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The check-in link is missing from your messages

  • Updated

An online check-in link that never reaches your guests is usually a template problem: the placeholder that inserts the link isn't in the message. Add [onlineCheckInLink] to your template under Experience > Communication. For Booking.com guests, the second most common cause is Booking.com removing the link from the message.

First, check

The placeholder isn't in your template

The check-in link only goes out if the message template contains an online check-in placeholder. Open Experience > Communication, open the template that should carry the link, and insert the placeholder from the editor's placeholder panel:

  • [onlineCheckInLink] inserts the link; the form opens in the guest's browser language. This is the usual choice.
  • Language-specific variants exist for English, German, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, French, and Portuguese: [onlineCheckInLinkEN], [onlineCheckInLinkDE], [onlineCheckInLinkIT], [onlineCheckInLinkNL], [onlineCheckInLinkES], [onlineCheckInLinkFR], [onlineCheckInLinkPT].

Copy the placeholder from the panel rather than typing it, so the spelling matches exactly. How templates and triggers work: set-up-automated-messages.

Booking.com's messaging filters out web links it doesn't recognize. When that happens, the guest sees "[link removed]" where the check-in link should be, and the same shows in your Booking.com Extranet conversation. You can approve Smoobu's links yourself:

  1. In the Booking.com Extranet, go to Property > Messaging preferences.
  2. Under Security Settings > Your Approved Links, choose Add a link.
  3. Add the domain of your check-in link, login.smoobu.com, not the full link. Every guest's link is unique, so approving one full link doesn't help the next guest.

If a guest needs the link right away, send it to them by email instead.

A check-in link is valid for 30 days from when it's generated, and it stops working once the guest has submitted the form. For a booking made months ahead of the stay, a link sent at booking confirmation can be dead by the time the guest opens it. Send the check-in message closer to the stay instead: in the template, set the trigger to Arrival with a "days before" offset, for example 7 days before. A message triggered at booking confirmation also goes out only a few minutes after the booking is created; a days-before-arrival trigger avoids both the timing squeeze and the expiry problem.

The booking's details don't show when a check-in link expires. If a long-lead booking's link may have lapsed, don't puzzle over it: open the booking's Online check-in section, copy the current check-in link there, and send it to the guest. One more thing that looks like a broken link but isn't: once a guest has submitted the form, reopening the link shows "Token not found or expired". The guest can't re-open or edit a submitted form; you correct any details on the booking instead.

Check it's fixed

Open the sent message in the booking's message history: the placeholder is replaced by a full web link. Open that link in a private browser window; your online check-in form loads with the fields you configured.

Still stuck?

If these steps didn't fix it, contact the Smoobu team: open the Help menu to open a ticket or book a call slot, or use the chat bubble in the bottom-right corner. To get the fastest answer, please include:

  • Your Smoobu User ID (in the profile-icon menu, top right).
  • The property name or ID, if it's about one property.
  • The Booking ID, if it's about one booking (Bookings, then View more).
  • The channel name, if it's about channel sync (Booking.com, Airbnb, Vrbo, and so on).
  • A short step-by-step: what you did, what you expected, and what happened.
  • Screenshots or a short screen recording of the problem.
  • Your browser and operating system, if something looks wrong on screen.

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