AI guest messaging and upsells for Hostex
TravelPal connects to Hostex with one access token that you make in your own Host Portal. It answers guests in the conversation each booking already has.
One Hostex connection works in both directions. Each item is explained below.
What TravelPal reads from Hostex
Hostex is used by short-term rental companies. Hostex sells through twenty channels. Many of these companies' bookings come from Asia-Pacific channels such as Agoda, Trip.com, Tujia and Xiaozhu. As many come from Airbnb, Vrbo and Booking.com.
Properties, with the channels each unit sells on
A Hostex property has a name, an address, coordinates and your own groups and tags. It also has the list of channels the unit is listed on. Each stay names the channel it came in through. So an Agoda guest and a guest from your own site are treated differently from the first message. The property record does not hold your house rules, your check-in times or your photos. Filling that gap is the one real piece of setup work in this connection.
A multi-room booking arrives as one stay per room
Hostex gives every room in a booking its own stay code, under one shared reservation code. TravelPal follows the stay. Room two of a three-room group booking gets its own guest link. It also gets its own dates and answers. It is not hidden behind room one.
Six reservation statuses, and one means the guest is coming
Hostex marks a stay as accepted, waiting on acceptance, waiting on payment, canceled, denied or timed out. Only accepted means the guest is coming. A booking that still waits on the channel or on the guest's payment is kept as a hold. The guest is not greeted as if it were settled. Denied and timed out are closed requests that never become a stay. A booking that Hostex has not yet given to a unit is left alone until it has one.
Conversations come in whole, with HostGPT messages marked
A Hostex conversation arrives with its full history, oldest message first. Hostex tells us that a conversation changed, but not who wrote in it. So TravelPal opens the thread and checks the sender of each message before it answers anything. Hostex marks the messages its own HostGPT wrote and lists the knowledge sources it used. Those are never read as something one of your people typed.
Past stays, and what each one earned
A Hostex reservation query reaches back 180 days from checkout unless it is told otherwise. So the first import of past stays (the backfill) says how far back to look. Your older stays arrive with the live bookings. Each stay carries its rate as separate lines. The room rent is kept apart from cleaning and the other fees. That makes the before and after on an upsell a real comparison and not a guess.
What TravelPal writes back to Hostex
Every message goes out through Hostex, never around it. So your Hostex inbox shows exactly what each guest was told.
Replies go out on the conversation the booking already has
Hostex sends a message through the channel the conversation belongs to. It publishes no separate email, SMS or WhatsApp send. So there is one way out, and it is the guest's own thread. An Airbnb guest stays inside Airbnb, and a Trip.com guest stays inside Trip.com. Your Hostex inbox shows your team exactly what each guest was told. A stay with no conversation is left for a person. TravelPal does not contact that guest some other way.
Each sale is emailed to your team
On Hostex, 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 Hostex. Early check-in and late checkout are not sold on a booking that came from Hostex. TravelPal writes no check-in or checkout time onto a Hostex stay. The same Hostex record holds the door lock code and the guest's check-in guide link. TravelPal writes neither one. A code that guests key into a door is yours to set.
Extra nights go to your team, not onto the booking
TravelPal moves no dates on a Hostex booking. When a Hostex guest asks for another night, your team gets the request and the dates. Your team makes the change in Hostex. A guest who booked on a channel is sent to the channel's own change flow, where that booking lives. Hostex does not refuse a channel date change for you. It only warns that dates can collide.
Connected in four steps
You create the access details yourself, inside Hostex. TravelPal does the rest itself.
Create the token in Host Portal
In Host Portal, go to OpenAPI Settings, then Add new. Pick the writable scope while you create the token. The scope is fixed at that moment, so a read-only token cannot be upgraded later. It can only be replaced. There is no partner form and no approval queue. The token is yours to make.
Paste it into TravelPal
If Hostex does not recognize the token, it is refused as you save. A wrong paste costs nothing but a retry. A read-only token is not refused, because reading your account is what it is allowed to do. So the scope is the thing to get right when you create it. One note about your account: OpenAPI access comes with your Hostex plan. If the subscription lapses, or your edition does not include it, Hostex says so plainly. You fix it in your own portal. The connection itself is covered by the flat price, see what it costs.
Add the webhook secret token
Hostex puts a secret token in a header on every delivery. These go to the address TravelPal gives you. Hostex does not give that token back when you make the connection. So you read it once, from the portal or from the first delivery, and paste it into TravelPal. Until it is in, TravelPal turns those deliveries away. It will not act on anything it cannot prove came from Hostex. It is the last thing to paste before your first guest.
Properties import, then the content gets written
Your Hostex properties become the units TravelPal answers for, and your past stays are imported. From then on, each stay gets its own private guest link. A three-room booking gets three links. Hostex keeps house rules, check-in times and photos outside the property record. So that content is written once, with you, during setup. It is the one part of this connection that is typing and not pasting.
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 Hostex connection will not do
Know the limits of Hostex before you turn anything on. Every property management system has its own limits. TravelPal works inside them, not around them.
Hostex keeps your property content off the property record
A Hostex property record is a name, an address, coordinates, groups, tags and channels. House rules, check-in and checkout times, parking instructions and photos are not on it. There is nothing there to import. TravelPal answers from the knowledge base, the notes your team writes for it during setup. A unit's own check-in time is not published by Hostex, so tell TravelPal yours and keep it in the knowledge base.
No property carries a time zone
Nothing in Hostex says which time zone a unit is in. This is true of the property and of the booking. The clock for quiet hours, scheduled messages, upsell cutoffs and deposit deadlines is set with you during setup. It is not read from your account. Confirm it first, before anything timed is switched on. If your units are in different countries, confirm it unit by unit.
The note on a Hostex conversation is one shared box
Hostex gives a conversation a single note that your whole team shares. Saving it replaces what was there. A line written by TravelPal would erase what your staff last typed. The next save would erase ours. So TravelPal does not write to it. It also never puts a team note in the guest's thread instead. Sale notes, and anything held for a person, reach your team in its chat and by email.
A message that does not come back clean is not sent twice
Hostex states that this send cannot be made safe to repeat. It returns no id for a message it accepted. So if a request times out, nobody can look up afterward what happened. Hostex suggests sending again, because a repeat is better than silence. That suits a greeting. Our messages quote your prices and confirm paid extras. So TravelPal makes one attempt, tells your team, and lets a person decide.
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.
Hostex integration FAQ
Do I need Hostex to enable anything before I connect?
No. You create the access token yourself in Host Portal, under OpenAPI Settings and then Add new. After that, paste it into TravelPal. Pick the writable scope while you create it. The scope is fixed at that moment, and a read-only token is refused on every send. Your Hostex plan must include OpenAPI access. If the subscription lapses, Hostex stops answering until you restore it in your own portal.
Which booking channels does the Hostex connection cover?
Every channel you sell on in Hostex. That means Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo and Expedia. It also means the Asia-Pacific channels, including Agoda, Trip.com, Ctrip, Tujia, Xiaozhu, Meituan, Muniao and Fliggy. Social channels such as TikTok and Xiaohongshu are covered, and so is Houfy. So are direct bookings taken in the Host Portal or on your own booking site. Each guest is answered in the conversation Hostex keeps for that booking. The reply goes back out over the channel they used.
We already use HostGPT. Can both run?
Yes. But decide for each property which one answers first. Two assistants in one thread will both reply to the same guest. Hostex marks the messages HostGPT sent and lists the sources it used. So TravelPal can tell a HostGPT message from one your team typed. It reads the conversation correctly either way.
We take multi-room bookings. What does each guest get?
Each room gets its own private guest link, its own check-in and checkout, and its own answers. A booking of three rooms arrives in Hostex as three stays that share one reservation code. TravelPal follows the stay and not the reservation code. So the second and third rooms are not folded into the first.
Not the system you use?
TravelPal connects to 33 property management systems. Below are the systems closest to Hostex in how widely they are used.
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Hostex is a trademark of its owner. TravelPal is not affiliated with or endorsed by Hostex.