When your guest booked through Airbnb or Booking.com, Smoobu talks to them through that channel's own messaging system, not by email. That is why your formatting can look different on the guest's side, why some Booking.com messages appear with a delay, and why Smoobu doesn't send you a separate notification for them.
Your messages travel through the channel, not by email
For Airbnb and Booking.com bookings, everything you send from Smoobu (a manual reply or an automated message) is delivered through the channel's messaging connection. The guest sees it inside their Airbnb or Booking.com conversation, exactly where they expect it. Their replies flow back the same way and land in your Messages inbox in Smoobu, attached to the booking.
This only works on channels connected with a full connection. Channels connected by iCal exchange calendar data only: no guest messages travel over an iCal connection in either direction. For direct bookings and bookings from your own website, Smoobu messages the guest by email instead.
Formatting and attachments follow the channel's rules
Airbnb and Booking.com strip HTML formatting from incoming messages. This happens on the channel's side, not in Smoobu, so bold text, colors, and layout from a formatted template arrive as plain text. Write templates for these channels in plain text so the guest sees what you wrote. Images are delivered as links rather than embedded pictures.
Messages sent to a Booking.com guest can also lose their line breaks in the Booking.com conversation view, so paragraphs run together even though your template has them. There is no setting on your side that fixes this; if it affects your messages, contact the Smoobu team.
Smoobu updated how it sends messages in 2026, and the update is now live for all accounts. With it: images to Booking.com guests are sent as real attachments (up to 1 MB per image), PDFs to Booking.com guests are sent by email instead (this needs a guest email address on the booking, and the send is blocked until you add one), attachments to Airbnb guests go by email, and the message preview shows exactly the text that will be delivered on each channel. When a booking has no guest email address, request one from the guest so these email fallbacks can go through.
When Booking.com messages arrive in Smoobu
Regular guest conversations from Booking.com import into Smoobu as they happen. Since October 2025 Booking.com's system messages (check-in time requests, reservation modifications, service-related inquiries) import automatically too.
One type still lags: message requests, where the guest taps a pre-built option like an early check-in request on Booking.com, can take longer to appear, because Booking.com delivers them separately from regular messages and they are not yet part of the faster import. Everything else, both regular and system messages, imports automatically. If Booking.com messages are genuinely not arriving in Smoobu, that is a problem worth fixing, not expected behavior: see Guest messages aren't arriving in Smoobu.
Notifications stay with the channel
Smoobu does not send you an email or push notification when an Airbnb or Booking.com guest writes to you, because Airbnb and Booking.com already notify you themselves. Keep the channel's own notifications switched on in its app or account settings. To choose what Smoobu itself notifies you about, see .
Common questions
Why does the guest see a smoobu.com sender address?
Messages sent through Smoobu's sending system can appear to the guest as coming from a smoobu.com address. That includes messages triggered by connected integrations, such as a smart lock or check-in tool, so a smoobu.com sender does not always mean the message came from one of your Smoobu templates. If a guest receives the same content twice, check whether a connected integration is set up to send it too. To send emails from your own address instead, see .
A link I sent to a Booking.com guest disappeared from the message
Booking.com sometimes filters external links out of guest messages, for example your online check-in or Guest Guide link. In the Booking.com Extranet the message then shows the link as removed. Send the link to the guest by email instead. You can also add your link's domain as a trusted link in the Booking.com Extranet so it stops being stripped: go to Property > Messaging preferences > Security Settings > Your Approved Links and add the domain. See The check-in link is missing from your messages for the full steps.
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Still stuck?
If this didn't answer your question, the Smoobu team is happy to help. In Smoobu, open the Help menu to open a ticket or book a call slot, or use the chat bubble in the bottom-right corner for a quick question during business hours.
Comments
3 comments
Hello, it should be usefull if the entire conversation between host and guest it was visible scrolling a unique page as it happens in AirBnB and Pulse (Booking) applications. Right now, to read the entire conversion, you continuosly have to switch between the inbox and the outbox
Hi, has what Casa di Dulio asked changed?
Hi there!
Apologies about the delay, I only see these comments now. You may check the thread on the Message History. Please head to a booking's Details page, it's on the right-hand side.
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