Airbnb’s scheduled messages are genuinely good and take about ten minutes to set up. Most hosts configure them once and never revisit the setup, which is a shame, because a few details separate automation that saves you time from automation that generates unread notifications.
Here is the setup, and then the honest part about what it does not fix.
Setting up scheduled messages
In the Airbnb host menu, go to Messages, then Scheduled messages, then create a new one. Each message needs four decisions.
The trigger. Airbnb offers booking confirmed, a chosen number of days before check-in, check-in day, a number of days after check-in, and after checkout. This is the single most important choice, and the most common mistake is sending everything at booking, when the guest is least able to act on it.
The timing within the day. You can set the hour. Send check-in details in the morning, not at 11pm the night before when the guest is asleep or already travelling.
The content. Write it as you would speak. Airbnb provides shortcodes that fill in per guest, and using them is what stops automated messages reading like form letters.
The listings. Apply per listing or across all of them. If your properties have different access instructions, do not share one template between them, because the day you edit it for one property you will break the other.
Useful shortcodes
These fill in automatically when the message sends:
%guest_first_name%for the guest’s first name%listing_name%for the property%check_in_date%and%check_out_date%%check_in_time%and%check_out_time%%confirmation_code%%host_first_name%
A message that opens with the guest’s name and names the actual property reads as though you wrote it that morning. One that opens with “Dear Guest” does not.
The five worth automating
More automation is not better. These five cover nearly everything without becoming noise.
1. Booking confirmation, triggered immediately. Thank them, confirm the dates and property, say when full check-in details will arrive. Keep it short. Its job is reassurance, not information.
2. Pre-arrival details, three days before check-in. Address, directions, parking, what to bring. Three days gives the guest time to read it while planning travel, and time to ask you something before they are standing outside.
3. Check-in day, the morning of arrival. The door code, the wifi password, your number. This is the message that decides whether you get a phone call, so make it short enough to read on a phone at an airport.
4. Mid-stay check, for bookings over four nights. One line asking whether everything is fine. This catches small problems while you can still fix them, which is considerably cheaper than reading about them in a review.
5. Checkout, the morning of departure. Checkout time, what to do with keys and rubbish, thank you. A separate review request a day after checkout tends to work better than bundling it here.
Common mistakes
Front-loading everything at booking. The guest books in March for a stay in July. Nothing you send in March survives until arrival.
Automating your way out of a conversation. If a guest asks a question, a scheduled message that ignores it makes things worse. Automation covers predictable moments, not replies.
Sharing templates across dissimilar listings. The reason you eventually send the wrong door code.
Writing for yourself instead of the guest. You know where the bin store is. Read each template as someone who has never been to the building.
The part scheduling does not fix
Now the uncomfortable bit. You can get all of the above right and still get the call at the door.
Scheduling controls when a message is sent. It has no influence over whether it is read. The guest booked weeks ago, has not reopened the Airbnb app since, and very likely has push notifications off. Airbnb emails a copy, which lands among every other travel email that month. They are in transit, on mobile data, possibly abroad, and they need a door code.
Nothing is broken. The message was sent, delivered, and available. It just was not seen at the moment it mattered. This is why hosts add a second reminder, then a third, and still get the call. More messages into a channel nobody checks produces more unread messages, and eventually a guest who feels spammed and uninformed.
It is a delivery problem, not a scheduling problem.
Moving the same messages to a channel guests read
Measured WhatsApp read rates run around 60 to 70%, roughly three times a typical email open rate. The larger difference is that guests reply, because WhatsApp is a thread they already have open all day rather than an app they need to remember.
You do not have to rewrite anything. The five messages above are the right five regardless of channel. What changes is where they arrive. Notify My Guest connects to Smoobu, Lodgify, Guesty and Hostex, reads each confirmed booking, and sends your template over WhatsApp from your own number. Numbers missing a country code are corrected, and if a guest is not on WhatsApp you are told rather than left assuming.
Keep Airbnb’s scheduled messages running as a fallback. Add WhatsApp for the ones that actually have to land.
Start your 14-day free trial and send your next booking a WhatsApp welcome automatically. No credit card required.
