Great news! In the past, we were unable to handle large attachments in messages from Booking.com guests, which sometimes led to messages getting stuck.

We have now made improvements to our system that allow us to seamlessly import and download large message attachments from your Booking.com guests without any hiccups!

There were several exciting Direct updates in this week's Town Hall, chief among them that we went live with our long awaited integration with Google Vacation Rentals (GVR). Google is a 100% free channel that sends leads to your Direct site.

Direct Basic and Premium hosts who are using Hospitable sites and domains are now able to add eligible properties to Google in Direct's Channels tab. Check out our help article for the full list of Google's requirements.

Custom domains

We hope to add support for custom domains by next Friday, October 13th. We delayed these until we passed the initial Google audit as they add complexity and we need to implement additional controls to prevent a drop in our platform quality score.

Reviews

We intend to start syncing reviews from Airbnb listings to their corresponding GVR listing starting next week.

Upcoming improvements

We'll also be adding a status (live/pending/issues) for listings. As it can take up to two weeks for Google to process new properties, the status will be helpful to monitor your progress. We are also investigating if we are able to fetch the links for each Google listing so you don't have to find it yourself.

Following that we will be working on a solution for custom sites, syncing your Direct cancellation policy, and custom brands for GVR listings.

We announced on August 23rd Hospitable Town Hall our intention to launch Priority Support. Thanks to your feedback, this is now live and available for beta users first.

All customers will always be serviced by the same our Award-Winning team, with the highest satisfaction score in the industry (according to G2), but for an extra fee, you can get access to

• WhatsApp: Interact with our support team via our WhatsApp phone number and send voice messages while you are on the go.
• Priority: All your new conversations are flagged as a priority and ranked first for our live chat agents.
• Phone support [Coming Soon]: Whenever we are ready to launch phone support, you will be the first to know and test it out.

This feature is now available to all users.

Ad hoc refunds

Both Premium and Basic hosts can now choose to return any portion of a booking to the guest, up to fourteen days after the reservation ends. Click the Send or request money button from the Inbox inner sidebar and enter an amount to refund. See details.

Ad hoc payment requests are coming next.

Legacy sites and widgets

We recently discontinued support for Hospitable sites that don't have an active Direct plan.

We also will be winding down support for our legacy widgets soon. We have updated the URLs on our new widgets so that we can customize widget color schemes and, in the future, track your conversion rates. Check out this article for instructions on how to update your widget.

Instant Book for Basic

We recently extended our Instant Book feature to Direct Basic reservations.

We also added an optional "last-minute" condition that all Direct customers can use to disable Instant Book if the booking is within X days of check-in.

Payout History page

We completely remade the Payout History page, which now displays your current balance, and for Premium users, your payouts in the last 30 days and upcoming 30 days. Each reservation can be expanded to reveal any alterations, refunds, and adjustments. We now display the property name and other reservation data, and you can click on the reservation ID to open the conversation in the Inbox.

Property < Direct tab

There's now a super helpful Direct section on each property page. After selecting a property, click on Direct in the inner sidebar to get quick access to the property's site and widget links, the cancellation policy, the payout method, active promo codes, and, for Premium customers, the current tax rates.

Fees pulled from Airbnb

We fixed an issue with how we were pulling percentage-based fees from Airbnb for management, community and resort fees. Specifically, if you had a percentage fee set, we were saving it in Hospitable as a fixed fee (eg. $3 instead of 3%). This would only have impacted your Direct price calculation.

Have you ever been on the go when you received a mobile notification from Hospitable, only to realize you're asked to log in... again?

Previously if any user on an account changed their password, everyone on that account would be forcefully logged out of Hospitable, even the users who didn't change their password. This was especially impactful for accounts with several secondary users. Now, these security logouts are user-based, not account-based, so if a user changes their password, only the user who changed their password will be logged out on other devices, but the rest of the users on that account will remain logged in.

We have our eyes on a few more improvements to prevent these forced logouts while still maintaining high security standards.

We've addressed the confusion surrounding smart lock backup code messages. Previously, it appeared as if these messages were always scheduled to be sent.

We've now cleared this up, and you will only see backup code messages in your messaging logs if they are actually sent!

We're launching support for the Igloo and Nuki lock apps to select users🎉

If you want early access to these integrations as a beta tester, let us know by applying to part of the test group!

We have updated our Booking.com integration, which gives us several new capabilities!

What's New :

• We can now receive all messages sent by your the guest, even those sent via the Booking.com mobile app or SMS messaging.
• You're now able to send / receive attachments in Booking.com messages.
• We will import all messages for reservations that existed before connecting your Booking.com account to Hospitable.
• Adding a special request contact during account connection is no longer required.

This also resolves some messaging issues experienced by users who already have a connected booking.com account.

Based on popular demand, we now color reservations based on the booking channel. This feature was available briefly on an opt-in basis. We got such good feedback from hosts that we have now updated it for everyone.

If you're curious, we used Airbnb's secondary color teal, instead of pink, because the pink was not working. Trust us.

📆 Color-coded calendar

Have you updated your Hospitable calendar with the new channel color scheme? Based on popular demand, we now color reservations based on the booking channel.
Because change can be scary, we let you control the update by clicking the Try Now button at the bottom of your calendar. If you're curious, we used Airbnb's secondary color teal, instead of pink, because the pink was not working. Trust us.

💳 Direct sites and widgets will require a Direct subscription

From September 15th, we require an active Basic, Premium, or Lite subscription to have a published Direct site or booking widget. Direct Lite is a new option for customers in markets that are not supported by Stripe.

🔓 Set buffers in minutes

Smart lock buffers can now be set in minutes, in addition to hours. Buffers are useful to add a little bit of cushion before and after a check-in or check-out time, so that if a guest arrives a few minutes early, or checks out a few minutes late they can still use their code. You can set a buffer you're comfortable with in Settings > Smart locks.

✈️ FlightAware cancelled

We had an integration with FlightAware that wasn't delivering a lot of value. In the interest of removing distractions and focusing on things that matter, we have removed the integration from our Apps page.