Holiday let check-in texts and the short-term let rules

A holiday cottage has no reception desk. The guest arrives at dusk after five hours on the M5, the satnav has put them in the wrong lane, and the only person who knows where the key safe is lives twenty miles away. Holiday let check-in texts do the job a front desk would: directions that work, the code on the day, a way to ask where the stopcock is, and a nudge about checkout. The rules around short-term lets are changing too, at different speeds in England, Wales and Scotland, and one of the changes reaches into what an owner needs to ask before a guest arrives.

How many people stay in short-term lets

The Office for National Statistics publishes figures for short-term lets booked through Airbnb, Booking.com and Expedia Group, which cover a big slice of the market (hotels, campsites and direct bookings aren't in them). In 2025 there were 100,911,620 guest nights in UK short-term lets, up 11.5% on 90,507,070 in 2024. A guest night is one person staying one night, so a family of four on a week's holiday counts as 28.

England had 78.4 million of those guest nights, Scotland 12.7 million, Wales 7.4 million and Northern Ireland 2.4 million. Wales grew fastest of the four countries, by 17.4%. The same table gives 35,101,220 nights and 10,191,430 stays for the UK, which by our own sums makes the average booking about 3.4 nights for a party of just under three.

The seasons are as you'd expect, only more so. August 2025 had 14.1 million guest nights, 14.0% of the year, and January had 4.3 million. For an owner that means the busiest weeks of messaging all land in the same few weeks of summer, and changeovers on a Saturday in August can run back to back.

Two more findings matter for texting. Domestic visitors made up 67.2% of guest nights in 2025, and international guests 31.9%. That second group is worth remembering, because their phones may be on foreign numbers. And nearly a quarter of all guest nights (24.4%) were spent in just nine of the UK's 361 local authorities: Westminster, Cornwall, North Yorkshire, Kensington and Chelsea, Camden, Westmorland and Furness, Liverpool, the City of Edinburgh and Highland.

The rules changing around holiday lets

Each nation is doing something different, and the dates matter for anyone with property in more than one.

In England, GOV.UK's guidance on letting out a self-catering holiday home was updated on 2 October 2026 to say the mandatory national registration scheme "is expected to begin in March 2027". The legal framework came from the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, and when DCMS set out its plans in February 2024 it said 61% of consultation responses backed a mandatory scheme across all of England. The same GOV.UK page reminds owners that the Furnished Holiday Let tax regime was abolished on 6 April 2025, and lists fire, gas, electrical and energy performance rules that already apply.

In Wales, anyone who takes bookings of 31 nights or fewer for overnight stays must register their visitor accommodation with the Welsh Revenue Authority "by 31 March 2027", and the register applies "even if your council has not introduced a Visitor Levy". So far one council has: Cardiff, which starts the levy on 1 April 2027. Self-catering lets, cottages, lodges and homestays pay the higher rate of £1.30 per person per night, for guests of all ages, babies included. The levy is worked out "based on the number of guests on the booking", and each stay's records must show the date, the number of guests and the number of nights, kept for six years after the return.

In Scotland, hosts have needed a licence for some time. The mygov.scot guidance says "You must get a licence before you take bookings or receive guests", and operating without one is a criminal offence with a fine of up to £2,500 and a one-year ban from applying.

The Wales levy is the part that touches texting, because it turns an accurate guest count into a tax record, and a pre-arrival text is the easiest place to ask for one.

The texts from booking to departure

Here's a set for a fictional two-bedroom cottage called Fernlea, run by an owner called Sue. They go to the lead guest's mobile number from the booking.

A week before arrival, which is when people start planning the drive:

Fernlea Cottage: see you Sat 12 Jun, check-in from 4pm. How many of you are coming, and roughly what time will you arrive? Just reply here. Sue

On the morning of arrival, with the details that matter in the order they'll be needed:

Fernlea Cottage: today's the day. The postcode brings you to the lane; we're the 2nd gate on the left after the chapel. Park on the gravel. Key safe by the back door, code 4821. Sue

That one runs to 181 characters, so it goes as two parts and costs two credits, which is a fair price for the text that stops the 9pm phone call. Our guide to the SMS character limit explains how the parts are counted.

On the first evening, short and easy to ignore if all is well:

Fernlea Cottage: hope you found everything OK. If anything's not working, reply here and I'll sort it. Sue

The evening before departure:

Fernlea Cottage: checkout is 10am tomorrow. Please leave the key in the safe and close the code. Safe journey home. Sue

Every one of these leads with the property name, because the guest has never seen this number before. Every one is signed, so the guest knows who's at the other end. And the pre-arrival text asks one question with an easy answer, which matters more now that, in Wales, the answer feeds a tax return.

Key codes and what to keep out of a text

A key safe code is the one thing in this set that a stranger could use. Send it on the morning of arrival, not in the booking confirmation weeks before, and change it between guests if the safe allows. A text sits on a phone for months, often on a lock screen, and a code that still works next year is a risk the owner carries.

Location is the other detail worth getting right. The government's fire safety guidance for small paying guest accommodation suggests information in a welcome pack, "including advice on how to call the emergency services and location details, especially if the postcode might not identify the location accurately". Rural postcodes cover a lot of ground, and the arrival text is a good second copy of the directions you'd give an ambulance.

Keep payment details out of texts completely. Owners don't need a guest's card number by text, and guests shouldn't be asked for one: a text asking for payment details is what smishing looks like, and a genuine owner doing it trains guests to fall for the fake ones.

Service texts, offers and next year's booking

Everything above is a service message. The ICO's guidance on identifying direct marketing describes messages that "aren't promotional but are for administrative or customer services purposes" as outside the marketing rules, and directions, codes and checkout times are plainly that. The same page warns that if a service message has elements that are direct marketing, "even if that is not the main purpose of your message, then it will count as direct marketing". So a checkout text that adds "book again for 10% off" needs the marketing rules.

For a guest who booked direct, that's usually the soft opt-in. The ICO says you can text marketing to "an existing customer who bought (or negotiated to buy) a similar product or service from you in the past", as long as you gave them "a simple way to opt out both when you first collected their details and in every message you have sent". Put a line on the booking form, end every offer with "Reply STOP to opt out", and a rebooking text in January is fine. Whether a guest who booked through a platform counts as your own customer is less clear, so the safer course is to ask them directly. The hotel guest texts post works through the late checkout version of the same question, and the post on review request texts covers asking for a review after the stay.

Setting it up

Most of these texts can be written the day the booking comes in and left to send themselves. CaptiFi Connect's scheduled texts can be set up to a year ahead, the credits are taken when you schedule, and a cancelled booking means cancelling the texts, which refunds them in full. Through the API, a booking system adds schedule_at to POST /messages for each one, with the right UK offset for the date (summer bookings are an hour ahead of UTC).

The first-evening text and the pre-arrival question both want answers, so send them from a real UK mobile number and not a sender name. Replies arrive in the two-way inbox threaded by the guest's number, and receiving them costs nothing.

One limit to plan around: CaptiFi Connect texts UK mobiles only (Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man included). With nearly a third of short-term let guest nights coming from international guests, some of your bookings will have a foreign number on them, and those guests need the same details by email or through the booking platform's messages. For Welsh-speaking guests, the post on texting customers in Welsh covers the encoding and the cost.

Common questions

What should a holiday let check-in text include?

The property name, the address or postcode with any directions the postcode won't give, where to park, where the key is and the code, and the check-in time. Send it on the morning of arrival so the code isn't sitting on a phone for weeks. Sign it with a name so the guest knows who to reply to.

Do I need to register my holiday let in England?

Not yet. GOV.UK says the mandatory national registration scheme for short-term lets in England is expected to begin in March 2027. Wales already requires visitor accommodation to be registered by 31 March 2027, and Scotland requires a licence before you take bookings.

How does the Welsh visitor levy affect a holiday let?

Every holiday let in Wales has to be registered by 31 March 2027. Where the council charges the levy (so far only Cardiff, from 1 April 2027), self-catering stays pay £1.30 per person per night based on the number of guests on the booking. Asking the guest to confirm numbers by text before arrival helps keep that record right.

Can I text holiday let guests about offers for next year?

If they booked direct and you gave them a way to opt out when you took their number, the ICO's soft opt-in usually covers it, as long as every offer text carries an opt-out. Guests who booked through a platform need to be asked first.