Airbnb Message Automation
So you’ve decided to put your spare bedroom on Airbnb. You’ll find yourself using Airbnb messaging services to send and receive a lot of messages. It’s important to understand what messages you need to send and how to automate them so they don’t take over your life.
This post explains when to send messages, how to write good ones, and three levels of message automation. It can help prevent Airbnb messaging from taking over your life. send and how to automate them so they don’t take over your life.
When We Send Messages
You need to message your guests and potential guests several times about their stay.
Respond To Inquiries
Potential guests have looked at your spare room listing on Airbnb and have questions. At this stage, the only way you can answer their questions is with the Airbnb messaging system. It’s a text based system and Airbnb doesn’t give you or the Guest any other way to make contact until there is a booking.
An inquiry is what a guest asks before they decide to book. Some frequent ones are:
- What parking is available?
- Can we check in early?
- Can we check out late?
- How far are you from the airport?
- Can we check-in after our 2 AM airport arrival?
Many guests will ask the same questions so you should prepare standard answers to the ones you receive most.
Requests To Book
When the guest decides they would like to stay in your room, they may instant-book or request a booking. As a host, you can set up some conditions guests must meet to instant-book.
They may have more questions or you may be asking them questions to be comfortable with them. Their booking isn’t final so you must use the Airbnb messaging system to communicate.
We have a list of questions we ask every guest. Questions like:
- Why are you coming to our area?
- Who is coming with you?
- What time do you expect to arrive?
- Are you willing to social distance or wear a mask in the common areas of our home?
Ask enough questions to get comfortable before sharing your home.
Unlike other Airbnb arrangements, you will be in your home with your guests. It’s different than having someone stay in your place when you are away. You need to feel safe.
We make sure they have provided government ID to Airbnb. This helps because we know that Airbnb can find them if they do damage. It also makes it harder for guests who Airbnb has blocked to book again using another account.
Booking Confirmation
When a guest books your spare room, Airbnb will notify them of the booking. It’s a good idea for you to introduce yourself as well.
At this stage, we confirm the reservation details. If their reservation is less than 3 days away, we provide check in instructions. Otherwise, we tell them we will send check in instructions closer to their arrival date.
You want to make them comfortable coming to stay with you. You want to make them feel welcome.
Check In Instructions
About three days before a guest is due to arrive, we send check in instructions for them.
We tried sending them earlier, but many guests forgot or lost the instructions. We tried sending them later, but had guests asking check in questions before we sent them. So three days ahead seems to be about the right time, as long as they know the instructions are coming.
We include: the address, the name of their room, where to park, which door to use, their access code, where the light switches are, and how to get to their room once they are in the house. We also include the check in and check out date and time. Try to include everything they need in case you aren’t there when they arrive.
The more complete you make these instructions more comfortable your guest will be.
Covid Questions
When COVID-19 hit, we shut down our spare rooms for a while. When we reopened, we added a message that we send about five hours before our guests check in time.
We ask if they have any COVID-19 symptoms or have traveled outside the country in the past 14 days.
We do this so we can cancel, or ask the guests to cancel, if they have. We haven’t had to do this yet.
We’ve only been sending this message for a short time. Everyone we have sent it to responded quickly. We thought they might take offense to these questions, but so far that hasn’t happened. Our priority is keeping everyone safe.
Guests seem happy to know we are serious about their safety and ours.
During Stay
We’ve heard that some hosts send messages to their guests during their stay. They mean to help guests feel welcome and answer their questions and concerns.
Because we are in our home with our guests most of the time, we don’t usually send out any messages during their stay.
After Check Out
After your guest checks out, you might want to send a thank you message.
The day after they have checked out, we ask our guests what we could have done better to earn a five star review.
How To Send A Good Airbnb Message
Whenever you send a message, make sure you create a good Airbnb message. You are trying to attract guests to stay in your spare room. Your potential guests can’t tell by your smile or the warmth of your voice that you are happy to serve them. You have to tell them. You have to say that you look forward to meeting them. You need to tell them you look forward to being their host or that you would like to have them stay with you. Say thank you whenever it makes sense and please whenever you ask them to do something. Also remember that for them, their first name is the sweetest word in any language!
Whenever possible, avoid saying ‘no’ to guests. If you won’t do what they’re asking, tell them what you will do. This comes across as positive where saying ‘no’ comes across as negative.
Rather than saying you don’t have off-street parking, say you do have plenty of parking on the street. You send a positive message but get the same truth across. People don’t like it when you tell them ‘no.’
Message Automation
If you don’t want Airbnb messaging to take over your life, find tools to help. Consider three levels of automation.
Automation With Airbnb Saved Messages
The first level of automation is to use “Saved responses“ in the Airbnb messaging system. This feature allows you to save copies of messages you use over and over. It means you can create standard answers to questions that come often.
What it doesn’t do is to personalize the messages. It doesn’t add customer names, listing details or booking details.
We got around this by putting in placeholders like XXXXX for the guest’s first name. We had copies of messages for different listings. We created placeholders for booking details like check in date and checkout date.
It took some time to get it set up, but once it was, we could pick the correct response for the question and listing. Then replace the placeholders before sending the message. This was simpler than typing the whole message every time.
I have to apologize to several guests after sending them messages starting with “Hi XXXXX.” I had failed to replace the placeholder before sending the message. Oops!
Partial Automation With Smartbnb Canned Responses
We now use the Smartbnb Service instead of Airbnb saved responses. The Smartbnb Service has “canned messages.”
Like Airbnb saved messages, canned messages let you save messages you send often.
Unlike saved messages, they let you insert placeholders that Smartbnb recognizes. Smartbnb replaces placeholders with booking, guest, or listing information. So I type “Hi %guest_first_name%,” at the start of my message.
This allows you to create one message for many listings, guests, and reservations.
It saves you the trouble of having to edit your message to add these details each time you send a message. The Smartbnb system adds the information about the guest, listing and booking automatically.
Automated Responses
Up till now, we discussed messaging systems that need you to send each message.
There are some situations when you know in advance what message to send. For example, when a guest completes a booking, you should send a confirmation message. Three days before the guest arrives, you should send a message with check in instructions. You need to send the same message every time one of these, or other, events occur.
Because you know the message needs to be sent at these times, you can completely automate some messages. Events can trigger messages and software can add the details using placeholders. All you need is the right software.
Several online services can send these messages automatically for you. We have used Host Tools and Smartbnb.
First we used Host Tools (hosttools.com). It seems to be the most affordable service that will send messages automatically for you. You set the rules from their phone apps or website. We started with it because it was the most affordable option. Last we checked, it’s still very affordable for the time it will save you.
We use it to send out messages after our guests have confirmed bookings. This means for booking confirmations, check in instructions and after check out messages.
We have now started using Smartbnb to automate more messages. Smartbnb allows you to automate ratings and provide standard answers to certain questions. It even detects when a guest asked those questions.
At the moment we are trying out these features. So far we have Smartbnb responding to inquiries and booking requests. The robot acknowledges receipt of the message and answers some questions. We tell guests these responses are automated and that I review the responses. I answer any questions the robot didn’t.
This means that every message gets a quick response. Quick responses lead to more guests.
Questions
Our goal is to help you succeed at Airbnbing your spare room. We would love hear from you with other question you have for us to answer. Please contact us or comment below with your questions.