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 Channel Guest Without 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 booked through a channel and subsequently canceled will make your workflow easier.
This scenario assumes the guest booked through a listing channel (such as Airbnb and Booking.com) but has not yet provided contact information or signed a renter agreement.
Handling Guest Booking Cancellation Notification messages will vary depending on where the booking originated. Listing Channel cancellations are handled differently than Direct booking or Vrbo API-connected cancellations. We recommend you read our Canceling a Booking support article for a complete explanation.
Since we don't have the guest's contact information, our only option is to set up a channel message template and trigger that 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 Channel Message Template to Send a Cancellation Notice to Your Channel Guest Without Contact Information
- Create a Trigger That Applies to Booking Cancellations to Send a Booking Cancellation Notice to Your Channel Guest Without Contact Information
Create a Booking Message Template to Send a Cancellation Notice to Your Channel Guest Without Contact Information
Go to Settings > Templates to configure the "booking" template type message you want to send to your guest.
Since we have no guest contact information, there is only one choice for the type of template you can create - a channel template. If you want to send a message on Airbnb, the booking must have come through Airbnb, to begin with, so that our system knows how to deliver your response back to the correct Vrbo thread.
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.
Send by Channel
Cancellations can happen anytime, even before guests provide contact information or sign a renter agreement. 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!
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.
We also added the listing channel source {BSOURCE} field code and stated that any refund will be processed through that listing channel so the guest knows what to expect regarding any refund.
Now we have your channel message template created; it's time to configure the trigger that will send it.
Create a Trigger That Applies to Booking Cancellations to Send a Booking Cancellation Notice to Your Channel Guest Without Contact Information
Since each trigger can only send one message template, so we'll need to create one trigger to send our channel 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 > Listing Site is > Only: Airbnb or Booking.com
- Action: Email Templates > Guest Booking Cancellation Channel Template
Now, let's talk about what the above settings mean!
The Type and Event fields will make the trigger send your Guest Booking Cancellation Channel Template as soon as any booking cancellation/deletion is received or recorded in your account.
Since we are targeting "booking cancellations" for guests who booked on a channel for whom we do not 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 "Listing Site is Only Airbnb or Booking.com" 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 Channel 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 a channel message, select the channel template and be careful not to choose an email or SMS template.
At this point, your trigger should look like this:
Nice and simple!
Click Save, and you will have a trigger ready to go. These actions do exactly what they say. When a booking cancellation comes in from a guest who booked on a listing channel whom you do not have contact information for, the trigger runs to send your Guest Booking Cancellation Channel Template. That's it!