Guest communication for Leads & Booking requests - Rentals United - Sales channels

Modified on Mon, 17 Mar at 5:47 PM

How to manage my Day to Day communication for Leads & Booking requests from the Sales channels

Introduction

This guide will cover how to use the Inbox and Guest planner in Rentals United to respond to all messages from leads and bookings requests for connected sales channels. This will stop you having to log into each sales channel account to respond to any new enquiries/messages

Prerequisites

Channel manager account connected to Sales channels

Accessing Rentals united and using the Inbox & Guest planner

1/ Log into Your Rentals United Account

Click on the channel manager modal in iPRO
Click on the "Log in to Rentals United" button top right of the screen
Your Login details can be accessed via the "Connections" tab.
IMPORTANT NOTE - DO NOT CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD
The password in iPRO is needed for the system to connect to the channel manager. If your password differs to what is in iPRO it breaks the connection between iPRO and the Channel Manager.

3/ Inbox & Messages

On the left hand side click on the "Inbox"
This will display and Airbnb style inbox with the items ordered by the most recent message received
In the guest panel, you can see all the conversations. Select the guest to start a conversation or view the chat.
Conversations are always created after you receive a reservation or a guest contacts you directly. In this first case, if the guest only booked a stay with you, but did not send you a message - you may see an empty conversation. You can always send a message first.
Chats with new (unread) messages have the subject marked in bold, so that you can easily spot them and respond.
By default, only conversations for reservations from the current day up until +10 days check-in or check-out are loaded. If you want to view more conversations - you need to change the date range by applying filters
The Colours of the conversations on the left represent the type of booking the conversation is for
Each conversation includes the following set of information, which comes directly from the booking:
Guest name
Booking dates
Property name
Subject (optional)
Sales channel
Booking type

4/ Booking details

Reservation details are displayed after you open the chat. You can find them on the right side.

Booking type
Reservation ID (Rentals United)
Reservation ID (channel)
Guest details
Property name
Check-in and check-out dates
Length of stay (number of nights)
Pricing details

In addition to that, you can quickly jump to the bookings' details by clicking the See the booking details button - you will be redirected to the Guest planner for this booking.

4A/ Guest Planner Via "booking details" button

Here is where you are able to view the booking and action certain day to day tasks from the booking level

When opening a booking request this allows your to accept or reject the request.
When Opening a Lead an there will be an Airbnb-exclusive feature called pre-approvals. Pre-approval is nothing else than a welcoming message, inviting your guest to book your property. This way you can let your guests know that they are more than welcome at your apartment! You will see the pre-approval option once your potential guests
initiates the conversation with you in Airbnb
Guest Communication displays again here as in the inbox allowing you to respond to any leads or booking requests
You also have the ability to "reveal" the Virutal Credit Card (if applicable). Please ensure you read through the below guide if this is applicable to any of your bookings where the guest Pays you and not the sales channel via Virtual Credit Card and you are not opting to ignore these and direct the guest to your Make Payment page
How to process a guest payment via a Virtual Credit Card using Rentals United

4B/ Guest Planner Via the dashboard

This top level view of the Guest Planner allows you to quickly access and manage communications with your Sales channels Leads and booking Requests.

In Guest Planner, each booking is presented in a separate line and includes the following information:
- creation date
- check-in and check-out
- location
- guest
- length of stay
- price
- status
Clicking on an entry in the screenshot above will direct you to the Guest Planner for that booking type (4A of this guide)

Tips and Best Practises

1/ Tip 1

Respond to all leads and booking requests via the Rentals United Inbox
Continue to respond to actual bookings via iPRO

2/ Tip 2

Do not update any booking details for bookings via the guest planner unless it is for Vrbo bookings
If you want to cancel an Airbnb booking for example, you do so via Airbnb. Vrbo is slightly different to booking.com and Airbnb and changes to bookings cannot be made on the Vrbo platform when connected to a channel manager.

3/ Tip 3

Approve or Reject booking requests via the guest planner

FAQs

1. What is the purpose of the Rentals United Inbox and Guest Planner?

The Inbox and Guest Planner in Rentals United centralize communication for all connected sales channels. This eliminates the need to log into individual sales channel accounts, streamlining your day-to-day management of leads and booking requests.

2. What does the Inbox do, and how can I use it?

The Inbox functions like an Airbnb-style chat system, showing messages sorted by the most recent activity. From here, you can:

View all conversations.
Respond to messages.
Identify new or unread messages (marked in bold).
Identify what booking requests need to be responded to and Approved or Rejected via the Guest planner

Use filters to view conversations outside the default date range (+10 days from check-in or check-out).

3. What information can I see in the Inbox?

Each conversation provides:

Guest name
Booking dates
Property name
Sales channel
Booking type

4. What is the Guest Planner, and how does it differ from the Inbox?

The Guest Planner provides a more detailed view of bookings and lets you perform booking-level actions, such as:

Accepting or rejecting booking requests.
Cancelling bookings for Sales channels where it is not possible for the guest or Host to cancel the booking. Vrbo For example.

You can access the Guest Planner directly via:

The “See the booking details” button in the Inbox.
The Guest Planner tab in the dashboard for a top-level overview of all bookings.

5. What is a pre-approval in Airbnb, and how can I send one?

A pre-approval is a welcoming message sent to potential Airbnb guests inviting them to book your property. You can send a pre-approval directly through the Guest Planner when responding to an Airbnb lead.

6. What happens if a guest does not send an initial message?

If a guest books a stay but does not initiate a conversation, you may see an empty conversation in the Inbox. You can always message the guest first to establish communication.

7. What happens if I do not respond to a booking request?

Request will expire
You can no longer approve the request
Airbnb will block the calendar dates of the request. (Airbnb has confirmed that every expired request is considered as "host unavailable". Because of that, the dates are blocked. The only way to unlock such dates, is to contact Airbnb Support directly and explain the situation)

8. If I use Rentals United to communicate to enquiries and booking request, do I use them to communicate to bookings also?

No. For now until development is done where Leads and requests can be managed and replied to via iPRO.

All BOOKINGS, should be communicated via iPRO.
iPRO enquiries responded via iPRO.
Sales channel enquiries and requests responded to via Rentals United Inbox & Guest Planner.
Sales channel enquiries that are in iPRO but unable to see the conversations from the sales channels in iPRO should be set to "Closed" to make you Day to Day easier.

9. How do I know which enquiries in iPRO are direct enquiries are which are ones from the sales channels so I know which ones to close?

The guest name will have "Not Provided" as the surname