The 2026 World Cup is bringing you guests who don't speak your language

The World Cup runs from 11 June to 19 July, and if you host in one of the sixteen cities, you've probably already felt it. Airbnb says searches in the host cities are up around 80% on last year, nightly rates have roughly doubled, and there's a $750 bonus for new hosts who take their first booking before the end of July. It's a good time to have a place near a stadium.

Here's the part the revenue calculators skip. The guest coming for a match is not your usual guest. Most have never set foot in your city. Plenty don't speak much English. And they all turn up in the same few weeks with the same handful of questions.

Same questions, far more of them

You already know the questions. Where's the WiFi, how do I get in, how do I get to the stadium, where's somewhere good to eat. Normally you field those a few times a week. During the tournament it's a few times a day, some of it through a translation app, some of it at 2am because the guest has just landed from another time zone. That is a rough way to spend the best booking month you'll have in years.

A guide they can read themselves, in their language

The thing that holds up under that load is a guest guide the visitor can read on their own, in their own language, the second a question comes up.

That's the idea behind staymanual. You write your guide once, in English. The guest scans a QR code on the fridge or taps the link in your welcome message, and the guide opens on their phone in their language. Nothing to download, nothing to log into. A guest from São Paulo reads it in Portuguese, a guest from Osaka reads it in Japanese, and you only wrote it the once.

What to put in it for a World Cup guest

A few sections earn their keep for this crowd in particular:

• Getting to the stadium. Which train or line, where to catch it, roughly how long it takes, and the taxi fallback for after the final whistle. This is the one you'll get asked most.
• Check-in and WiFi. The usual two, written for someone who has been travelling for a day and is not at their sharpest.
• A few places to eat and watch the other games. Not a city guide. Four or five spots you'd send a friend to, including one that'll have the other matches on.
• Check-out. Kept short.

Set it up before your first match-week guest

Two reasons to do this now rather than after the first booking checks in. The obvious one: the wave has already started. The other is that the guide outlasts the tournament. Every international guest you host after July gets the same benefit, and you build it only once.

You can put one together free for a single property, every feature, no card on file. Start free and have your guide ready before your first match-week guest arrives.