Use the Guesty Inbox or message automations to send an SMS message to a guest. This requires the guest's phone number to be saved in Guesty. SMS messaging works best for short, concise instructions.
When you send an SMS to a guest manually or automatically, the guest's location determines the phone number they see:
| Guest's location | Phone number (message received from) |
| Guests based in North or South America | +12106861984 |
| Guests based in Australia | +61480088796 |
| Guests based in other countries | +447520619995 |
Guests replying to SMS messages
Guests can reply to SMS messages using the Guesty number shown in the received message. You receive the reply only if the guest's phone number is saved in Guesty.
Note:
Guest replies via SMS appear as a single message in the Guesty Inbox regardless of length. However, the carrier controls the delivery, so messages may be split or arrive out of order depending on the carrier's network settings.
Limitations
-
Viewing SMS messages:
Messages sent from the Guesty Inbox via SMS or WhatsApp are delivered to the guest's phone number. You can view these messages only on the guest's phone, not in the respective booking channel's inbox. -
Images via SMS:
Guesty doesn't support receiving images via SMS. If images are attached to an SMS, the message won't appear in the Guesty Inbox, even if the guest replies to an SMS sent from the Inbox. Learn more about sending messages with images from the Inbox. -
Links via SMS:
Due to security restrictions, you can't send shortened or unbranded links. Send such links via email instead. -
Character limit:
When sending an SMS to a guest from the Guesty Inbox using manual or automated messages, note the following limitations:- English messages have a limit of 306 characters per SMS.
- Other languages, which are considered Unicode, have a limit of 134 characters per SMS.
The character limit becomes 134 per SMS when you add Unicode (any character not in the GSM-7 character set) because of standard SMS restrictions. You may unknowingly include Unicode characters if you copy and paste text from other sources. To avoid this, rewrite text directly in Guesty instead of pasting.
If an SMS exceeds the character limit, the error message "SMS is too long. Only part of the message was sent" appears. The message is split, and only the first part is sent.
Unicode includes any character not in the GSM-7 character set, such as:
- All Latin letters A–Z
- Digits 0–9
- Certain special characters, including curly brackets, backslash, tilde, and the euro sign
Important:
When you use variables in SMS messages, the text inserted instead of the variable is not included in the character count.
