First host

[Leslie1142]

Good morning. My first guest arrive tomorrow! How do I know they received check in door codes, house manuals, etc. I want to make sure we start out great, but not overdue the communication! 

thanks 

Les 

[Elisa]

Hi @Leslie1142 😊, 

Congratulations on your first guest!

How long will he stay?

I’m tagging a few experienced hosts to see what they can advise you: @Marcin65, @Zheng49, @Nash-Cottages-LLC0, @Karen114, @Jim-and-Caroline0 and @Greystone0.

Thank you in advance, everyone!

[Karen114 · Accepted solution]

@Leslie1142  Congrats on your first guests! 

There is a place in the Airbnb app that you can set up automated messages such as door code, directions etc or anything you want the guest to know and have.  You can shedule them to go off timely.  Once you have done that you can see the message in the message thread between you and the guest.  Often times you can see if the guest read it, unless they have disabled that on their end.  

Personally,  for mission critical items such as directions and door codes,  I send a separate message via text or email to make sure they are getting it.  It's not uncommon for guests to make a booking and never open the app again or even be able to distinguish a notification from them.  I find text to be the most effective as everyone gets and reads their text messages.  

If you use a welcome message, you can let them know to expect those critical items in a text as well.  Hope this helps and best of luck in your hosting journey 🙂

[Greystone0]

Hi @Leslie1142  - welcome! And hope all went well with guest check in!

Here's some thoughts that might help for future guests:

- if the guest has the 'read receipt' on, then you will know if they have read the message as it will say so under the message.  Otherwise it is hard to know.  Regardless of what we do or don't know, we try to just be ready for a guest arrival/check in. We are remote so for us that just means, we are super alert to our phone, app, text, whatever and if the guest reaches out we are immediately available. Once they have arrived and all seems fine, we relax a little bit. They are inside and any future questions will be less urgent, generally speaking.

- we often have guests that don't regularly use AIRBNB and so they are only 'looking' when they need to know something, not necessarily when you send something. 

- as mentioned previously, you can set up automatic messages as well. We don't really do this as we are just one listing with one check in but it makes sense otherwise. We just cut/paste and refine for each message, so a version of this.

- AIRBNB doesn't share an email address of each guest so you won't have ready access to this and now phone numbers are masked so texting is problematic. Instead, I would develop a routine that uses the platform. And as mentioned, for mission critical info sometimes you need to prompt the guest outside of the platform because they are unresponsive in the platform, it is hard to avoid this scenario often times.

Hopefully that gives you some food for thought!

Wishing you much success!

[Ravi866]

hello , 

congratulations for  your first guest 

[Lorna170]

@Leslie1142   When I send my guests their Welcome information via the AirBnB platform, whether automated or initiated by me, I include in the text a request for the guests to send a REPLY via the platform acknowledging that they have received and read the information I sent.

If I do not receive a reply in a timely fashion, I send it again with a "excited" reminder that I would very much like to know that they have received the information that will make their visit start smoothly.  

I keep everything on the AirBnB messaging as I want to have an electronic trail of what the guest was sent.

Asking the guest to acknowledge the access information is not overdoing communication.

[Elisa]

Hi @Leslie1142 😊, 

I see amazing suggestions from other hosts. Did you use any of them?

Have you been able to welcome your guests in a nice way?

I would love to hear more!