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Smoobu is down: what should I do during and after an outage?

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When Smoobu is not loading, check status.smoobu.com: if an incident is listed, our team is already working on it and there is nothing you need to do to bring Smoobu back. Your channels keep taking bookings in the meantime, so block the dates of any new booking on your other channels yourself while Smoobu is down, and check your calendar once it is back. Once Smoobu is back, bookings, cancellations and price changes from the outage window import again, but not always completely, and bookings that arrive late do not send their first automated messages. This article tells you what to watch during the outage and what to check afterwards.

First, check

While Smoobu is down

Calendar sync, booking imports and automated messages are paused with the platform, and they resume by themselves once Smoobu is back. You cannot speed that up from your side.

Your channels are not affected. Booking.com, Airbnb and your other channels keep taking bookings and cancellations, but Smoobu cannot receive them or update the other channels' availability while it is down. So during the outage:

  • Watch your channels' own apps or extranets for new bookings, cancellations and changes.
  • When a new booking arrives on one channel, block those dates on your other channels yourself, in each channel's own app or extranet. This is the only way to prevent an overbooking while Smoobu cannot update availability. Once Smoobu is back and the booking has imported, remove those blocks again so Smoobu controls the availability.
  • Write down every booking, cancellation and price change that arrives on a channel while Smoobu is down. That list is what you check against once Smoobu is back.
  • Send time-critical guest messages yourself, for example check-in instructions for a guest arriving today, from the channel's messaging or your own email. Automated messages do not go out during the outage.

When Smoobu is back, check your calendar

Once the status page shows the incident as resolved, imports restart and the bookings, cancellations and changes from the outage window arrive over the following hours, in batches. The platform being back does not mean everything has been recovered yet. Go through the list you kept and compare it with your Smoobu calendar, and enter anything that has not arrived yourself.

A booking from the outage is missing

Enter it yourself so the dates cannot be sold twice: create the booking with the Channel set to the one it came from and copy the guest name and the arrival and departure dates exactly. When the real import arrives, the two merge into one booking. If you only know the dates, block them instead. Both options are described in A booking is missing, or dates are blocked for no reason.

A booking you entered yourself now shows Overbooking

The real booking arrived and did not match what you entered, or you had blocked the dates rather than entering a booking. This flag is expected after an outage and you can clear it: My imported bookings look wrong (Overbooking / 1 guest): did something break? explains how, including the circular Book Again button (the circular-arrows icon) on the booking's details page, for a booking you entered by hand.

A guest did not get the automated messages

Bookings that import late, after an outage, do not send their first automated messages, such as the booking confirmation. The same applies to a booking you resolved with the circular Book Again button. Send those messages yourself from the booking's conversation. Messages scheduled for later, such as check-in instructions, are sent as usual. For a guest arriving very soon after the outage, check the conversation: a message can arrive late or out of order when the booking imported after its trigger time had already passed.

Prices you changed during the outage are not the same everywhere

Price changes made on a channel while Smoobu was down are not guaranteed to reach Smoobu and your other channels afterwards. Check the prices you changed during the outage and apply them again where needed.

A cancellation from the outage never arrived, so the dates stay blocked

Compare each channel's cancellations from the outage window with your calendar. If a guest cancelled on the channel but the booking is still active in Smoobu, cancel it in Smoobu yourself so the dates open again on every channel. If you are unsure about a booking, contact Smoobu support before cancelling it.

Your own integration missed events

If you built your own integration on Smoobu's webhooks, the webhooks that would have fired during the outage are not sent afterwards, and there is no way to request them again. It is up to your integration to catch up, for example by fetching the bookings for that period through the API. See Use the Smoobu API: get an API key, set up webhooks, and sign your requests.

Check it's fixed

Every booking, cancellation and price change on your list has a matching entry in Smoobu, the dates you blocked on other channels during the outage are open again, no booking shows the status Overbooking, and the guests arriving next have their confirmation and check-in messages in their conversation.

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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