Domestic Intelligence
Exploring the Craft of Hosting
Welcome! I’m glad you’re here.
I’m Elise Lauterbach, an artist and former college professor, who surprised herself by creating one of the most successful and beloved small short term rentals on Airbnb. In 2020, Airbnb tapped me as one of their 50 top-performing hosts and asked me to mentor new hosts for their platform. Since then, I’ve thought even more deeply about why hosting is important, how it is informed by history, and how thinking about the narrative of the guest experience can help build better businesses for hosts.
I hope Domestic Intelligence will help you cultivate a space that honors your unique vision. Whether you are welcoming guests into a short-term rental or opening your home to friends, you will find essays and insights that prioritize connection over hustle, and soul over spreadsheets.
This is hospitality design for the deliberate creator.
I hope you’ll subscribe to receive regular reflections, historical inspirations, and prose designed to help you host with purpose, depth, and your own distinct voice.
Explore the Archive here.
Late Check-out: A Field Guide to the 5 Types of Guests Who Will Ask for a Late Checkout & How to Respond to Each
Late checkout requests aren't all the same request. Here's how to read what five types of guests actually want, and answer accordingly, to help them have a good expereince, and to optimize your operations.
Handling Summer Stress from Summer Guests
Summer guests arrive more brittle than October ones, and no one quite says why. A working list of techniques for staying warm, holding boundaries, and not taking the thermostat complaint personally.
The House Manual I've Been Writing for Thirteen Years
After 13 years of hosting, my house manual is the single most important thing I've built for my Airbnb — and most new hosts skip it entirely.
A great house manual isn't a checklist. It's the difference between a guest who feels lost and one who feels genuinely welcomed. It's where you share which local restaurant is actually worth the drive, which trail delivers the view, which farm stand is run by people whose values you trust. It's where your barn cats get names and your goats get feeding instructions. It's hospitality in document form — and it starts earning you five-star reviews before your guests even arrive.
If you're just starting out on Airbnb, this is the first thing you should build.
What Your House Rules Are Really Saying (And How to Make Them Say Something Better; or, Lions can be lambs)
House rules occupy a strange psychological territory in the short-term rental world, in that they are both entirely necessary and remarkably easy to get wrong in ways that cost you bookings and goodwill before a guest has ever set foot in your space.
The Ineffable and the Practical: What Actually Goes Into an Extraordinary Five-Star Stay
The sensory details — smell, texture, the unexpected small touch — that generate 5-star reviews and repeat guests at Airbnb and Short Term Rentals.
Your Listing Photos Are a First Date
The question worth asking about your listing photos is not only whether they are beautiful, but whether they are honest in an aspirational way — whether they show your space at its genuine best rather than at an idealized fiction of its best.
How To Cancel a Airbnb Reservation Without Penalty in Bad Weather
Sometimes weather-related cancellations are inevitable. Here’s how to make sure your guest gets a full refund, and you aren’t penalized.
Most hosting advice is all systems and shortcuts.
But the stays people love? They’re thoughtful, intentional, and a little bit unexpected.
Domestic Intelligence is where you’ll learn how to solve real hosting challenges with creativity—not just copy what everyone else is doing.
Hosting well is a nuanced, thoughtful, and reaffirming process, and in my blog we get into its history and its complications.
Subscribe for fresh ideas (and better stays)