Supercharging Your Guest Communication With The All-New Message Templates

Great communication is the heart of excellent hospitality. We know how important it is to deliver the right message, to the right guest, at exactly the right time. That’s why our team has completely revamped the Message Templates experience!

Why We Did This & What It Means For You 

As your vacation rental business grows, so does the complexity of managing guest communications across multiple channels and languages. We listened to your feedback and realized our previous template system needed a major upgrade to match the evolving needs of modern hosts. You needed more flexibility, deeper automation, and better tools to help your brand stand out.

We rebuilt this experience from the ground up with a few core benefits in mind:

• Save Countless Hours: With advanced triggers, AI translations, and up to 30-day sending windows, your communication runs entirely on autopilot. You can step away from your inbox knowing guests are getting exactly what they need.
• Elevate Your Professional Brand: From sending emails via your own custom domain (SMTP) to adding professional attachments, you now have total control over how your brand is presented to your guests.
• Prevent Mistakes and Broken Messages: We have introduced smart guardrails, such as automatically disabling HTML in incompatible channels, to ensure your messages always render perfectly and avoid confusing formatting errors.

From AI-powered translations to advanced sending rules, this massive rollout is designed to give you unprecedented control over your guest journey. Here is everything new in your Smoobu account.

1. Take Control Of Your Sender Identity

Custom SMTP Configuration & Host Aliases: Want to send automated messages directly from your own professional email address? You now can! We’ve added Custom Email Server (SMTP) support for users with private domains (or those using tools like Brevo and SendinBlue).

• Custom Host Alias: Personalize your host.smoobu.com alias to easily route replies back to your dashboard while keeping your personal email private.
• Professional Touch: By connecting your SMTP, your guests will receive communications that perfectly match your brand's domain.

2. A Revamped, Smarter Templates Dashboard

Managing dozens of templates across multiple properties can get complicated. We’ve redesigned the Templates List to give you a bird's-eye view of your entire communication flow.

• Sort by User Journey: You can now sort your templates by the natural flow of a reservation: Booking Confirmation → Arrival → Online Check-in Completed → Add-on Purchase → Departure → Cancellation → Manual.
• Advanced Filters: Easily filter your templates by property, trigger, and channel.
• At-a-Glance Insights: Instantly see which languages are configured (just hover over the flag icons!), view configured channels, and check your "Additional Recipients" without ever opening the template.

3. AI Translations & Default Languages

Say goodbye to language barriers!

• AI-Powered Translations: You can now automatically translate your templates into 10 supported languages (including French, Spanish, German, Italian, and more) with a single click. (Note: AI Translations have a generous daily limit of 30,000 characters).
• Default Languages: You can now set a default language for your templates. If a guest’s language isn't specified or translated, they will automatically receive the default version.

4. Powerful New Triggers, Timing, And Rules

We’ve added incredibly powerful automation rules so your messaging is as dynamic as your business.

• 30-Day Sending Windows: Need to send a message 14 days before arrival? Or 30 days after departure? You can now schedule messages up to 30 days before or after a trigger!
• New "Add-on Purchase" Trigger: Automatically send a custom thank-you or instructional template the moment a guest buys an item or service from your Guest Guide.
• Expanded Online Check-in Support: The "Online Check-in Completed" trigger now natively supports Chekin and Stellar forms, in addition to Smoobu's native Check-in!
• Advanced Sending Conditions: Ensure messages are sent only when the context is perfect. You can now set rules to only send a template if:
  • The booking is paid or unpaid.
  • Online check-in is complete or incomplete.
  • The booking length exceeds X days.

5. Attachments & Editor Improvements

• Send Attachments: You can now add up to five attachments (PDF, JPG, PNG; max 1MB each) directly to your templates! (Note: Attachments are disabled on Airbnb due to channel limitations.)
• Smart HTML Editor: To prevent broken messages, we’ve added intelligent guardrails. The HTML editor will automatically deactivate if you select Airbnb, Booking.com, or Vrbo, ensuring your text always looks perfect on those platforms.
• New Placeholders: We’ve added new dynamic tags, including [ChannelReservationID], [lastPurchasedAddon], [pin5], and [pin6]. Integration-specific placeholders will now conveniently hide themselves if you don't have the relevant integration active, keeping your workspace clutter-free.

6. One-Click Template Duplication

Why start from scratch? You can now duplicate any existing template directly from the table. This instantly copies your message content, channels, attachments, and settings, making it incredibly easy to create variations of your favorite templates.

Plus: We’ve streamlined the CC/BCC process into a single "Additional Recipients" field. You can now BCC up to 10 stakeholders (like your cleaning team or property managers) on any template!

Sneak Peek: What’s Coming Next?

We aren't stopping here. Our team is already hard at work on the next batch of communication upgrades. Here is a little sneak peek at what’s coming soon:

• Template Previews (See exactly what your guest will see!)
• WhatsApp integration
• Bulk, one-off send-outs
• Expanded AI translations & AI-suggested replies

Log in to your Smoobu account today to explore the new Message Templates and take your guest communication to the next level!