For any host
Two short films. One carries them from the last landmark they'll recognise to your door. The other shows them how the place actually works — the boiler, the pool, the bins, the door that sticks.
Be there to welcome them, or don't — it works either way. Which matters on the morning you wake up ill, and on the night their flight lands at one.
The eleven o'clock phone call
Every one of those sentences quietly costs a star. And behind each one is you, typing the same directions into WhatsApp for the two-hundredth time this season — usually late, usually to someone already tense.
And then the other half
Every arrival ends the same way: a walk round the place explaining the air conditioning, the pool pump, the wi-fi, the bins. The same twenty minutes, in the same order, to a different tired family every week.
They have been travelling since five in the morning. There is a toddler asleep on a shoulder and another one already running at the pool. What they want is the bathroom, then the sofa, and for somebody to stop talking.
And you know it while it is happening. You are eleven minutes into the boiler, they are nodding at nothing, and you can see that not one word is going in.
It isn't going in. That is why they message you on Tuesday about the hot water — you did explain it, standing right there, and they were in no condition to hear it. Everything you say at an arrival is said at the worst possible moment to hear it.
A film moves the explaining to when they can take it in: after the shower, on the sofa, once the children are finally asleep. In their own language, at their own speed, twice if they want.
You still meet them at the door, if that is how you like to do it — the keys, the welcome, the two minutes of being glad to see them.
Or you don't. The road film ends at your door, a lockbox opens it, and the house film takes over inside: a whole arrival that runs without you.
Either way, you stop being the thing standing between them and sitting down.
The part only you know
The shower that needs the tap turned the other way. The window that only shuts if you lift it. The tap that runs brown for ten seconds. The fuse board behind the coat hooks.
You know all of it. Whoever does your check-in knows some of it — and on their fourth arrival of the day, in their second language, to a family who stopped listening ten minutes ago, they will mention about half.
Nothing goes wrong while someone is standing there explaining it. It goes wrong at ten at night when a fuse trips and nobody knows where the board is. Then the call comes to you anyway, and the gap in what was explained becomes a gap in the stay.
A film does not get tired, does not run late, and never skips the boring one because the guests looked bored. It says the same thing to the fortieth family as to the first.
So tell us what goes wrong most often at your place. Whatever it is, it becomes a section.
What it costs you now
A check-in agent or a member of your team, at fifteen to thirty euros a visit. Forty arrivals a season and that is a line item you can point at in your accounts — for a conversation that has been identical since May.
The drive over, the wait for a flight that lands late, the tour, the drive back. Call it an hour, and be honest about how many evenings that has cost you this year.
What you buy back is the tour, not the greeting. And unlike the tour, a film is still there midway through the stay, when someone finally tries to take the pool cover off.
What arrives
Sixty to ninety seconds, shot upright for a phone, held in one hand on a dark road. Every turn captioned, every junction called before it arrives.
The tour you currently give in person — the door, the heating, the pool, the wi-fi, the bins, check-out — cut into short sections. A guest goes straight to the one they need instead of watching the whole thing again.
Your actual driving route, drawn on the map from the pin you already give guests — so they know exactly where the film takes over.
Narrated for the driver, captioned for the passenger. It works with the sound off, which is how most people will watch it.
The same film with a new voice. German guests, French guests, Israeli guests — all arriving already at ease.
Paste it into the confirmation email and the check-in message. Print it for the gate. It costs you nothing to send it a thousand times, to every guest, for years.
How it's made
Drive the road, then walk the house explaining it exactly as you always do. A one-page shot list tells you how. Half an hour, no equipment — or we come and film it ourselves.
Route map, colour grade, voiceover, music, captions, chapters, arrows at every turn. First cut within a week, then one round of changes.
It goes into your booking confirmation and is never written, driven or explained again. It works for every guest after that, for as long as the boiler stays where it is.
Plainly
If the place changes
The films are built in separate sections and we keep your project, so replacing one is an edit, not a rebuild. Film the new thirty seconds on your phone, send it, and we swap it in. The link you have already given a hundred guests keeps working.
What this does not stretch to, and we would rather say so now: a different property, or a change big enough that the film no longer describes the place — a renovation, a moved entrance, a rerouted road. That is a new film, at a price for people we have already worked with.
One more thing
Send the address and the pin you currently give guests. We'll build a short animated map of the real drive to your door and send it back — no charge, yours whether or not we go further. It takes about an hour, and it is the fastest way to see what this looks like with your own place in it.
If arrival is not your problem — if everyone finds you easily — say so, and ask about the house film instead. That is the one that gets your evenings back.
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