Vrbo Guest Messaging

Setting your Vrbo guest messaging up

When you connected your Vrbo account with Hostaway by API you will be asked to add your Hostaway Proxy email address as a secondary email in your Vrbo account. You can find this email address under Channel Manager > Vrbo > Configure > Settings.

Understanding your VRBO messaging reservation details page

After you have fully connected any new Vrbo confirmed reservation will come in and contain both the guest's direct email address as well as the Vrbo Guest Proxy email address. The guest proxy email address will be used as the primary address and the guest's direct email address will be used as a secondary email address.

After the email addresses have been changed automatically the Hostaway guest messages inbox can be used to communicate with the guest by the Vrbo channel guest dashboard.

Important to know

• Your Hostaway VRBO proxy email address should be the main contact email address for all messages on the VRBO side under your connected listings.
• The VRBO proxy email system is the best there currently is but can from time to time have missing messages, we advise still to keep your VRBO host app as a backup to answer any message that might not have been sent over correctly. These messages will not be seen in the Hostaway inbox.
• VRBO is working on a new Messaging system and we hope this will be available during 2023. When it is Hostaway will implement this as soon as possible.

Good to know

• After the reservation was confirmed by the guest on Vrbo it may take a couple of minutes to update the email addresses.
• For message automation on trigger reservation, it is best to delay the automation by 10 minutes before automatically sending the messages out.
• Reservations made before connection with Hostaway will not be able to receive the guest proxy email address. For these, you can communicate by the guest's direct email address.

Reasons why you don't have the second email address

• You haven't set up the Hostaway email in Vrbo
• The guest hasn't sent any messages after the booking got confirmed
• The guest was sent a direct automated message and replied to it (which then doesn't pass by Vrbo)