Alexa Local Guide Script

Your guests just dropped their bags. It’s 5:30 p.m., they’re hungry, and they don’t know if they should order delivery or walk somewhere. Their phone batteries are at 18% from navigating from the airport. Yelp keeps recommending the chain restaurant by the highway. They scan your welcome book for ten seconds, can’t find what they want, and end up at the same generic burger spot every other tourist eats at — the one you’d never recommend.

The neighborhood actually has a small wood-fired pizza place two blocks east, a great taco truck that parks behind the gas station Friday nights, and a coffee shop with a back patio that opens at six. They never find any of those. An Alexa local guide script fixes that exact moment. The guest says "Alexa, restaurants nearby," and the Echo Dot 5 in the kitchen tells them, in 20 seconds, the three places you’d actually send a friend. It’s the natural follow-up to the Airbnb Alexa welcome script that runs the first 60 seconds after check-in.

Who this is for

Hosts in walkable neighborhoods, beach towns, mountain towns, college towns — anywhere the difference between "the chain on the highway" and "the spot locals love" is meaningful. It’s especially useful if your listing is in a city or rural area where the algorithm-driven apps lead guests astray.

You’ll get more five-star reviews mentioning the neighborhood, and fewer guests who tell you on checkout day that they wish they’d known about the bakery down the street. You don’t need to be a content creator to write this. You need three lists of three: three restaurants, three coffee places, three things to do. That’s it. Anything more and Alexa starts sounding like a tour-bus pamphlet, and guests stop listening.

When to use this template

Build a voice-triggered routine, not a scheduled one. Guests don’t want a 6 p.m. announcement telling them where to go — they want answers when they ask. Good trigger phrases: "Alexa, restaurants nearby," "Alexa, where should we eat," "Alexa, coffee shops," "Alexa, things to do."

You can build separate routines for each category or one master routine that covers them all. The split-routine approach is cleaner because guests asking about coffee don’t need to hear about hiking trails first. Update the script seasonally. The taco truck moves in winter. The coffee shop changes its weekend hours in summer. A stale local guide is worse than no guide — guests trust it, drive there, find a closed door, and put it in their review. Set a calendar reminder every three months to check your recommendations are still accurate.

Copy-and-paste version

Standard version. Three picks per category, walking distance noted, one detail that helps guests decide. Replace placeholders with your actual neighborhood spots. About 25 seconds per category.

For dinner nearby, three good options. First, Salt & Char on Maple Street, about a five-minute walk — wood-fired pizza, no reservations, gets busy after seven. Second, Casa Lola, eight minutes south on Elm — family-run Mexican, cash preferred, closed Sundays. Third, the brewery at Mill Pond, about ten minutes by car — full kitchen, dog-friendly patio, last orders at nine. Want coffee or things to do instead? Just ask.

Short version

For minimalist listings or guests who just want a quick answer.

Three nearby: Salt & Char for pizza, five minutes walk. Casa Lola for tacos, eight minutes. Mill Pond Brewery for beers and dinner, ten minutes by car.

Warm version

For family rentals, longer stays, hosts who want to feel like a friend on the trip.

Happy to help. If you want pizza and you don’t mind a wait, Salt & Char on Maple is great — the place fills up by seven, but it’s worth it. If you’re craving Mexican, Casa Lola down on Elm is family-run and the carnitas are excellent — bring cash, they prefer it. And if you want to make a night of it, Mill Pond Brewery has a full kitchen and a dog-friendly patio about ten minutes by car. All three are favorites of ours.

Luxury version

For premium listings where you want to feel curated rather than chatty.

Three nearby restaurants we recommend. Salt & Char, a wood-fired pizzeria five minutes on foot. Casa Lola, an eight-minute walk for traditional Mexican. And Mill Pond Brewery, ten minutes by car, with a seasonal tasting menu. A printed guide with full addresses and phone numbers is on the welcome desk.

Building the coffee and things-to-do versions

Same structure, different category. For coffee: pick three spots, note the walk time and one detail (best for laptops, fastest for grab-and-go, best pastries). For things to do: pick three options across price points (free walk, paid attraction, weather-dependent activity). The structure that works on every category is "name, distance, one specific detail." Guests don’t want adjectives. They want decision-quality information in 20 seconds.

Coffee example: Three nearby coffee shops. Bean Counter on Main, two-minute walk, opens at six, best for grab-and-go. Lila’s, four minutes east, opens at seven, has a back patio and free Wi-Fi if you’re working. The bakery at the corner of Elm and Third opens at five-thirty for early risers, and the croissants are unreal.

Things-to-do example: If you’ve got a free afternoon, three ideas. The Riverside Trail starts a block south — flat, two miles round-trip, great for kids. The Heritage Museum is fifteen minutes by car, ten dollars admission, closed Mondays. And on Saturday mornings, the farmers market at Town Square runs from eight to noon. Free, walkable, dogs welcome.

How to set it up in the Alexa app

Open the Alexa app on the phone signed into the property’s account.
Go to More, then Routines, then the plus icon.
Name the first routine "Restaurants nearby."
Set the trigger to Voice. Type "restaurants nearby" as the phrase.
Add an Alexa Says action and paste the dinner script. Chain a second Alexa Says action if your script runs over the 250-character limit.
Set the From Device to the Echo at the property by name.
Save. Add alternate trigger phrases: "where should we eat," "dinner ideas," "food nearby."
Repeat for "coffee shops" and "things to do."

If you have multiple Echo devices, you don’t need to duplicate the routines — the trigger fires whichever device hears it. The response plays from the same device, which is exactly what you want. The same multi-device behavior is worth knowing for any of the Alexa guest script examples that hosts use across the property.

How to customize the picks

Three rules for picking the actual recommendations.

Pick places you would send your in-laws to. Not your hipster cousin. Not the place with the best Yelp rating. The place that handles a wide range of guests.
Cover three different price points or vibes. Don’t pick three pizza places. Pick a casual, a sit-down, and a special-occasion option.
Include one walkable, one short drive, one farther afield. Guests with kids walk. Guests on a date drive.

If you want help converting your raw list into a clean script, drop your three picks into any AI tool with: "Turn these three restaurants into a 25-second Alexa script for short-term rental guests. Include name, walking distance, and one helpful detail per spot." You’ll get back something usable in seconds. Adjust to taste — the AI doesn’t know whether the place takes reservations on Mondays.

Where to place the Echo

The kitchen wins again. Guests ask about food in the kitchen — that’s just where the question naturally surfaces. The living room is a strong second. Avoid the bedroom; that’s not where dinner planning happens.

If you have an Echo Show 8 on a coffee table or counter, even better — you can build a Visual response that displays a map link the guest can tap, but that’s overkill for most listings. The Echo Dot 5 with a clean voice answer covers 90% of the value. Pair the routine with a printed local guide on the kitchen counter. The voice answer is for the spontaneous question; the printed card is for guests who want to write down the address or screenshot it. Belt and suspenders.

Privacy, testing, and the local-business note

Privacy here is straightforward — you’re recommending public businesses, not sharing anything sensitive. Disclose the Echo in your listing description per Airbnb policy and move on. The bigger consideration is the relationship with the businesses you recommend. Walk in once a quarter and tell them you send guests their way. They’ll appreciate it, and they’ll occasionally do something nice in return — a small discount for guests who mention your listing, or a heads-up when they’re closing for vacation. That kind of local relationship is the actual moat for a short-term rental.

Testing matters more here than for most routines because Alexa stumbles on business names. "Salt & Char" might come out as "salt and char" or "salt ampersand char," depending on how you wrote it. "Casa Lola" sounds great until Alexa decides to stress the wrong syllable. Test every name out loud, adjust the spelling phonetically if needed (write "Cassa Lola" with two s’s if Alexa softens it), and re-test. Five minutes saves a year of mispronunciations. The same testing discipline applies to the Alexa house manual script that covers trash, parking, and quiet hours.

Fallback plan

Print the local guide and prop it on the kitchen counter. Three sections: eat, drink, do. Three picks per section. Same picks the Echo announces, formatted with addresses, hours, and phone numbers. If the Echo is muted or down, the printed guide is right there. If the printed guide gets shoved into a drawer, the Echo answers when asked. Either path, the guest gets the right answer in under a minute.

FAQ

Should the Alexa local guide script change for different seasons?

Yes, especially if your area has seasonal businesses. Coffee shops with patios, farmers markets, outdoor restaurants, and weekend food trucks all have season-specific hours. Update the routine quarterly — once when summer starts, once before fall, once for the holidays, once when things slow down again. Each update takes ten minutes if you keep the same three slots and just swap names and details.

Can guests ask for directions through Alexa?

Alexa can give rough distance and walking time, but it’s not a navigation app. The cleanest move is to keep your script focused on names and detail, then point guests to their phone for the actual route. If your guests have an Echo Show 8, you can include a phrase like "tap the screen to see directions" and configure it to display a map. Most hosts skip this and let guests use Google Maps for the routing.

What if a recommended business closes permanently?

Edit the routine within 24 hours of finding out. A guest sent to a closed restaurant is a one-star review waiting to happen. Set up a recurring monthly check-in — just walk past or call your three dinner spots once a month. Add a note in your phone with the date you last verified each recommendation. That habit alone separates hosts whose local guides are trustworthy from hosts whose guides are stale.

Should I recommend chain restaurants too?

Generally no. Guests can find chains on their own — the value of your script is the local picks they wouldn’t otherwise discover. Exception: if your nearest grocery is fifteen miles away and there’s a Whole Foods two blocks down, name it. Practical recommendations beat ideological ones. You’re solving a problem, not curating a magazine.

Next steps

Pick three restaurants, three coffee shops, three things to do, then build three voice routines this weekend. Test each from the kitchen with the actual trigger phrase. Update your printed welcome card to match. The full Echo welcome scripts hub covers the rest of the host playbooks, and the main Alexa routines pillar has the broader collection.