Bedside table setup for Airbnb: what I put in each bedroom and what guests notice in reviews

For two years I treated bedside tables as furniture. Surfaces. Places for lamps. I gave them roughly zero thought beyond whether they matched the rest of the room.

Then a guest left a three-star review. The headline was fine. The cleanliness score was 5. But under 'value' she wrote: 'Lovely flat, nowhere to charge my phone by the bed, had to use the kitchen socket.' And I thought: fair.

I've now spent two years actively thinking about bedside tables, and it turns out there's a surprising amount to get wrong.

The basics that guests expect

A lamp. Obvious, but I had a property with a ceiling pendant and no bedside lamp for eight months. The remote was on a shelf across the room. One guest turned it off at the wall and couldn't work out how to turn it back on. She messaged at 11pm. Never again.

A socket. Ideally at table height, not requiring them to crawl behind the bed. If you're retrofitting a flat with no sockets near the bed, get an extension lead with a built-in USB port and run it cleanly behind the headboard. Yes, it's a compromise. It's a much better compromise than 'go plug in in the kitchen.'

A glass of water. I leave a sealed 500ml bottle of still water per bed per night on every turnover. Cost: roughly 18p per bottle in cases of 24 from Costco. Guests mention this more than almost anything else. I've had 'lovely touch' in review notes at least twelve times across five properties.

A copy of the WiFi password. Even if it's in the guidebook. Even if it's on a card by the front door. Even if they got it in the check-in message. Put it on the bedside table too. People lie in bed and want to scroll. They will not get up to find the card in the kitchen.

What I've added over time

A small notebook and a pen. Not a nice one — a Muji-style softcover A6 notebook (about 30p each in multipacks from Amazon Business) and a cheap biro. Guests occasionally use these to leave a note for cleaning staff or each other. One guest wrote me a two-page thank-you letter. I was surprised by how much it meant.

A lip balm and hand cream. On the double and king rooms only. I use original formula Burt's Bees and a small tube of Neutrogena Norwegian Formula. The hand cream in particular gets used and mentioned. These cost roughly £1.20 per unit at bulk purchase from Amazon. I lose about 40% of them over the course of a year — they get taken home, occasionally. I've priced this in.

A plug-in night light on the floor between bed and bathroom. One of those 40p dusk-to-dawn LED things that turns on automatically. I added these after a guest banged her knee at 3am. Not complained about it — just mentioned it in passing when she messaged about something else. The lights cost 45p each from Amazon and they genuinely get used.

What I removed

Alarm clock. Every guest has a phone. Physical alarm clocks create problems: wrong time (power cut, not set right), guests don't know how to operate them, and I had one with an alarm set that went off at 4am for a different guest. Removed from all five properties. Not a single review mention since.

Books. I had a small selection of paperbacks at the Edinburgh flat — nice idea, full of good intentions, terrible in practice. They went missing, got left in different rooms, guests put their own books back in different order. I replaced them with a simple Kindle Paperwhite that lives in a charging dock on the bookshelf. Guests can download their own books. I've had three reviews mention 'the Kindle was a nice touch'.

Decorative throw pillows. This is a bedside-adjacent issue but relevant: every throw cushion I removed from a bed reduced my turnover time by about two minutes. Across five properties, eight beds, that's twenty cushions that are now in storage. My cleaner is considerably more cheerful.

Charging specifically

This is where I've spent the most effort. I've written a separate post about USB sockets. Short version: I retrofitted MK Electric dual USB-A/USB-C sockets in the main bedrooms at three properties. Cost £68–95 per room depending on the rewire complexity. Worth it for the reviews.

For properties where I haven't done the electrical work yet, I use Anker 30W charging bricks with a 1.5m USB-C cable and a 1.5m Lightning cable in a small cable tidy by the lamp. I replace these when they disappear. At about £4 per set from Amazon Business, I can absorb a few losses a year.

The thing guests hate most is a short cable. A 1m cable means they can't use their phone while it's charging on the bedside table. I only use 1.5m and 2m cables. This is not a small thing.

Both sides of the bed

If it's a double or above, replicate everything. Socket on both sides. Water bottle on both sides. Lamp on both sides (or a controllable central lamp). I had a property where only one bedside table had a socket and guests consistently mentioned it. Couples need symmetry. One person doing all the charging on their side is a minor but ongoing friction.

What this costs

Fully fitted across one double room:

• Night light: 45p
• 500ml water bottle: 18p per night
• Notepad and pen: 50p
• Lip balm: 75p (amortised over multiple stays before it disappears)
• Hand cream: 45p (same)
• USB charging brick and cables: £4 (amortised over ~8 months before loss/wear)

Per-turnover cost: roughly £1.80. Per-year cost for one double room, at 100 turnovers: around £180. Five properties, multiple bedrooms, maybe £700–900 per year across the portfolio. That feels like a lot until you read the reviews it generates.

One more thing

I leave a small folded card that says: 'If you need anything during your stay, message us on Airbnb — we aim to reply within the hour.' Not a manual, not a welcome pack — just one line, on cream cardstock, from a Moo.com notecards order I did eighteen months ago. Eight hundred cards for about £45. I'm still using them.

Guests read what's in front of them when they're lying in bed. Make that content earn its place.