Learn what the Hostaway Inbox includes, how guest messaging works across channels, and where to manage conversations, automations, and communication settings.

Inbox

The Inbox centralizes all host-guest communications in one place, eliminating the need to switch between different OTA applications and even devices to save time and increase responsiveness. With the ability to send channel messages, email, SMS, and WhatsApp messages, you'll only need one inbox to communicate with your guests.
 

Highlights

• Ability to send messages via OTA API for Airbnb, Booking.com, and Vrbo API connections. For other channels, messaging is still based on an email proxy system
  • Due to integration limitations, messages from Booking.com will be displayed if they are related to confirmed reservations and not inquiries. This is different from Vrbo, in which inquiries are displayed in the Hostaway Dashboard > Inbox
• Airbnb co-host messaging capabilities. Ability to select the message sender from the list of available Airbnb co-hosts. From the Hostaway Inbox, you can choose the account with co-hosting permissions that you want to use as the message's sender.
  
  
  • Only for manually sent messages, not auto-messages
  • The user selection can only be performed on the dashboard, not the mobile app
  • The user's selection for each reservation via the dashboard will reflect on messages sent from the Mobile App
  • The user must have co-host access to the listing on Airbnb
  • The co-host's Airbnb account must be connected to Hostaway from the channel manager
  • The listing should be re-imported to refresh our list of co-hosts assigned to the property on Airbnb
• Ability to send messages via email. This means you can send and receive messages to and from the guest email provider (i.e., Google)

  • To use your email address instead of the Hostaway sender email address, please read this article

• Ability to use two-way SMS (text messages only) communication with a 140-character limitation, and in the countries where the service is applicable. Please check this article to understand in which countries two-way SMS messaging is available
• Ability to set notifications for conversation assignments
• Ability to leave internal notes for users
  • Internal notes are displayed in yellow
• Ability to Pre-approve Airbnb Inquiries
• Ability to send Airbnb Special Offers
• Quicker refresh timing allows seeing new messages without the need to refresh the page
• Ability to use a responsive version of the Inbox on mobile devices
• Airbnb inquiries and confirmed reservations may appear as separate conversation threads in Hostaway Inbox. This is expected behavior.

Inbox options

Mark messages as read/unread

When importing listings, Hostaway imports reservations and generates the message threads, but they are, by default, unread.

To mark these messages as read in bulk, you should follow the next steps:

1.  Go to your Hostaway Dashboard > Inbox
2. In the upper right corner, click on Bulk update
3. Choose the option to mark the message as Read / Archive
4. Select the date of the last message sent or received
5. Click on Confirm

Please note:

1. If there are many threads to be updated, the process may take a few minutes
2. Manually refresh your browser, and you should see that all messages have been marked as desired
3. Read/unread status is per user, but archiving is for all the threads from one account
4. When a message automation is sent, although the message is sent with your username, it will be displayed as unread since you didn't write it yourself
5. When a new reservation is imported to Hostaway, no matter who sent the last message, it will be displayed as unread
6. When a guest answers back, the conversation will be marked as unread
7. When you reply to the channel directly, the message will be marked as unread. We cannot display the conversation as Read in Hostaway since it has been Read outside of Hostaway

You can also mark these messages as unread or archive them individually:
 

Snooze messages

You can snooze messages for a given time and automatically recover the message after the time has passed.

Archive messages

Read more here on how to archive your messages.

Attachments

Ability to send attachments with the following limitations:

• Airbnb only accepts image files in .jpg and .png
• Booking.com only accepts image files in .jpg and .png. PDFs or QR codes are not supported
• VRBO accepts image files in .jpg and .png formats as well as PDFs
• Direct email: images & PDFs

Disclaimer: hyperlinked images are not supported in message automations.

Assign Messages

Ability to assign a message thread to a Hostaway User on the same account.

Note: You can filter by Unassigned thread in the inbox. If you want to quickly check the messages that are not assigned to a User, you can use this filter to check the Unassigned threads.

 

Schedule manual messages

You can schedule manual messages

Format messages

HTML is available in the inbox to help format messages. This option is available only for direct channels as other channels do not allow HTML. Some options include text formatting, adding images, hyperlinks, and alignment.

New message notification

You don't need to go to your Inbox to see if you have any new unread messages. A circular notification with a number inside it indicates the number of messages received. Note that this number will update automatically if the "New message" notification is enabled in the Dashboard. If not, it will update when you refresh any page.