Emergency Contact Sheet Template for Vacation Rentals (Copy and Fill In)

Here's the emergency contact sheet vacation rental hosts should have ready before their next guest checks in. Copy it, fill in your details, and put it somewhere a stranger can find it in under ten seconds while panicking.

EMERGENCY

Emergency services: [number]
Non-emergency police: [number]
Host mobile: [your number] (answers 24/7)
Backup contact: [name, number, how far away they are]

Property address: [full address, as you'd say it to a dispatcher]
What3Words / plus code: [///location]

Nearest A&E / ER: [name, address, drive time]
24h pharmacy: [name, address, opening hours]
Urgent care / walk-in: [name, address, hours]

Water shut-off: [exact location]
Gas shut-off: [exact location]
Fuse box: [exact location]
Fire extinguisher: [exact location]
First aid kit: [exact location]

Nearest exit from each bedroom: [describe]
Meeting point outside: [describe]

That's the whole thing. Below I'll explain why each line is there, what goes wrong when it isn't, and how to fill in the parts most hosts get lazy about.

Why the standard emergency sheet fails

Most of what's ranking for this search is a printable form with blank lines for "Doctor" and "Dentist." Those templates were built for parents leaving a babysitter with the kids. They weren't built for a Dutch couple in a Portuguese apartment at 2am who don't know the local emergency number, don't know the street name, and can't find the light switch in the hall.

That's the actual scenario. Design for it.

I've had two real emergencies across the properties I've managed. Neither one was a fire. One was a guest's kid falling off a bunk bed and needing stitches. The other was a washing machine hose that popped and put four centimetres of water across a ground floor. In both cases the guest called me first, not emergency services, because I was the only number they had.

That's not a compliment. That's a failure of the sheet.

The lines that actually matter

Emergency services number, written out

If you host anywhere with international guests, do not assume they know the number. It's 999 in the UK, 911 in the US and Canada, 112 across the EU (and 112 works in the UK too), 000 in Australia, 111 in New Zealand. A German guest in Scotland will dial 112 out of habit and it'll work. A guest from Texas will dial 911 in Spain and get nothing.

Write the local number in the biggest text on the page. If you're in the EU, write 112 and add "works from any phone, any country, no SIM needed." That last part matters more than you'd think, because a guest whose phone has no local data still assumes they can't call.

Your number, with a promise attached

"Host mobile" on its own is weak. "Host mobile, answers 24/7, if no answer call [backup]" tells a guest what to do when you're asleep or in a tunnel.

And give them a backup who is physically nearby. A cleaner, a neighbour, your co-host. Someone who can be at the door in twenty minutes with a key. My backup is the woman who cleans for me and lives four streets away, and she's saved me twice.

The address, written the way you'd say it out loud

This is the line hosts skip and it's the most important one on the sheet.

When a guest calls an ambulance, the first question is "where are you?" A guest who's been in your flat for six hours has no idea. They know the neighbourhood name from the listing and maybe the building colour. That's it.

So write the address exactly as a dispatcher needs to hear it: street number, street name, floor, flat number, city, postcode. Then add the entry detail that isn't on any map. "Blue door between the bakery and the dry cleaner." "Third building on the left after the roundabout, the one with scaffolding." Emergency vehicles have wasted whole minutes on my street looking for the right number.

Add a What3Words address or a Google plus code as well. Rural properties, in particular, need this. If your holiday let is down a track with no postal address the ambulance can find, three words are the difference.

Hospital, pharmacy, urgent care, with drive times

Not just the name. The drive time and whether it's open right now.

A guest with a sliced finger does not need A&E. They need the walk-in clinic that's open until 10pm, and they need to know it exists, or they'll spend five hours in an emergency department for something a nurse could handle in fifteen minutes.

Split it three ways: emergency department for the serious stuff, urgent care or walk-in for the medium stuff, 24-hour pharmacy for the "I forgot my inhaler" stuff. Include opening hours, because a pharmacy that closes at 6pm is useless information at midnight.

If you host outside your own country's healthcare system, add one line about how it works for visitors. In Spain, an EHIC or GHIC card gets an EU visitor treated. In the US, a guest needs to know an ambulance ride is billed. Two sentences of context saves a lot of confusion.

Shut-offs, described so a stranger can find them

"Water shut-off: under the sink" is not enough. There are three cupboards under my kitchen sink.

Write it like directions: "Water shut-off: kitchen, under the sink, back left corner, blue plastic tap. Turn clockwise until it stops." Then photograph it. A photo of the actual valve with a red circle drawn on it beats any amount of description, which is one of the arguments for keeping this in a digital guidebook rather than a printed welcome book: you can put the photo right there.

Same for the fuse box. Same for the gas shut-off. Same for the stopcock outside if you have one.

My washing machine flood happened because the guest didn't know where the stopcock was and I didn't pick up for eleven minutes. Four centimetres of water. Two days of drying fans. One review that mentioned it, politely, and still cost me the five stars.

Exits and a meeting point

One line per bedroom describing the nearest way out, plus where to gather outside. It takes two minutes to write and it's the part fire officers ask about if anything ever goes wrong.

If you have window locks, say where the keys are. A locked window in a bedroom with a jammed door is a genuinely dangerous combination, and guests have no way of knowing your key lives in the bedside drawer.

What to leave off

Don't put your insurance details, your alarm code, or the neighbour's number on a sheet that any guest can photograph. The emergency sheet is for guests. Anything that's really for you goes in your own records.

And don't turn it into a rules page. Guests skim this document under stress. Every line that isn't an emergency instruction makes the emergency instructions harder to find. Your quiet hours and your bin day belong in your house rules, not here.

Where to put it

Three places, and you want all three.

In your digital guidebook, as its own tab. Not buried on page nine of a house manual. Its own labelled section, reachable in one tap from the home screen. This is the version guests will actually use, because their phone is already in their hand.

Printed, on the fridge. A single A5 card. Phones die, phones get left in taxis, and the person who needs the number might not be the person who booked. Laminate it if you're feeling keen.

In your check-in message. One line: "Emergency numbers and shut-off valve locations are in the guide here, and on the fridge." That's it. You've now told them it exists, which is the only reason they'll remember it exists at 2am. If you're rewriting your messages anyway, the complete timeline for guest communication covers where this line fits.

Filling it in without spending an afternoon

Sit down with your phone and do it in one pass. Twenty minutes, honestly.

1. Walk the property and photograph every shut-off. Water, gas, electric, stopcock. Note the exact location as you go, in the words you'd use to describe it to someone standing in the room.
2. Search "A&E near [your postcode]" and "24 hour pharmacy near [your postcode]." Copy the addresses and check the opening hours on the actual listing, not the search snippet. Hours change.
3. Check drive times at a realistic hour. Not 3am with empty roads. Something like 6pm on a Friday, so the number is honest.
4. Write your address the way a dispatcher needs it, plus the landmark detail.
5. Ask one person who's never been to your property to find the fuse box using only your description. If they can't, rewrite it. This test takes four minutes and it's the only real quality check on the whole sheet.

Then set a calendar reminder for six months out. Pharmacies close. Your backup contact moves. The numbers rot quietly and you won't notice until you need them.

The version for hosts with multiple properties

If you run three or four places, resist the urge to make one master sheet. The addresses differ, the shut-offs differ, and a guest reading the wrong flat's fuse box location is worse off than a guest reading nothing.

Build one template with the fixed parts (emergency number, your mobile, the format) and swap the property-specific lines per listing. In GuestIntro you'd duplicate the guide and edit the emergency tab; whatever tool you use, the principle is to keep the structure identical so you only ever have to update one thing in one place.

A note on tone

Write this section flatter than the rest of your guide. No jokes, no exclamation marks, no "hopefully you'll never need this!" Everywhere else in your guidebook you're being warm and personal, and you should be. Here, be a road sign.

Compare:

Fingers crossed you won't need these, but just in case, here's a few useful numbers! 🙂

Emergency: 112. Host: +34 6XX XXX XXX.

The second one works when someone's hands are shaking. The first one doesn't.

What this does for your reviews

Nothing, most of the time. That's the honest answer. Ninety-nine stays out of a hundred, nobody opens this page and nobody mentions it.

The hundredth stay is the one that decides whether you get a five-star review with a story about how helpful you were, or a three-star review with the word "unprepared" in it. Guests forgive emergencies. They don't forgive feeling abandoned during one.

I'd put an emergency sheet in the same category as a first aid kit and a fire blanket: cheap, boring, and the thing that separates a host who's thought about it from one who hasn't. It's the same logic behind everything you need before your first guest arrives, and it sits naturally alongside the rest of what goes in a proper Airbnb guidebook.

Common questions

Should the emergency sheet be in multiple languages?

If more than about a fifth of your bookings come from one non-local language, yes, at least for that language. Emergency numbers and shut-off locations translate fine through a digital guide's language switcher. The landmark descriptions are the ones that need a human eye, because "the blue door by the bakery" goes strange through machine translation.

Do I need to list my address if it's already in the booking confirmation?

Yes. The booking confirmation lives in an app, behind a login, on the phone of whoever made the booking. The guest bleeding on your kitchen floor might be their friend.

What about carbon monoxide and smoke alarms?

List where they are and what the sounds mean, especially if you have both. Guests hear an unfamiliar chirp at 4am and assume it's a low battery. Sometimes it is. One line: "Smoke alarms: hallway and both bedrooms. Carbon monoxide alarm: kitchen, above the boiler. If it sounds, leave the property and call [number]."

Should I include a doctor's number?

Only if you have a genuine arrangement with one, like a clinic that sees visitors. A random local GP's number is noise, and a guest who calls it will be told to go to urgent care anyway.

Fill the template in this week. Photograph the valves, check the pharmacy hours, and put it somewhere a stranger can find in ten seconds. Then forget about it, which is the whole point.

If you're building your guide from scratch, the step-by-step house manual guide covers what goes around it. GuestIntro's free plan covers one property, so you can build the emergency tab and see how it reads on a phone before you commit to anything.