Let’s talk about the Guest Portal

I love the dynamic/contextual part of this. Of course all of this can/should live in the guidebook too (it does for us) but surfacing the /page of this info dynamically/contextually is a guest benefit. 

We already do this in our drip campaigns via automated messages that go to guests PRIOR to their arrival. Driving them to different parts of our guide that are useful for them at that stage of their journey/experience with our home(s). 

I would love to be able to add more than 1 email for direct bookings! So that multiple guests can get the automated messages :) 

​@chantalo - This is a great feature request!

I have only had a few direct bookings but the guests don’t seem to know where to go or where to get the information.  I recently had one respond 2 weeks after checking out that they only saw messages at that time (2 weeks later).  

Is it made clear on where they should go for the information after the reservation?  Maybe I missed a tutorial and can be directed to it.

Thanks!

Stacia 

Hi ​@Stacia, sorry for delayed response, I was conferencing, and missed it completely. 

For Direct bookings, guests get a “Manage my stay” button in the booking confirmation email. This opens their portal with address, house rules, payments, cancellations, upsells, contact host, and any tasks like verification or rental agreements.⁠⁠​

But for guest not to miss it, you should do following: add %guest_portal% to “After reservation,” “Before check-in,” and “Day of check-in” templates.⁠⁠⁠⁠​ By including Guest Portal everywhere, it is a lower chance guest will miss it.

For more information, you can read the help article here: https://help.hospitable.com/en/articles/9360903-guest-portal

Does this help?

Wouldn’t it be awesome if ALL the messaging threads (like an app) lived in the Guest Portal too (at least for direct guests)? 

I am onboarding a new property that is part of a Property Association with many restrictions on guests registration, It’s a gated community in PA. Right now, I’m setting up the Guest Portal to collect Guest information including Primary Booking Guest Age, which I notice is missing from custom codes and a field for collection. I also notice there is one general {guest_name), {guest_age}, {relationship_to_booking_guest} collection field I must include for the association for all guests and send an email to the security office for when they arrive at the gate when complete. My questions are:

If I collect multiple {guest_name), {guest_age}, {relationship_to_booking_guest} fields will it persist correctly in the form? I really need Guest1, guest2 guest3 and so on….

My second question, is how can I send the email once it’s complete? Is there a task, or Zapier to achieve this?

Thanks in advance, Chris

The main frustration for some guests has been when booking direct and having difficulty finding where to pay.  I send them the guest portal link and they go to complete the tasks and there is no link to pay.  They have to go to their email to find the link to pay.  This isn’t abundantly clear to them.  

100% agree that “where do I pay” is a major pain point. Right now the request comes via EMAIL. Doubly worse it comes from support@hospitable.com alias. boo. 

It could be an easier solve if the Guest Portal mimicked and APP where the communication thread lived there. Email could still act redundantly. 

If you agree, vote up this feature request and share with others too. It’s on the backlog and we need to move it front & center if Direct booking is going to get a proper experience. 

Agreed with this - will start looking into allowing the guest to see the full communication thread in the guest portal

OMG- this would be GAME-CHANGING for direct guests. I’d put this ahead of the branding/custom domain email aspect as it ties specifically into behavior they’re used to (app/app-like experience with email redundancy). 

I do agree everything should be done through a web portal; there is no need for guests to check their emails, and I do agree the email is a nice plus, but it is not the main way to deal with our listings.

Sounds promising!

How does the Guest Portal fit into your process? (e.g., when do you send it, what's the main use it has for you?)

I may have added it to guest messages.  But i need to check! Only time I've looked at it was when a guest asked about when a payment was going through,  and I was happy to find the info in there to send them to.

Are guests actually using it? Have you seen it help or cause confusion?

Is there a way to see if they have accessed it? Some stat's would be useful.

If you use rental agreements, security deposits, ID verification, or upsells - have guests been accessing the guest portal and completing the tasks promptly?

n/a

Any frustrations or pain points?

What would you love to see added or improved?

If this could work for improving guest communication for direct in all in!  I have guests who booked direct filling in the contact form on our website, even messaging me via instagram, so the current process is either not working or not trusted by guests.

I have a new property I have been working on integrating the guest portal use. The specific property is in a community requiring additional information in the form of a rental agreement. While the guest portal has served great point to collect that data, I’m not finding many options to either trigger a workflow like email nor do I see that agreement available to manage through API to manage with something like Zapier. I need to extract the data because the community wants the info in a pdffiller.com form, which I created as a template.

 
So, the challenge I see or feature requests to help are;

• an integration with pdffiller.com or similar, to manage additional contracts or agreements
• email trigger once the agreement is complete 
• enable the custom fields used in the rental agreement to be available in the API
• expose the rental agreement to the API that can then be included into a workflow like Zapier

Admittedly, I’m not as experienced with hospitable as I would like to be so perhaps some of this if an option. 

Thanks, Chris

It’d be really cool if, in the guest portal, guests could tap the Wi-Fi and have their device connect automatically. That would make the QR codes super smooth.

Something like this I want to create, but not sure how would the guest click the guest portal and it will automatically take them to their own portal

Maybe by adding a URL that is more generic and not tied to a specific listing, but the whole account could work well for this, especially since Hospitable already uses the last name to access it. 

Hey ​@Homelike.ca, thanks for sharing! I merged your posts in one, as it’s much better for clarity and readability, and moved it here under the fitting topic. 💜

*Add a guidebook 

*Let us collect their data and have it export for repeat business (is there already a way to do this through mail chimp?) 

-guest feedback for direct booking was that booking process was exhausting and extensive. I appreciate the thoroughness though with direct booking with new customers. But it sounds like it’s an arduous process. I might do a mock booking myself to see what they’re referring to.

It’d be really cool if, in the guest portal, guests could tap the Wi-Fi and have their device connect automatically. That would make the QR codes super smooth.

Something like this I want to create, but not sure how would the guest click the guest portal and it will automatically take them to their own portal

Maybe by adding a URL that is more generic and not tied to a specific listing, but the whole account could work well for this, especially since Hospitable already uses the last name to access it. 

 

This is a great suggestion - We are working on more generic landing pages for the guest portal tied to a specific property or upsell. I like the idea of a ‘connect to wifi’ button in the portal also, that will take some figuring out. Thanks for sending this over

Hi!

I understand that it is not possible to put a nicer looking link or hyperlink to the guest portal, but is it possible to at least have the address say /guestportal ?

​@Thomas Wayfinder What do you mean address - the URL?