, and 44 told us they live locally and were booking a staycation. Neither answer is a problem. Both are guests being straight with you, and both deserve a friendly call to confirm what they are planning.

That call is cheap and it works because they volunteered the information. If you want the structural version of this, our 4-layer system for preventing party and noise complaints covers the rules, monitoring and neighbor relations that sit underneath.

A pre-arrival survey is not screening. It tells you what a guest is willing to say about their plans, which is genuinely useful, and it tells you nothing about the guest who has decided to lie. Treat the answer as an opening for a conversation, not as a verdict.

What the second question adds

The reason a guest is coming is a category. What they intend to do is the detail, and it is the second question in the framework. We ask what kind of activities brought them to the area and leave the field open. Pair it with the reason: 279 of our 957 guests said they were celebrating, and the activity answer is what tells you whether that is a quiet anniversary or a large group dinner.

The wording is deliberately generic, and that is a design choice rather than laziness. One form serves every property we manage, from a beach condo to a mountain house, so a question that named local activities would be wrong on most of the portfolio. If you run one property, do the opposite and name the two or three things people actually come for.

The answers change small decisions that guests notice. A guest coming to ski wants to know where wet gear goes. A guest coming for a wedding two towns over cares about drive time, not about your beach recommendations. Neither of those is in the booking data, and both take one line to solve if you know before they arrive.

Why should you ask about their 2 AM snack?

Because a small, odd, no-stakes question turns a transaction into a conversation. We ask what the guest would want if it were 2 AM and they were craving a snack. It is optional and it has nothing to do with operations.

It gets answered anyway. The question was live for 804 of the 957 surveys, having been switched off for most of August 2026, and 739 of those 804 guests answered it. That is 92 percent, on an optional free-text field, in a form the guest did not ask to receive.

The mechanism is reciprocity. You asked a human question before the stay started, so the guest has already told you something personal and slightly silly. Guests who have engaged once are easier to reach when it matters, and the tone of the whole thread is set before anyone checks in.

It is not a satisfaction metric and it will not show up in your revenue. It is an icebreaker with a 92 percent response rate, which is a better opening than a welcome message on its own.

What special request should you invite, and what should you head off?

Invite the requests you can act on and exclude the one you cannot. The fourth question in the framework asks whether there is anything we can do to make the stay special, other than changing check-in or check-out times.

That exclusion is doing real work. Early check-in is the ask most tightly bound by the cleaning schedule, and inviting it produces a queue of requests you have to decline. Ruling it out in the question text means the answers you get back are answers you can say yes to.

Guests use the box. Across 957 surveys, 627 guests wrote a substantive request, which is 66 percent. Two in three guests will tell you how to make their stay better if you leave a line open and ask before they arrive.

Then the answer has to go somewhere. A birthday needs to reach whoever preps the property, and it should be handled that same day, not read the morning after checkout. An answer that mentions a broken expectation, like a guest asking whether the hot tub is working, is a maintenance ticket. An answer that asks how something works is a gap in your house manual, and our house manual template for vacation rentals is where that fix belongs permanently.

How do you build a pre-arrival survey this afternoon?

Any form tool will do. Google Forms, Typeform or Airtable all work, and the tool is the least important decision here. Build the four questions, put the link in your booking confirmation message, and keep it to two minutes.

Here is the whole framework, with the job each question does.

Question	What we ask	The job it does
1	What brings you here	Tells you which stay to prepare
2	What kind of activities brought you to the area	Surfaces local needs and the odd logistics ask
3	How can we contact you in case of an emergency	Gives you a number Airbnb does not control
4	Other than changing your check-in or check-out time, is there anything else we can do to make your stay special	Produces one ask you can act on

Four rules make the difference between a form that gets answered and a form that gets ignored.

Send it immediately after booking, not the day before arrival. The guest is at peak enthusiasm the hour they book, and a form that arrives the night before check-in reads as one more task.

Require three fields at most, and leave the rest open. On our form the reason for the visit, the activities question and the emergency contact are all required. That is why the reason answer is complete across all 957 surveys and every guest supplied a phone number. The two optional fields still came back strong: 627 of the 957 wrote a special request, and 739 of the 804 guests shown the icebreaker answered it.

Handle the answers the same day. A special request that nobody reads is worse than not asking, because you created an expectation and then visibly ignored it.

Keep it to four core questions and one icebreaker. Our numbers came from a two-minute form, and the response rates above are what a short form buys you.

The pre-arrival survey closes half the loop. The other half runs after checkout, where one question does most of the work. We call it the Planned-Review Question, and it is the subject of why every Airbnb host needs a post-stay survey.

Key Takeaways

• Airbnb controls the phone number you were given. Per Airbnb's Help Center, a guest's number becomes available only after the reservation is confirmed, and in certain locations Airbnb may assign a temporary number that expires two days after checkout. Asking for a number directly is how you keep a line that outlasts the booking.
• A required emergency-contact field captured a number from all 957 guests, and 940 of those, 98 percent, were long enough to dial. Required guarantees an answer, not a valid one.
• Three answers cover 89 percent of guests. Just visiting, celebrating and family gathering accounted for 855 of 957 surveys, and each one changes how you set the property up.
• The 16 event answers and 44 staycation answers earn a phone call, not a flag. Guests who tell you their plans in advance are being straight with you.
• An optional, non-operational question hit a 92 percent response rate. 739 of the 804 guests shown the 2 AM snack question answered it, which is what reciprocity buys before a stay starts.
• Two in three guests will tell you how to improve their stay. 627 of 957 wrote a substantive special request, but only if the answer reaches someone the same day.