How To Automate Airbnb Messaging with Hospitable

Communication is an extremely important aspect of the Airbnb platform and a key part of getting 5-star reviews. Automated messaging can help hosts to be consistently available in case issues arise at their listing. Communication is part of the entire Airbnb culture, and hosts that don’t communicate well are likely to receive bad reviews.

Unlike a hotel, Airbnb delivers a personal and informal experience. Airbnb allows hosts to save and send message templates and send simple, personalized messages through the platform. But professional Superhosts can take that one step further by including personal content like the guest’s name while also confirming their specific dates and trip details, scheduling cleanings, and publishing reviews for guests on their behalf.

You can automate Airbnb messaging using Hospitable, so you can maintain the personalized experience for your esteemed guests while gaining all of the additional benefits of Hospitable’s service.

Keep It Personal With Automated Messaging

Before I found Hospitable, I had over 20 listings with guests checking in almost every day! Sometimes I had to send 5 check-in messages a day. It was horrible, I felt constantly stressed having to keep up with every calendar. I had to constantly communicate with the cleaning and spa maintenance staff to let them know when and where our check-ins were.

When I inevitably forgot to send the check-in messages, I was hit with a slew of bad reviews saying “host unreachable”. You never want potential guests fearing that they won’t be able to reach you if they have a question, or worse, an emergency.

Then I Discovered Hospitable!

I had considered using software-based automation before, but many of them wanted to charge 2% or more of our gross revenue for every listing just to automate Airbnb messaging! That’s absurd, I thought. When I found Hospitable, which was then known as Smartbnb, I was shocked at how low the flat pricing was, and they even offered a free trial! I was surprised by how easy it was to learn how to use the app and how much control I had over the customization of the messages and how or when they were sent. As Hospitable, they have optimized their offerings and offer more peace of mind for us as hosts and for our guests.

Hospitable’s Ease of Use Is Key

For a lot of tasks, automation can definitely seem like a complicated procedure. With Hospitable, it is simple to set up messaging “templates” that can automate Airbnb messaging. For example, when we receive a new inquiry, we send out the following message:

Hello %guest_first_name%! Thanks a lot for your interest in %listing_name% for your trip to %listing_city%! I wanted to confirm right away that it would be a pleasure to host you from %check_in% to %check_out% (%guests% for %nights%). The total price would be %total%. Although the %listing_type% is still available at this time, I may have received requests for those dates. I would advise you to book quickly. %answers% If you need any additional information, please feel free to ask, it would be my pleasure to answer you. I look forward to hosting you! Best regards, %host_name%

As you can see, there is a lot of information between the “%” signs that gets filled in by the app automatically. We’ve save a ton of time automating our inquiries, booking confirmations, check-in messages, check-out instructions, review reminders, and more. You can even customize these messages to detect and address any questions your guest may include in their booking confirmation message.

It Even Does Reviews!

Not only can it customize your messages, even does reviews! Hospitable saves you time by automating Airbnb reviews for you. By default, it includes standard review templates it will rotate through and you can, of course, add your own. Unless you change the setting, it will leave a review 3 days after check-out.

You can also edit the review if the guest doesn’t deserve a good one. If you are expecting a guest to leave a poor review, you can delay the publishing of your own review until the last second. This will protect your rating and push the review further down the page on your listing if you allow other reviews to publish before it.

Let Hospitable Automate Airbnb Messaging to Your Team and Staff

Hospitable can also text or email your cleaning company, your spa service, your manager, or anyone else on your team. You can set it to send them notifications every time a new booking is made, changed, or even canceled. It’s possible to include a lot of information in these alerts – such as how many people are staying, how many nights, their names, and pretty much any information you’d be able to find on the Airbnb reservation. We also like to make sure everyone gets a text the morning of check-in so we have one more safeguard to prevent missing a cleaning.

Market Reports

In addition to allowing you to automate Airbnb messaging, Hospitable can also generate daily market reports for each of your listings. These market reports break down all the dates for the next couple of months and how competitive your listing is for those specific dates. This is a huge benefit and one of our best secrets. You can use these search rankings to see how well your listing is performing. Your search ranking allows you to price your listing more competitively and maximize your reviews. Read more about how important this is in our search rankings article.

Heartbeats! – Constantly Updated Calendars

Hospitable also features Heartbeats. Heartbeats constantly sends a signal to Airbnb that your calendar is updated. This helps boost your listing’s search rankings by telling Airbnb that your calendar is current and you are ready to host.

Do you automate Airbnb messaging? What are your best templates and tricks? Tell us in the comments.