Want better communication with less effort? Use scheduled messages to save time by automatically sending messages based on triggers like a new reservation, check-in, or check-out.
The templates can be personalized with shortcodes, which are placeholders you can choose that automatically fill in guest, reservation, and listing details. You can access shortcodes through a drop-down menu when you compose a message. You’ll also have to add the corresponding information for each shortcode completed in your listings, including some of the optional info areas, or else the shortcode will display as unavailable in the message.
Common use cases for scheduled messaging and shortcodes (indicated in bold) include:
Sending a thank you message shortly after booking
Sending a check-in reminder a couple days before the trip starts
Sending a checkout reminder the morning before the trip ends
You can set up quick replies, which are essentially message templates, in the Messages tab to streamline your communication about common topics.
Quick replies are short messages that address specific topics. You can create them ahead of time to send when you’re chatting with a guest. You can personalize these messages by inserting shortcodes. These placeholders pull information from both your listing and your guest’s reservation, like your house rules and their name and check-in date.
You can always choose to skip, customize, or send messages early, and you’ll be able to review a full timeline of every message sent for each reservation.
If you want to send these templates manually instead of automatically, learn more about quick replies.
When you create and schedule a message for a listing, it will be applied to current and upcoming reservations. Scheduled messages are sent in the listing’s time zone. Also, setting the language of the template affects how your shortcodes are translated.
For last-minute bookings or short stays, some messages will be skipped by default. If you prefer to always send these messages and never skip them, you can switch the Always send this message toggle on before you save the template. You’ll receive a notification and email when your messages are skipped or sent at a non-scheduled time.
For example:
Overall, when the toggle is on, the messages scheduled for before check-in will never be skipped–we’ll send them immediately at the time of booking if the normal trigger has already passed. For any other messages that would normally be skipped because of a last-minute booking or short stay, they will instead be sent at the check-in time set for the listing.
You can check past and upcoming scheduled messages by reviewing the guest’s message thread and the scheduled message thread dialog.
You’ll get a list of all scheduled messages that have been sent or skipped, as well as messages that will be sent in the future. If a guest has multiple reservations, each reservation’s timeline is collapsible.
You can skip, send early or modify the content of an upcoming scheduled message before it’s sent—without changing the template.
Deleting a template will remove all future unsent scheduled messages for all listings related to the template.
If you host with a team, team members with guest management permissions will share the same set of scheduled messages, and all messages will be sent from the team owner. Any of the team members will be able to skip and edit upcoming scheduled messages, and create new templates that can be used by the team. Any saved messages you previously created will now be accessible in your team’s shared messages.
If you host with a co-host, your co-host can access your scheduled message history and upcoming message list from each conversation’s message thread, and will be able to skip and edit upcoming scheduled messages. Your co-host will also be able to apply their own templates to your listing, but they won’t be able to view or edit your templates.
Find the Scheduled by tag on the timeline to learn about your scheduled message details, including messages created by a co-host or team.
The full list of shortcodes includes: