Channel specifics

Guest Communication is a feature that allows you to communicate with you guests directly from Rentals United, without the need to log in to each channel separately or use email. Even though, Rentals United follows channel-specific flows and requirements

 

General

  • Having a reservation available in Rentals United is required due to the fact that threads are always mapped with the Reservation ID.

 

Attachments

  • You can add attachment to your message and send it together at once, but you can also send the attachment with no message. Note that in case of Airbnb, if your message consists of text and attachment, they will arrive in separate messages.

  • If you are using Guest Communication via proxy, remember that files added in the body of the email message are not processed!

  • Keep your attachment names short and concise. Some channels (e.g. Vrbo) may reject files with too long names.

  • If you send the same files with the same names, some email providers (e.g. Gmail) may ignore the duplicates.

  • If you are sending attachments via API, the <Name> parameter of the file must contain an extension in it (e.g. name.jpg).

  • You can see size and format limits here.

 

About Airbnb messages

  • Even if one guest books multiple stays with you, there will be only one messaging thread between the guest and yourself in Rentals United. You will see the entire communication history under the most recently modified reservation. It may therefore happen that the chat history will “jump” between reservations.

  • Messages from co-hosts are supported. See more here.

  • If you import some reservations from Airbnb to Rentals United, then the Guest Communication threads will be created during the import process and you will be able to carry on the conversation in Rentals United. Bear in mind that these chats will not include past messages.

  • The body message limit for Airbnb is 65535 characters.

 

About Booking.com messages

  • You can exchange messages with the guest from the moment of a booking until 7 days after the guest checks out or cancels the reservation. Whenever the guest responds to the message, the conversation window is extended with additional 14 days. It is not possible to communicate after 80 days have passed from the check-out or cancellation.

  • When making a booking in Booking.com, the guest can send a structured message. Structured messages can be viewed and answered in the Booking.com dashboard, but are not passed by Booking.com in their API. It means they will not be synchronised to Rentals United and available in Rentals United API. See below the full list of the structured requests that are not supported by the Booking.com Messaging API:

    • Check in / out time

    • Date change

    • Cancel for less

    • Parking

    • Bed preference

    • Extra crib

    • Extra bed / Add an extra bed

 

About Expedia messages

  • You can exchange messages with the guest from the moment of a booking. Messages become inactive either three years after the message thread creation date or one year after the reservation check-out date, whichever is later. Inactive messages cannot be replied to.

  • A message sent by either party (traveller or partner) undergoes review. Typically, the messages are reviewed within a couple of minutes, yet sometimes the process may take up to a few hours. In the end, the message may be accepted, blocked or moderated by Expedia. A good example of a suspicious message is a message recognised as a phishing attempt.

    • Accepted: The message is delivered to the receiver.

    • Blocked: The receiver (host/guest) of the message will not receive the message at all. If the sender was you (host), we will add the following text on top of the message to inform you that the message was blocked: “This message has been redacted by Expedia”. Additionally, you will receive an email notification about a blocked message. If you want the message to reach out to the guest, you need to send another one.

    • Moderated: The receiver (host/guest) will receive the message. The original content will be redacted by Expedia, e.g. “If you need assistance, contact us at [--@------.-]". If the sender was you (host), you will see the original message in Rentals United, while the receiver (guest) will see the redacted version. You will not be informed that the message was redacted.

  • Expedia has the right to redact the message in case the following information is found in the message:

    • Competitor information

    • Credit card information

    • Bank routing numbers

    • IBAN numbers

    • Phone numbers

    • Email addresses

    • Domain names

    • Email addresses

    • URLs (except for these: host.virtualkey.co, o.hmwy.io, t.hmwy.io, homeaway.tumblr.com, facebook.com/homeaway, pinterest.com/homeaway, twitter.com/homeaway, plus.google.com/+homeawaycom, linkedin.com/company/homeaway, instagram.com/homeaway, youtube.com/homeawayvacation)

  • The characters limit of the message is 20 000 characters.

 

About Vrbo messages

  • You can exchange messages with the guest from the moment of a booking. Messages become inactive either three years after the message thread creation date or one year after the reservation check-out date, whichever is later. Inactive messages cannot be replied to.

  • Due to legacy limitation on the Vrbo site, the first message sent by the guest in a request to book is displayed in the reservation comments. The requests' to book reservation comments can be retrieved by the Pull_GetLeads_RQ method. This workaround is no longer necessary as all messages are available in regular Guest Communication API

  • If the reservation from Vrbo is not yet confirmed (booking request or lead), Vrbo will not pass any sensitive information shared via the chat, e.g. email addresses. You may noticed some information are replaced with the “***” symbols.

  • There is one thread between a lead and its subsequent confirmed reservation. If the confirmed reservation follows a lead, than the chat history will “jump” from the lead to the confirmed booking. You will see the entire communication history under the new confirmed reservation.

  • Sometimes the guest may send you a lead that is a duplicate of existing one. In this case there will be only one Vrbothread between these two leads and the chat history will accordingly “jump” to the new lead.

  • Messages sent by the guest in the modification or cancellation requests are not supported by the Vrbo API, hence Rentals United does not have access to them and will not display them.

 

About Airbnb reviews

  • Airbnb reviews are double-blind. It means that reviews will not be published on Airbnb and will not be available to the host and guest until there are two reviews submitted or after 14 days pass since the first review.

  • Both you and your guest have 14 days to submit the review after the reservation's check-out date. If this time passes and none of you leaves a review, the review thread expires.

  • Once two reviews are available, both you and your guest have 30 days since the last review publishing date to leave a reply. After both responses are published, it is no longer possible to continue communication in the review thread. If only one of you leaves a review and the review period ends, the other one will still be able to respond to it within 30 days.

  • Guest Reviews written by Co-hosts in Airbnb are available to view in Rentals United. See more about Co-hosts here.

  • You can semi-automate the Airbnb reviews by using templates - see more here

 

About Booking.com reviews

  • Rentals United pulls new reviews from Booking.com once a day.

  • Only guests are able to review the stay. Hosts can only respond to the guest's review.

  • Guests' reviews get published on Booking.com right away and are available in Rentals United within maximum 24 hours.

  • You can only respond to the review with comments. In case your guest provides only the rating and skips the comments, it is not possible to respond to such a review.

  • After you submit the response, it awaits moderation from the Booking.com side and will be eventually published on the Booking.com website.

 

About Vrbo reviews

  • Reviews become available for Rentals United after Vrbo performs the content check of the submitted guest review and host reply. The content check may take up to 14 days.

  • Once the review is available for Rentals United, it is pulled with a slight delay of 15 - 20 minutes to ensure that all necessary details are correctly provided by Vrbo.

  • When you are connected to Vrbo, Vrbo may list your properties also on the Expedia website. Depending on the channel where the booking comes from (Vrbo or Expedia), the review categories may be slightly different. Be aware of this, especially if you are an API user.

    Review categories for Vrbo

    Copy
    Review categories for Vrbo
    [
      {
        "ID": *********,
        "ThreadID": ***********,
        "Body": "{
            \"type\":\"GuestRating\",
            \"recommendGuest\":true,
            \"starRatings\":
                [{\"category\":\"overall\",\"value\":\"5\"},
                {\"category\":\"cleanliness\",\"value\":\"5\"},
                {\"category\":\"house_rules\",\"value\":\"5\"},
                {\"category\":\"communication\",\"value\":\"5\"}]}",
        "CreateDate": "2024-04-03T13:36:19.8856781",
        "IsIncoming": false,
        "ReadDate": "2024-04-04T11:39:12.0462237",
        "RecipientRole": "Host"
        "SenderName": "Antoine Seteban",
        "SenderInitials": "AS",
        "Attachments": [],
        "Sender": {
          "ID": ***,
          "FirstName": "Antoine",
          "LastName": "Seteban"
        },
        "Receivers": [
          {
            "ID": ***,
            "FirstName": "Mauch",
            "LastName": "Steve"
          }
        ]
      }
    ]

    Review categories for Expedia

    Copy
    Review categories for Expedia
    [
        {
            "ID": **********,
            "ThreadID": ***********,
            "Body": "{\"type\":\"GuestReview\",
                    \"body\":\"Close to the main square, yet fairly quiet at night... \",
                    \"starRatings\":
                        [{\"category\":\"ecoFriendliness\",\"value\":\"5\"},
                        {\"category\":\"roomAmenitiesScore\",\"value\":\"5\"},
                        {\"category\":\"overall\",\"value\":\"5\"},
                        {\"category\":\"communication\",\"value\":\"5\"},
                        {\"category\":\"roomCleanliness\",\"value\":\"4\"},
                        {\"category\":\"hotelCondition\",\"value\":\"5\"}],
                    \"title\":\"\",
                    \"createdDateTime\":\"2024-05-12T15:27:58Z\",
                    \"lastUpdatedDateTime\":\"2024-05-12T16:52:18.7706Z\"}",
            "CreateDate": "2024-05-12T15:27:58",
            "IsIncoming": true,
            "ReadDate": "2024-05-13T15:08:21.6924059",
            "RecipientRole": "Host"
            "SenderName": "John Linland",
            "SenderInitials": "CS",
            "Attachments": [],
            "Sender": {
                "ID": ***,
                "FirstName": "John",
                "LastName": "Linland"
            },
            "Receivers": [
                {
                    "ID": ***,
                    "FirstName": "Ron",
                    "LastName": "Romalo"
                }
            ]
        }
    ]

  • The ratings available in Vrbo API and Vrbo extranet are different. The rating in the extranet ranges from 1 to 10, and in the API - from 1 to 5. This discrepancy is just visual, as the ratings received via the API are doubled to fit the 1 to 10 range.

  • The host can submit the rating first. The host can do it up to 365 days after the guest's check-out. Then, the guest has 14 days to submit the guest review. If the guest fails to submit the guest review, the rating gets published on Vrbo.

  • If the host does not submit the rating, the guest submits the guest review first. The guest can do it up to 365 days after the check-out. Once the guest review is submitted, the host has 14 days to submit the rating. If the host fails to submit the rating, the guest review gets published on Vrbo.

  • If the second reviewer fails to review the stay within the 14 days, it will no longer be possible to submit the guest review or rating to the review thread

  • The host can submit the host reply without any time limits.

  • The host can submit the host reply only if the guest review is present in the thread

  • Only 1 Vrbo-approved host reply is allowed in the review thread.

  • Reviews are retrieved at a property level only. It means that Vrbo does not support reviews retrieval for multi-unit properties.

  • Rating submitted in the Vrbo extranet will not be available in the review thread. If you have already submitted the rating in the Vrbo extranet and you try to submit it again via Rentals United API, you will receive the response "type":"GuestRatingPostedFromVrbo".

  • Only reviews submitted after April 1, 2024 are available in Rentals United. Historical Vrbo guest reviews will not be synchronised.

 

Airbnb pre-approvals

  • Sending pre-approval does not block your property's availability.

  • You can send pre-approvals to multiple guests at the same time and for the same property.

  • Guest still needs to book a stay with you after you pre-approve.

  • Once pre-approval expires, the guest will need to send a request to book or book instantly or contact host again.

  • Pre-approvals can only be sent for the date range of the guest's lead.

  • You cannot send a pre-approval if the property has been booked in the meantime.