Inbox

The Unified Inbox centralizes all host-guest communication under one tool removing the need to move between different OTA’s applications and even devices in order to save time and increase responsiveness. With the ability to send channel messages, emails, SMS and (soon) Whatsapp messages you'll only need one Inbox to communicate with guests.

What does this new feature include:

• Ability to send messages via OTA API for Airbnb & Booking.com. For other channels, messaging is still based on an email proxy system.
• Ability to send messages via email. Meaning you are able to send and receive messages to and from the guest email provider (e.g. Google).
• Ability to use two-way SMS (text messages only) communication with a 140 characters 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 in the Notifications module.
• Ability to leave internal notes for users.
• Ability to Pre-approve Airbnb Inquiries in message module.
• Ability to send Airbnb Special Offers in the message module and have logs for this in the guest message thread.
• 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.

New message notification 

You won’t need to visit the Inbox to see if you have new unread messages. Please note that the number will be automatically be updated if the “new message” notification in the dashboard is active. If not, it will update after refreshing any page.

Mark messages read/unread

When importing listings, we import reservations and generate the message threads, but they are by default unread. You can now mark these messages as read and archive in bulk.  

Simply choose the option to mark the message as Read/ Archive> Select the date of the last message sent or received> Click on confirm:

Please note:

1. If there are many threads to be updated, the process may take a few minutes
2. Read/unread status is per user, but archiving is for all the threads from one account

3. 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

4. When a new reservation is imported to Hostaway, no matter who sent the last message, it will be displayed as unread

5. When a guest answered back, conversation will be marked as unread

6. When you replied from the channel directly, the message will be marked as unread > we cannot displayed the conversation as Read in Hostaway since it has been Read outside of Hostaway

Of course, you can also mark these messages as unread or archive individually : 

Snooze messages

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

Attachments

Ability to send attachments with the following limitations:

• • Airbnb only accepts image files as in .jpg, .png
  • Booking.com accepts images files as in .jpg, .png
  • Direct email: images & pdfs

Assign Messages

Ability to Assign a message thread to a Hostaway User of the same account.

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

Schedule manual messages

You can now 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 of the options include text formatting, adding images, hyperlinks and alignment.

How to archive messages?

In order to archive, select the thread and click on the appropriate button in the actions bar. The thread will move from the inbox view to the archived view. Moving it back to the inbox is done the same way.

Threads will automatically move from archived to inbox if the guest sends a message, but not if the host sends one. Threads cannot be both archived and snoozed at the same time.