The Guesty Inbox is a messaging platform that centralizes your guest communication and history. It includes messages sent by email, SMS, via the booking channel, and automated messages triggered by a message automation.
A message may be duplicated in a conversation thread for several reasons:
- If the guest has more than one reservation, messages are merged under a single conversation thread.
- If a reservation meets the sending conditions of more than one message automation, it can trigger multiple automated messages.
In some cases, an automated message may appear twice in the Guesty Inbox for an Airbnb reservation. This typically occurs when the message body contains special characters or excessive blank spaces.
Here’s what happens behind the scenes:
- When Guesty sends an automated message to Airbnb, a unique message ID is generated. This ID is based on several parameters, including the content of the message.
- Airbnb processes the message, removing special characters or extra spaces.
- Airbnb then returns the message to Guesty as an incoming message.
- Since the returned message no longer matches the original, Guesty considers it a new message and generates a unique message ID.
- As a result, the message appears twice in the Inbox.
The message is not actually sent twice to the guest. The duplicated message is only visible in the Guesty Inbox due to formatting changes made by Airbnb.
Find the source of the issue
Follow these troubleshooting steps to find the source of the issue.
Step by step:
- Sign in to your Guesty account.
- In the side navigation menu, click
Inbox. - In the submenu, click Guests.
- Click the relevant message thread.
- Locate the duplicate messages. Note the content, delivery date and time, and delivery method.
- In the inbox widget submenu, click
. Note the listing name, because you will use this to filter results in step 6 of "Find the message automations". - Click the arrow next to the confirmation code to check if the guest has more than one reservation.
- If the guest has multiple reservations: they may receive the same automated message for each reservation, resulting in duplicate messages. This is normal, and no action is necessary.
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If the guest has one reservation: follow the instructions below to investigate and adjust the triggered message automations.
Find the message automations
Follow these instructions to investigate and adjust the message automations when the guest has only one reservation.
Step by step:
- In the inbox widget submenu, click
. - Under "Guest auto messages", select History.
- Locate the duplicate automated messages and note the name of the trigger, such as "At reservation confirmation". Use this to filter results in the next step.
- In the side navigation menu, click
Operations to open the dropdown menu. - Select Automated messages.
-
Filter your message automations to identify the message that was duplicated:
- Use the trigger filter to select the trigger that caused the duplicate message.
- Use the properties filter to select the listing name identified in step 5.
- Expand each message automation to view the associated automated messages. Identify the message automations that triggered the duplicate automated message.
For example:
You might have one message automation assigned to all listings that sends a thank you message, and a different message automation assigned only to Booking.com reservations that sends the same message.
This overlap triggers duplicate automated messages when a guest reserves via Booking.com.
- Decide what action to take:
- Deactivate message automations that you don't need.
- Adjust reservation conditions to remove any overlap for the property, including advance notice and length of stay.
- Add message conditions to automated messages to ensure they are only triggered with the relevant reservations.
