This forum is dedicated to connecting hosts with other hosts. Sign up to get the latest updates and news just for AirBnb hosts! Note that we are not affiliated with Airbnb - we are just passionate hosts!
As far as I know, this is a new thing, I’ve never seen it in several years of hosting and it caught me off guard. Has anyone else seen this?
I usually send out my check-in info message a couple of days before the stay; however, 3 days before the stay, I got this message from my guest, “Just received your directions and parking instructions. Thanks for that and it says that keypad code to get in will come in a day or two, so I’ll look for that”
And this in the messaging stream:
Anyway, I was not amused as it forced a different conversation with my guest than I would typically have. It was weird to get a push to send the check-in message 3 days ahead of time. But at least my “check-in details” were up to date. You may want to check on yours if they are going to continue doing this. Because, apparently, no amount of 5 star reviews proves to ABB that you can handle getting check-in instructions and directions to your guests
It appears that there’s a way to opt-out which I chose and it looks like this:
I’m closed so I hadn’t seen this. I briefly went and took a look and it looked like you have to opt in. I just backed out because I don’t want to mess with it now but I’ll definitely want to opt out.
When I was a smartbnb subscriber they had something similar that I didn’t use. I wonder if Airbnb will try to hook people on these added “services” and then charge for them?
Okay. I have seen that. They sent emails about it too, but I didn’t read it. I almost always read everything but I assumed you had to opt in, not opt out as I had to do, but lesson learned.
I have seen it an my guests do get an automated reply but I supplement it with a longer communication. This is a good reminder to check after being closed for almost a year.
Vrbo has created a “chat bot”. A potential guest can ask questions (like “Do you allow pets?”) and the chat bot will answer from your listing settings. Maybe AirBnB is doing the same.
With the amount of times the Air site has crashed this past year plus all the glitches along the way…I’m not sure if I would trust the automated system to do its job . But I can admit that I need to work on my control issues a bit, haha.
On the phone app, there used to be a “key” icon so that we could send our own check-in details. Then about a year ago or so, it was no longer in the app. I contacted Airbnb about this, but they never got back to me about it. So, I wasn’t sure if my guests were receiving the check-in details (we also send a larger email to the guest with check-in details, but the one that we created in Airbnb has pictures and it’s step by step as to how to get to the front office, etc.). During the pandemic, Airbnb stopped giving us an anonymized email address for the guests, so now we have to ask for an email address…ugh. Otherwise, if you use the reply-to email address they now have, and you send the very long email with all the check-in details, it shows up in the Airbnb messages - this makes your messages with the guests so long and very hard to weed through if you are looking for something specific. And if you had any attachments, they don’t show up. Why are things always changing?
Anyway, we’ve received this message only once and we’ve had plenty of guests since October. I’ve gone through to make sure everything was accurate. I believe I had to change a thing or two because of COVID.
Funny, last year I had called Airbnb and asked them about why they got rid of the email alias (anonymized) and they told me to use the “reply-to” email address that is on the email for the reservation. They never told me about the “opt-in” for the email alias.
. But I can admit that I need to work on my control issues a bit, haha.