Building SMS: Seeking Feedback

​@Eli Stoughton - Coupled with messaging thread in the portal is the ultimate win. Agree?

Yes. A mirrored SMS & Guest Portal messaging experience would be best.

I agree with the goal here ​@carlama, especially around giving guests an easy way to ask questions and not miss important info.

My only concern is about where that conversation ultimately lives. Two-way SMS works well for short back-and-forth, but once you start pushing full check-in instructions, scheduled messages, and longer context, SMS gets unwieldy fast and fragments the experience.

Ideally, SMS becomes the nudge and delivery layer, while the full conversation, instructions, and history live in the Guest Portal tied to the reservation. That way guests can reply via SMS if they want, but there’s still a single canonical place they can return to and review everything. Have you checked out this thread on Guest Portal Messaging?

On the past-guest outreach point, totally agree there’s strong potential there. I’d just want to be careful to separate marketing outreach from stay communication so guests don’t lose trust in where to go for actual stay-related info.

In short, two-way SMS is valuable, but it works best when it points back to a central place rather than becoming the place itself. Good thread to be aware of ​@Abby Grous 

Yeah makes sense. To us the most important piece is being able to shoot texts to all our past guests from Hospitable :)

​@carlama have you signed up for StayFi? They do the work of collecting the emails & mobiles of ALL guests staying and then market SMS to them automatically (permission based)! Signup and get 50% off your first 3 months through our link. Https://stayfi.apluswprojects.com/ 

​@David Thorpe ​@Abby Grous 

You’re losing out on valuable data that you could be collecting just by being integrated with Open phone in WhatsApp. Many of my critical conversations on helping guests through emergencies happen via text because that is where guests feel most comfortable and that is where they see notifications first.
The AI could be learning from all those conversations if it was at least integrated to the reservation. Host buddy AI can link the conversation in Quo with the reservation and you can see your Airbnb inbox alongside your quo inbox in the same reservation. So the system could connect the quo thread to the reservation, even if you can’t send the text in the same thread the AI could at least learn from those conversations.

This is minimum integration where I can see everything in one place even if I can’t respond would be a huge win. If it could read everything coming in from Quo and respond in the platform or via email that could train my guest to move back to the platforms. 
it seems like you guys let perfection get in the way of progress just build the integrations please.

I agree with a lot of this ​@Knotty Retreats, especially the point about valuable conversation data being lost when it lives outside the reservation context.

Where I’d add a layer is this: the long-term win isn’t just integrating more channels so AI can learn from them, it’s training guests to return to a single place where the conversation lives.

Text is where guests are most responsive, especially in urgent situations. That’s real. But if those conversations only live in Quo, WhatsApp, or SMS threads, we’re still fragmenting the experience and forcing AI to chase context across systems.

That’s why I keep coming back to the Guest Portal as the anchor.

If messaging lived in the Guest Portal and was tied directly to the host inbox:

• AI and automations would have a canonical conversation to learn from

• SMS or WhatsApp could still be used for delivery and urgency, but point back to the portal

• Guests would gradually be trained that “this link is where my stay lives”

• Integrations would compound instead of creating parallel sources of truth

I like the idea of AI being able to read external threads even if it can’t respond there yet. That’s real progress. But from a guest experience standpoint, the Portal is what prevents us from permanently living in a world of scattered conversations.

So I don’t see this as anti-integration at all. I see portal-based messaging as the foundation that makes all those integrations actually pay off.

Progress absolutely beats perfection here. I just want to make sure we’re progressing toward consolidation, not permanent fragmentation.

Definitely agree with this. Having messaging in the guest portal would be best, and if it is technically feasible to be mirrored to SMS, that would be great.

Exactly ​@Eli Stoughton. Messaging in the Guest Portal as the source of truth, with SMS mirroring or nudging guests back to it, feels like the right architecture.

That way hosts stay in the inbox, guests know where to go, and SMS does what it’s best at without fragmenting the experience.

I have just started hospitable again having stopped a year ago. I was told last year before i left that hospitable were about to release text messaging to guests.
I spoke to support today who gave me suggestions on how to automate text messages to guests using zapier etc. I don't see why it is not included? It can not be that hard to implement. 
Personally I think one way text would work if that is the only option. Can put in the text the number to reply to.
I have had many customers thank me for communicating by text messages. I always send entry details etc by text. Not need for wifi or apps. 
 

​@timothyM - You’ve come to the right thread! 

Totally hear you on this. Guests definitely notice and appreciate quick text communication, especially for things like entry details or last-minute updates.

Where a few of us have been focusing the conversation is on how SMS fits into the bigger picture of the guest experience.

Text is fantastic for delivery and urgency. The challenge is that once instructions, questions, and updates all live only in text threads, there’s no single place guests can return to if they need to check something later. That’s the gap Direct bookings currently have compared to Airbnb or VRBO.

The idea many of us are advocating for is combining the two:

• Messaging lives in the Guest Portal as the full conversation tied to the reservation

• SMS acts as the notification layer that sends a short message and link back to the portal

So guests still get the immediacy of text, but they also have one place they can return to where everything about their stay lives.

That approach would also let all the AI responses, automations, and scheduled messages hosts rely on today continue to work seamlessly, just with a much better experience on the guest side.

If you’re interested, there’s an active Community thread where hosts are discussing exactly this and pushing for portal messaging as the foundation. Your perspective around guests preferring text would be really valuable there:
https://feedback.hospitable.com/p/enable-chat-history-in-guest-portal

I would love to have SMS! Primarily two-way, but would settle for one-way right now.