Triggers give you a powerful way to communicate automatically. You can respond to guests with personalized messages or notify third parties without lifting a finger! To read more about triggers, check out our Trigger overview support article. We've created a small library of trigger examples to help get you started.
In this example, we're dealing with a booking for the following scenario:
Scenario: Send a Booking Cancellation Notice to Your Guest With Contact Information
Nobody wants to see a booking get canceled, but sometimes life happens! Having Guest Booking Cancellation Notification message templates ready to send to guests who cancel will make your workflow easier.
This scenario assumes that the guest has already provided contact information and signed a renter agreement.
Handling Guest Booking Cancellation Notification messages will vary depending on where the booking originated. Direct bookings and Vrbo API-connected cancellations are handled differently than Other Listing Channels. We recommend that you read our Canceling a Booking support article for a complete explanation.
By setting up an email, channel, or SMS template and trigger, you can send a message to guests who cancel. OwnerRez can do that for you with message triggers.
Here are the steps for how to set up a template and trigger for this scenario:
- Create a Booking Message Template to Send a Cancellation Notice to Your Channel Guest With Contact Information
- Create a Trigger That Applies to Booking Cancellations to Send a Booking Cancellation Notice to Your Channel Guest With Contact Information
Create a Booking Message Template to Send a Cancellation Notice to Your Channel Guest With Contact Information
Go to Settings > Templates to configure the "booking" template type message you want to send to your guest.
There are three choices for the type of template you can create - email, channel, and SMS. These are the delivery methods that will be used for your response. To send these types of templates, the booking must have contact information you can reply to. For instance, if you want to send an SMS message as your reply, the guest must have provided a phone number with their booking. Likewise, if you want to send a message on Vrbo, the booking must have come through Vrbo, to begin with, so that our system knows how to deliver your response back to the correct Vrbo thread.
Send by Email
First, we'll create an email template, so go to Settings > Templates > Email tab > click the Create Email Template button > select the "Booking" option. This will open an email editor with some sample field codes filled in. For detailed information about how email templates work, check out the email templates overview article and field codes article.
Copy and paste the following values into your new email template.
Name:
Guest Booking Cancellation Email Template
From Name:
{MYCOFULL}
From Address:
{MYEMAIL}
To Name:
{CFULL}
To Address:
{CEMAIL}
Subject:
[Booking # {BID}] Canceled
Body:
Hi {CFIRST},
We're disappointed that you had to cancel your booking (# {BID}) at {PDISPNAME}.
As a reminder, our cancellation policy is:
{BCANPOLDAT}
If applicable, any refund will be processed by {BSOURCE}.
Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns, and keep {PDISPNAME} in mind for your future travel!
{MYFIRST}
If you're wondering what those field codes do, check out the field codes support article or use the "Preview" button on the booking to take a live look.
Here's a quick preview of what the above email message looks like:
Notice how clean and personalized the content is. The subject line is dynamic to the property name. We included the (# {BID}) booking ID field code as well as our cancellation policy in italics as a reminder for the guest by including the {BCANPOLDAT} field code that uses specific dates. The body addresses the guest by name, so it looks like the body was written by hand. In other words, it looks like a hand-written manual response, even though it wasn't.
After copying and pasting the above subject and body into your template, feel free to play with the words and styles to make it your own. However, remember that we are creating a message that is specific to "cancellations." This message assumes that all cancellations it responds to are bookings with guest contact information, so make sure to customize accordingly. While we did include the {BSOURCE} field code that displays the name of the listing site/channel of the original booking, we did not include any specific refund amounts because Direct bookings and Vrbo API-connected cancellations are handled differently than Other Listing Channels.
We are now armed with a solid cancellation email template to send to the guest. But what about channel cancellations?
Send by Channel
Even though we assume that the guest has already provided contact information and signed a renter agreement in this scenario, cancellations can happen anytime. Channels like Airbnb and Booking.com don't provide an email address for the guest, so you need to be able to respond to cancellations on channel messaging platforms as well. OwnerRez directly integrates with the native messaging platforms at Vrbo, Airbnb, and Booking.com, so this is easy to set up!
Note: Why can't you use a platform email or proxy email address like "joe.blow.12345@messages.airbnb.com" or "joe.blow.12345@messages.booking.com?" These platform/proxy email addresses aren't real. If you send messages to them, your message will be collected by the channel, stripped, re-formatted and displayed on the channel's message platform in various ways that typically don't work well for email.
For detailed information about how channel templates work, check out the Channel Templates and field codes support articles.
To create a channel template, go to Settings > Templates > Channel tab > click the Create Channel Template button > select the "Booking" option. This will open a message editor with some sample field codes filled in.
Copy and paste the following values into your new channel template.
Name:
Guest Booking Cancellation Channel Template
Body:
Hi {CFIRST},
We're disappointed that you had to cancel your booking (# {BID}) at {PDISPNAME}.
As a reminder, our cancellation policy is:
{BCANPOLDAT}
If applicable, any refund will be processed by {BSOURCE}.
Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns, and keep {PDISPNAME} in mind for your future travel!
{MYFIRST}
Channel templates have a Preview button, so as you type, take a quick look at the preview window to get a sense of how the channel message will look.
Here is a quick look at how the above channel template looks in preview mode:
As you can see, this message is plain (no colors, images, or rich text), but that's good because it will be sent to the guest via the channel messaging platform, and the messaging platforms don't allow anything other than plain text. We included the (# {BID}) booking ID field code as well as our cancellation policy in italics as a reminder for the guest by including the {BCANPOLDAT} field code that uses specific dates.
Now we have your channel message template created! But maybe we want to send an SMS message?
Send by SMS
Some bookings that arrive in your account will already include the guest's phone number. This typically happens when a guest books on your book-direct website, using your Book Now widget, or on a listing channel that passes guest contact information at the time of booking, such as Vrbo.
Using our SMS premium feature, you can reply directly to their cell phone via SMS. For detailed information about how SMS templates work, check out the SMS Templates and field codes support articles.
To create an SMS template, go to Settings > Templates > SMS tab > click the Create SMS Template button > select the "Booking" option. This will open an SMS message editor with some sample field codes filled in.
Copy and paste the following values into your new SMS template.
Name:
Guest Booking Cancellation SMS Template
To Phone Number:
{CPHONE}
Body:
Hi {CFIRST}, your booking (# {BID}) at {PDISPNAME} has been canceled. If applicable, any refund will be processed by {BSOURCE}. Keep {PURL} in mind for your future travel! 😁
Once again, smack that Preview button to see how this looks live! SMS templates are similar to channel templates in that they are plain text with no colors or formatting options, but you can still dress them up with personalized field codes and light-hearted emojis.
Here is a quick look at how the above SMS template looks in preview mode:
Not a fan of emojis? No worries, edit that part out!
You'll notice that this SMS template differs from the email and channel templates in that it is much shorter and doesn't include the {BCANPOLDAT} cancellation policy field code link. We did include the {PURL} property URL field code to encourage the guest to keep us in mind for future travel. Instead, it's a quick sentence to direct the guest to check their email from us. If you'd rather say something else - that's totally fine. Or you could send a larger message body, including the shorter {PCANPOL} cancellation field code link.
Now that we have some message templates created, it's time to configure the trigger that will send them.
Create a Trigger That Applies to Booking Cancellations to Send a Booking Cancellation Notice to Your Channel Guest With Contact Information
Since each trigger can only send one message template, you'll need to create a trigger for each type of reply you send. Above, we crafted replies for email, channel, and SMS, so we'll need to create three triggers to send each one.
First, we'll create a trigger to send the email message. Go to Settings > Triggers > and click Create to pull up the new trigger screen.
Here is a list of all the settings the trigger needs to have:
- Type: Immediate
- Event: Booking is canceled/deleted
- Add Condition > Email Address on File: Has Real Email Address
- Action: Email Templates > Guest Booking Cancellation Email Template
Now, let's talk about what the above settings mean!
The Type and Event fields will make the trigger run as soon as any booking cancellation/deletion is received or recorded in your account.
Since we are targeting "booking cancellations" for guests for whom we already have contact information only, we want to add a "Condition" to the trigger that will stop it from sending out messages for other bookings. Adding the "Has real email address" condition status covers that.
You may want to add other conditions, but for now, this is enough to make our trigger send the Guest Booking Cancellation Email Template when you receive a cancellation.
Finally, the last thing we select is the "Action" for the email template we want to send. Since this trigger is supposed to send an email message, select the email template and be careful not to select a channel or SMS template.
At this point, your trigger should look like this:
Nice and simple!
Click Save, and now you have a trigger ready to go. These actions do exactly what they say. When a booking cancellation comes in, the trigger runs to send your Guest Booking Cancellation Email Template. That's it!