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I’ve got guests coming tomorrow to pick up some luggage I stored for them. I went back to our messages and noticed all the phone numbers are ‘hidden’. Luckily I still have her number in my phone.
Just wondering - is this something air does after the check-out time so that people are not harassed by former guests/hosts?
It’s done so that you can’t contact guests directly in case they want to book a second time OFF the system. They’ve already slept in your bed, so there’s already a pretty intimate relationship.
I ask for guests email addresses in order to send them documents, and I also take their phone number. Both pieces of info go into my excel spreadsheet and now I can be in contact with guests directly if they do want to book privately after their initial stay. Each person has to find their comfort with this - some people ONLY take bookings that are through Airbnb, some (like me) use Airbnb as one of many tools available to use for my short term rental business.
thanks, superhostnyc!
Yes I noticed that a while back.
I always text the guest before check in to check the time they’re coming over
Yep - our friends at Guesty noticed that. I do like others do and at least get their phone number so I have a way to get in touch with them later. Guesty does this automatically, which is cool.
Back in the early days of Air, they left all of this info up forever…then they must have realized soon enough it was causing them to lose future bookings…
. I tell the guest to hang onto my guest doc with all my info in case they want to book again with cash and avoid fees and taxes. If I’ve had a good experience, I’ll waive the deposit too.
We have a guest book and we get all our guests to leave an email address.
Does Guesty have the guest’s email address? How do you like the Guesty service?
I’m not sure about email - I believe they ask for it when sending info but I can’t remember.
Good way around this is to leave out some vital information when guests are booking your flat, e.g. house number or surname. That way, guests will phone me up, asking for directions, before they ring the bell.
So their phone number will be transmitted when they call me, and will automatically be saved by the software in my telephone switchboard. Thus I never again have to worry about not having guests’ phone number, no matter what Airbnb does.
I used to have a large excel sheet, where I keep all the email addresses and phone numbers, as well as their countries etc. 
When Airbnb started to mask the emails, this did not have any more sense because those email addresses get invaild after 30 days of check-out.
Most of the times, I like to keep in touch with my guests, no matter they visit again or not.
Since couple of weeks, I’m using an App called Your Porter App (yourporter.com), which keeps the all guests data on my smartphone. It even adds my guests’ phone numbers with their name to the contacts of my phone! It is very useful if you have several listings and you get a text on your mobile phone from unknown number saying “Hey Maria, we are coming to your apartment soon or Hey Maria, the heater does not seem to be working” At lease I can answer an incoming call with their name 
The best part of it, that i can send my guests an arrival form to collect their arrival details, flight numbers and real email addresses for my records. Those masked airbnb emails do not work sometimes and they expire after a while.
If you take your Airbnb business seriously and manage it like a real guest relations professional, Your Porter may create a good difference for you. It did for me so far.
That app sounds cool! Too bad the site is wonky, I couldn’t get any of the sub pages to open. Must be a bit new and still in beta?
That was my experience, too - not much I could find to give me any info. But as discussed on another thread, it seems like guests pretty much overlook data in electronic format, they will still ask.
Here’s an even weirder thing about YourPorter…so the page finally comes up, and there’s a banner image. I’m looking at it thinking, oh cool, those people have a wire apple like I do. Hey, they have the same yellow chairs. Wait, that is a picture of MY listing!!!
Can someone else please go to Yourporter.com and see if one of their listing images shows up when looking at YourPorter? Is it some kind of hacky thing that is tracking your history on airbnb? I swear I haven’t looked at this particular picture in a long time, but yet, here it is. This isn’t even an airbnb owned photo, I had my own photographer.
I can answer this by saying…I like the pink vase you put on the table - a perfect accent.
and also
HOLY KAMOLLLY!!! What the hec? That’s your photo??
but only when I click on your link - when I click on marialvarez’s link I get a different photo - perhaps hers?
But I don’t get mine…