A Printed QR Code That Turns Guest WiFi Into Your Marketing List

Every guest who stays with you wants one thing within about ninety seconds of walking in: the WiFi password. For years hosts have handed it over on a card, a whiteboard, a laminated sheet on the bench. Nothing comes back the other way. The guest gets online, and you learn nothing about the four other people in the booking who never appear on the reservation.

The new WiFi QR code sign in BetterSTR flips that around. You print a designed A4 sign for each property, stick it where guests will look for the password anyway, and the sign does the asking. Scan, fill in a name and email, tap the marketing consent, and the network name and password appear with a tap-to-join code. The guest is online in seconds. You have a new contact.

Why a marketing list is worth having

Airbnb and Booking.com are happy to send you guests, and equally happy to keep them. You never get the guest's email, so the next time that family wants a week away they go back to the platform, search again, and pay the commission again. If they come back to you at all, it's luck.

An email list changes the maths. A short note before summer, a returning-guest offer, a heads-up when a cancellation opens a long weekend: these go to people who already know your place and liked it. One direct rebooking a year from a modest list pays for the whole thing many times over, and every booking that skips the platform skips the commission too. BetterSTR's WiFi Guest Marketing page keeps the list for you, per property, with a one-click CSV export for whatever email tool you use.

Built for consent, not just collection

Collecting emails only works if you can use them, and in most places that means clear consent. The guest form is designed around it:

• You choose what to ask for. Name, email, phone: each field can be required, optional or hidden in your WiFi settings. Ask for the minimum you need.
• Marketing consent is its own switch. A separate toggle on the form, with wording you write, so the guest is agreeing to hear from you rather than just agreeing to get online. You can require it or leave it optional.
• Every guest is tied to a property and a date, so you can show when and where consent was given.
• Delete on request. Any guest, or a whole batch, can be removed from your list in a click, which is what a GDPR erasure request needs from you.
• It's your data. It sits in your BetterSTR account, exportable at any time, and nobody else markets to it.

None of that makes you compliant on its own, that's still about how you use the list, but it means the tool isn't working against you.

What it costs

This is the part we're proud of. There is no monthly fee and nothing to buy. You pay 20c per contact, charged to your BetterSTR balance only when a guest completes the form and receives the password. A guest who scans again during the same stay isn't charged twice, and a scan that never becomes a completed form costs nothing at all. A quiet month with no guests costs you zero.

If the property is on BetterSTR Simple or a Premium Guide, scans are included. Nothing to pay.

For comparison, a typical WiFi marketing service starts at a monthly subscription per property plus its own hardware. Here you're paying a few cents for a contact you actually received.

Setting it up takes about a minute

1. Open WiFi QR Code in your BetterSTR account and switch on the properties you want.
2. Check the WiFi details guests will receive. They come from your PMS or guidebook, and you can edit them right there.
3. Choose a sign. There are six designs, from a plain "Free WiFi" layout to illustrated botanical, beach, alpine and Mediterranean welcome posters. Add the property name if you like, then download a PNG or print straight to A4.
4. Stick it on the fridge, and mention in your guidebook and arrival message that guests should scan the code for the WiFi.

Guests scan it with their phone camera. It opens your guidebook with the WiFi form ready, so they see your house rules and local tips at the same moment they get online.

The six signs

Here they are with the property name switched on. These examples link to our WiFi page rather than a real property, so feel free to scan one.

What it won't do, honestly

Your router still has a normal password. That means a guest who already knows it, or is told it by someone in the group, can skip the form. And because there's no controller on the network, we can't verify an email address: if someone types a made-up one, there's no way to disconnect them. For a lot of hosts that's a fine trade for zero hardware and zero fixed cost. If it isn't, read on.

Want every single guest? Add the captive portal

The QR sign is the entry point. The full version is the WiFi captive portal, and it uses the same guest form and the same marketing list, so nothing you've collected is lost when you upgrade.

With a captive portal there is no WiFi password. Every device that joins the network is sent to your guidebook and has to complete the form before it gets online. Nobody can skip it and nobody can share a password, because there isn't one. Emails are verified with a magic link, and a device that doesn't click it is disconnected after five minutes. You also get party prevention (see how many devices are connected, get alerted), remote reboots and control over how long access lasts.

It needs a UniFi or TP-Link Omada access point. If you already run one, setup is a few minutes in your BetterSTR account. If you don't, an entry-level access point costs about the same as one night's cleaning fee, and we list the ones we recommend. Pricing is $5 a month plus $2 per access point, and BetterSTR Simple includes up to 3 access points per property.

Plenty of hosts will run both: the sign at properties where a controller isn't practical, the portal where they want the complete picture. Either way, the guest list is one list, in one place, yours.