Activating Booking.com and Airbnb email notifications to receive messages in SmartChat
Booking.com and Airbnb guest messages arrive in SmartChat via portal email notifications. This guide explains how to activate them on both portals, which address to use, and how to verify the mailbox in SmartChat.
This page is not translated yet: you are seeing the Italian version.
You are in the right place if…
- “Booking messages are not arriving in SmartChat”
- “I don't see Airbnb chats, only WhatsApp ones”
- “My replies from SmartChat do not appear on the Booking extranet”
- “How do I connect Booking.com and Airbnb to SmartChat?”
- “Portal messages arrive with a few minutes delay”
This guide has not yet been verified against the latest software version.
SmartChat receives Booking.com and Airbnb messages by reading the email notifications that the portals send every time a guest writes. For this reason, notifications must be active and arrive at the same mailbox connected to SmartChat. WhatsApp, on the other hand, uses a direct connection: it can work even when portal messages are not arriving.
Booking.com
Repeat these steps for each property you manage.
- Log in to the extranet at admin.booking.com.
- From the menu, open Property and then Messaging preferences.
- In General settings, under the Notifications section, activate the option Send me an email when… A guest sends a message.
- Still in Messaging preferences, open Security settings and enter the verification code if requested.
- Click Add email address, enter the address connected to SmartChat, and click Apply to all properties.
- From the top right menu, open Contacts, enter the verification code, and in the Reservations section, indicate the same address.
The address must be the same one provided during the SmartChat activation: with a different address, replies sent from SmartChat will not appear on the extranet.
Airbnb
- Log in to your Airbnb account.
- Open the menu in the top right and choose Account settings.
- Open Notifications and then Account.
- In the Guest and host messages section, verify that email notifications are active.
Verification in SmartChat
Open Settings → Email → Mailboxes and check that the mailbox used for the portals is configured and active. If there is a verification button in the mailbox, use it to check that SmartChat can access it.
You can use the same mailbox for Booking.com, Airbnb, and direct emails. Avoid having multiple SmartChat mailboxes receiving messages from the same portal for the same property.
Arrival times
Between the guest's message on the portal and its appearance in SmartChat, a few minutes may pass: the portal must generate the notification, the email must be delivered, and SmartChat must read it. This is the normal operation of these channels. If messages stop arriving altogether, check the mailbox as described above.
Frequently asked questions
I changed my email mailbox password: what should I do?
Update the password in SmartChat as well, otherwise the mailbox will no longer be read and portal messages will stop arriving. Go to Settings → Email → Mailboxes, open the mailbox, delete the saved passwords for both sending and receiving, and type the new one manually, without using the browser's autocomplete. Then click Test connection and Save. If messages still do not arrive after the update, contact support.
Are messages that arrived while the mailbox was not working recovered?
Not automatically: messages received while SmartChat was unable to read the mailbox may not be imported. For those conversations, reply from the portal's extranet; to verify a specific case, contact support.