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Airbnb Messaging: How to Build Relationships with Guests

Growing your Airbnb business places increasing demands on each aspect of your job as a host, and this includes your guest communications and messaging on Airbnb.

Building a rapport with guests while providing them with practical information is your first step towards getting repeat bookings and great reviews—while on the other hand, poor communication can result in unfortunate mix-ups and disgruntled customers.

If you’re finding guest messaging time-consuming and stressful, you’re not only more likely to make mistakes with your texts and emails, but more likely to struggle with your other essential tasks as a host, too.

So, to develop great relationships with your guests and still have time for the rest of your Airbnb hosting duties, let’s look into what makes a guest messaging strategy efficient and successful.

RueBaRue is an all-rounder guest communication tool that lets you automate your Airbnb messaging, get better reviews and boost repeat bookings. To see how it works, book a demo now.

Why do you need an Airbnb messaging strategy?

Positive guest experiences and relationships are at the heart of a successful vacation rental business, and your first opportunity to start well is with your messaging.

Great communication with your guests keeps them feeling confident and welcome, it gives you the property manager peace of mind, and it’s a crucial driver in maximizing revenue. Guests are far more likely to return or extend their stay if you have a good relationship with them.

Also, if your helpful information and insights into the local area have helped your guests enjoy their stay, they’ll leave positive vacation rental reviews, pushing you towards Superhost status, which can be so important for an Airbnb business.

That’s the good stuff. The problem is, guests can be demanding. Sending multiple messages (ten or more) for each booking is draining. And, if you’re very busy, you could miss a question, forget to send on some key details, or mix up your information.

So while the importance of great communication is impossible to ignore, it’s also difficult to maintain, time-consuming, and easy to get wrong. So you need automated messaging tools and a messaging strategy to make communication fast and effective.

The limitations of Airbnb’s “Scheduled Messaging”

In 2020, Airbnb released its new messaging feature, “Scheduled Messaging,” which you can use to quickly fill in your template blanks and organize to be sent before the event.

It’s a useful tool and is an improvement on the previous “Saved Messages”—which allowed you to create and save messages but not schedule them.

But, with only three trigger events (confirmation, check-in, and check-out), Scheduled Messaging remains a limited messaging tool. Also, if you list your property on other channels, like Vrbo or Booking.com, you’ll need additional message templates for those.

So, if you want your messages to be relevant, personalized, and centralized in one intuitive app, you need the flexibility of specialized guest communication tools for vacation rentals.

Should you send messages through Airbnb or email/SMS?

Communicating with your guests via email and SMS works to the advantage of your business. Here’s why:

If you’re limited to Airbnb in-app messaging, you can’t obtain your guests’ contact details, which is essential if you’re to do any follow-up marketing with them.

Airbnb keeps customer contact information private from hosts, so you won’t have access to guests’ email addresses with the OTA giant. Contrast this with a dedicated guest communication tool like RueBaRue, which can capture those emails for your remarketing purposes. There are two issues here. First, you’re less likely to get repeat bookings from a guest if you’re not remarketing. Second, if they only interact with you via Airbnb, they won’t be able to make direct bookings with you—so say hello to more commission fees.

But aside from the business disadvantages to Airbnb messaging, many guests—especially, older guests who already feel overloaded with a range of apps to manage—simply prefer email (where it’s often easier to add more detailed information) and SMS communication .

How to automate your Airbnb messaging

If you’re using a specialized guest communication tool, automating messages for your Airbnb guests is EASY.

Here’s how you do it with RueBaRue:

  1. Log into your RueBaRue account, hover over AUTOMATE, and then click on the option MESSAGE TEMPLATES
  2. Click the red +ADD A MESSAGE TEMPLATE button
  3. Fill in the reference fields and write your message, adding the macros for personalization (just press “View Macros” to see the options), and press SAVE
  4. Hover over AUTOMATE again and click SCHEDULERxt
  1. Now hit the +SCHEDULE A MESSAGE button, select your template, and finish off the scheduling details
  2. Have a drink and check Twitter, your work here is done!

How to write Airbnb messages that build rapport with guests

Manage your tone

You can provide all the key information, every detail that a guest could possibly want, extra tips, and recommendations—BUT if you don’t manage your tone, it’ll all be for nothing. Why? Because it’s impossible to overstate just how important tone is as you attempt to build a rapport with your guests. You may have a number of vacation rentals, and if so, part of your job will be to interact with visitors on a daily basis, handle their concerns, and ensure their stay exceeds their expectations.

So for you, guest communication is highly functional—do it effectively and you can cross off another job on your list and move on to the next. But for your guests, their vacation is a special time, they’re excited and nervous, so they need warmth and helpfulness.

And your tone is a crucial part of your guests’ initial vacation experience, so be friendly, conversational, and accommodating.

So, your ideal tone won’t be:

  • Abrupt
    Short answers, overly direct
  • Condescending
    Sarcastic, making assumptions
  • Inappropriate
    Unprofessional, over-familiar, or emotional
  • Annoyed
    Impatient, busy

And it will be:

  • Welcoming
    Warm and friendly
  • Sympathetic
    Understanding if they have difficulties
  • Professional
    Clear and constructive, don’t take problems personally
  • Generous
    Helpful and patient

Keep it personalized

While you should always be polite, don’t confuse that with being formal. It’s vacation time so use your guests’ first names (this is super-quick with macros in scheduled messages, as mentioned above), and make sure you sign off with yours. Being personalized is also about your tone—so imagine you’re speaking to a work colleague, or someone you often see in a shop (so not too familiar like you could be with a close friend), and use that as your guide.

For example, if your guest asks you about changing their check-out time, don’t say:

“Yes Mr. Owen, I have extended your check-out time by one hour. Please drop off your keys by 1pm.”

Instead, do say:

“Hi Clive,

That’s no problem at all! Let’s push your check-out time to 1pm—I’ll let the cleaners know. Pleased you’re making the most of the place! Let me know if there’s anything else I can do for you before you drop off the keys,

Susan

And to save time, you can create this as one of your message templates, using the macro for your guest’s first name.

Maintain clarity

Warmth-of-tone and personalization are essential to building and maintaining a good rapport with your guests, but don’t allow your messaging to be ambiguous.

Unclear communications could result in confusion, extra messaging required, and even an unhappy customer.

So to avoid a lack of clarity:

  • Don’t use text abbreviations, which many people (especially older people or people who speak English as a second language) don’t understand.
  • Always ensure that, when responding to a question, you’ve read the question clearly.
  • Clearly lay out your messages with regular spacing, short paragraphs, and bullet points for lists.
  • Always read through your messages at least once or twice to check that all the key information is included.
  • Finally, if a guest does misunderstand any instructions or has to send you an extra message to question any details, check your vacation rental email templates again to see if there’s something you can improve.

Extra tips

If you stick to the recommendations above, you should have real success with your guest messaging, which is the first step towards having satisfied guests and positive reviews.

Also, remember to update your message templates periodically so that the information remains current.

For example, your house manual needs to be updated if there’s a new device, machine in the kitchen, or television. Also, your local recommendations could change over time to include new places and things to see.

And time your messages so they are scheduled to coincide with when they’ll be most useful for the guest.

For example, with RueBaRue it’s simple to extend your guest’s stay by giving them the chance to check-in a day early, so make sure they receive your offer at least in the week before their vacation starts.

What Airbnb message templates do you need?

You have so much flexibility with message templates, so feel free to experiment and play around with what works best for you, but there are eight templates that you’re likely to find especially useful:

  • Booking confirmation
  • Pre-arrival
  • Maintenance request
  • Post-arrival welcome
  • Pre-departure
  • Alert (for example, extreme weather information or traffic hold-ups)
  • Extend guest stay
  • Post-check-out thank you and review

For more information on these email and SMS templates, look here .

Conclusion

With great communication, you can get your guests’ vacations off to the perfect start, make them feel welcome, ensure everyone’s expectations are met, and even create opportunities for extended bookings.

But to get guests returning and to receive those glowing reviews, you need the right software, and though Airbnb has updated its in-app messaging service for improved efficiency, it still can’t match specialized guest communication tools like RueBaRue.

With the right tools, you can have more flexibility over your messaging, handle all your communications faster, and start utilizing your guests’ contact details for commission-free direct bookings.

So make sure you have a clearly defined strategy for better guest messaging, and give your Airbnb business every chance of success.

RueBaRue is an all-rounder guest communication tool that lets you automate your Airbnb messaging, get better reviews and boost repeat bookings. To see how it works, book a demo now.

FAQs

What messages should hosts send to Airbnb guests?

The most important messages from hosts to Airbnb guests are to confirm the booking details, a pre-arrival welcome letter with relevant information, details on house care and use (e.g. anything about cleaning or devices and controls), information about check-out, and the option of extending their stay, and a final thank-you message .

What are the benefits of an Airbnb messaging strategy?

An Airbnb messaging strategy helps you maintain great communication with all your guests without it becoming time-consuming. Also, because a messaging strategy clarifies how you should handle messaging, you are less likely to make errors.

How do I automate my Airbnb messaging?

You can use Airbnb’s automated messaging tool, Scheduled Messaging, andAirbnb guidebooks. Or, you can use a specialized guest communication tool like RueBaRue that lets you take care of all your guest messaging and send automated emails and text messages from a single, easy-to-use platform.

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