Guest messaging and upsells for Booking Automation
TravelPal answers your Booking Automation guests inside Airbnb, Booking.com or Vrbo, where they booked. It also sells paid extras (upsells), like a damage waiver, at your prices.
One Booking Automation connection works in both directions. Each item is explained below.
What TravelPal reads from Booking Automation
Owner-managers and small property management companies use Booking Automation. They keep units as room types under a property, usually one unit each.
A property and its room types become your units
A unit here is a property plus one room type. The property has the address, map coordinates, check-in hours, checkout time, house rules and your directions. The room type has its description, how many people it fits, and the minimum and maximum stay. Each booking is for one room type. TravelPal joins the two. When one property holds several room types, each unit gets both names. Then your team can tell which unit a guest is in. Booking Automation's API, the way other software reads its data, returns no property or room pictures. So every picture in your guidebook is one you add yourself.
A booking marked new is a real booking
Booking Automation gives each booking one of six statuses. The status new does not mean a draft. It means a real guest is arriving. The host has not opened the booking yet. So TravelPal treats a new booking exactly like a confirmed one. A request or an inquiry is treated as not confirmed yet. The status called black is how a host blocks dates, not a guest's booking. These blocks sit in the same booking list as real bookings. TravelPal reads each one as an owner block or a maintenance hold. It sends nothing.
The booking is the chat, and your notes are in it
Booking Automation's API has no separate record for a chat. Messages are stored under the booking id, in the same list as your team's notes. TravelPal reads the whole list, oldest first. It keeps each line under the label Booking Automation gave it. So a guest message, your team's reply, a booking site notice and an internal note stay apart. Each booking also carries a two-letter code for the guest's language. So the first answer is already in that language.
Amounts on the booking, currency on the property
TravelPal reads each invoice line's description and total. Each line keeps Booking Automation's own type: a charge or a payment. Lines a person added by hand are marked that way. Invoice lines arrive only if you give the bookings-financial permission in setup. The amount is on the booking, and the currency is on the property. So TravelPal reads both. It never gives a price in dollars for an apartment priced in euros.
What TravelPal writes back to Booking Automation
Every message goes out through Booking Automation, never around it. So your Booking Automation inbox shows exactly what each guest was told.
Replies in the channel's own inbox
A channel is a booking site, such as Airbnb. Booking Automation has one way to send a message: the booking site's own inbox. TravelPal answers an Airbnb, Booking.com or Vrbo guest in the chat they wrote in. Your team reads the same chat, and the booking site can check it. Nothing is sent outside that inbox. Booking Automation publishes no way to send email or SMS.
Each sale is emailed to your team
On Booking Automation, TravelPal sells the extras you price yourself, like a damage waiver or an extra clean. Each sale is emailed to your team, so nobody has to find it in Booking Automation. Early check-in and late checkout are not sold on a booking that came from Booking Automation. TravelPal changes no arrival or departure time on a Booking Automation booking. TravelPal sells at your prices, and on the Flat plan takes no share of your upsells. See how upsells work.
Extra nights go to your team, not onto the booking
TravelPal moves no dates on a Booking Automation booking. When a Booking Automation guest asks for another night, your team gets the request and the dates. Your team checks the calendar and makes the change. A guest who booked on a booking site is sent there, because the dates on that booking are the site's to change.
Connected in four steps
You create the access details yourself, inside Booking Automation. TravelPal does the rest itself.
Make an invite code in your API settings
Open your Booking Automation account, then API settings. Give the code read and write on bookings, bookings-personal and bookings-financial, plus read on properties and inventory. These permissions are called scopes. Choose all of them now, because scopes are fixed when the code is made. A missing scope means a new code, not an edit. There is no partner application and no wait for approval.
Trade the code once for the token TravelPal keeps
The invite code is traded one time for a refresh token, a long code like a password. The trade is done with you during setup. TravelPal stores the refresh token, not the invite code or the 24-hour access token. TravelPal checks the token against your account right away. If a scope is missing, TravelPal names that scope now. It does not fail quietly a week later. The marketplace organization box on the connect screen is for Booking Automation's own integration partners. On a normal account it stays empty.
Send the booking alert to TravelPal
A webhook is an alert one system sends to another. Booking Automation sends its booking webhook to a URL you set in the control panel. Paste in the address TravelPal gives you, exactly as given. Then new bookings and big changes, such as date changes and cancellations, arrive as they happen. TravelPal does not wait for an alert about a new guest message. It checks the booking's messages every 15 minutes, day and night.
Properties import, then you set the time zones
Your properties and room types come in. After that, each booking gets its own private guest link. Set each property's time zone with us at this step. Booking Automation keeps one time zone for the whole account and none on a property. Every scheduled message, quiet-hours rule and checkout offer uses the property's time zone. Booking Automation counts API use in credits over each five minute period.
TravelPal shows the connection at every step: connected, last update, and any error in plain words. To see the other setup steps, read what onboarding involves.
What the Booking Automation connection will not do
Know the limits of Booking Automation before you turn anything on. Every property management system has its own limits. TravelPal works inside them, not around them.
Inside Booking Automation, only channel guests can be reached
Booking Automation's API manual says its message send works for bookings from a channel, a booking site. For delivery, the manual names these booking sites: Airbnb, Booking.com and Vrbo. A booking made on your own booking page has no inbox in Booking Automation to write into. Neither does a booking that arrived as a calendar feed. A calendar feed brings dates, with no connection to a booking site. TravelPal does not message those guests through Booking Automation. They keep the private guest link that comes with their booking. They talk to TravelPal there. The manual also does not name Expedia among the booking sites a message is delivered to. So TravelPal answers an Expedia guest on the link, not in a chat the manual does not cover.
Notes on the booking are read here, not written
Booking Automation keeps four kinds of line on a booking. One kind is a note from the host that the guest never sees. TravelPal reads those notes, so it sees what your team wrote before it answers. Writing a note is different. Booking Automation's API manual does not say that a send follows the note setting. A wrong guess would put a private note in a guest's Airbnb chat. So TravelPal writes no notes here at all. Anything TravelPal holds for a person reaches your team in your team's own chat and by email. It does not go inside the guest's chat.
No time is written onto the booking
A Booking Automation booking keeps the times it was made with. TravelPal does not sell early check-in or late checkout on a booking that came from Booking Automation.
A room type is not always one unit
Booking Automation keeps units by room type. One room type can cover several units that are the same. TravelPal knows which room type a guest booked, but not which unit the guest is in. So those units all share one set of instructions for getting in. Such an account needs a person to check it before it is switched on. This is also why TravelPal holds no nights on your calendar here. The only way to close a date closes the whole room type. Opening the date again puts every unit of that room type back on sale. That includes units you had closed for your own reasons.
When TravelPal's AI is not sure, it stops and asks your team instead of guessing. This rule is the same on every system: see the safety guardrails.
Booking Automation integration FAQ
What exactly do I paste into TravelPal to connect Booking Automation?
A refresh token. You make an invite code in your own account's API settings. Give it read and write on bookings, bookings-personal and bookings-financial, plus read on properties and inventory. That code is traded once for a refresh token. The refresh token goes into TravelPal. The access token expires after 24 hours. So you do not paste it, and you do not paste the invite code. The marketplace organization box is for Booking Automation's own integration partners. Leave it blank on a normal account. Nobody at Booking Automation has to approve anything first.
Can TravelPal answer my direct bookings?
Partly: not inside Booking Automation. Its manual describes a message send for bookings from a booking site. It describes no email or SMS send. So a guest who booked on your own booking page cannot be written to there. That guest gets the private TravelPal guest link with the booking and talks to TravelPal on it. Another night on that booking is a change your team makes.
My control panel says Beds24. Is this the right connection?
Yes. Booking Automation runs on the Beds24 system under its own name. Its own published API manual points to the Beds24 manual. That is why some screens and field names in your control panel say Beds24. TravelPal connects to Booking Automation's own server, with a token from your own account. If your subscription is with Beds24 directly, not with Booking Automation, use the Beds24 connection instead.
Will TravelPal use up my Booking Automation API credits?
TravelPal uses some of them. Booking Automation sets one limit of API credits for each five minute period. TravelPal reads new messages on a fixed timer. It holds one access token for its full 24 hours. It does not make a new token for each call. It waits to be told about a booking. It does not read all your properties again to find out.
Not the system you use?
TravelPal connects to 33 property management systems. Below are the systems closest to Booking Automation in how widely they are used.
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Booking Automation is a trademark of its owner. TravelPal is not affiliated with or endorsed by Booking Automation.