AI that answers your Hostfully inbox
TravelPal connects to Hostfully with an API key created in Agency Settings and the UID of your agency, then answers each guest in the Hostfully thread that belongs to their stay. It reads your properties, your leads, the order behind each one, and the nightly calendar, sells upgrades at your prices, and writes a paid time change back onto the lead itself. Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com guests get a direct message in the channel thread; everyone else is answered by email.
One connection, running both ways. Every item on it is detailed below.
What TravelPal reads from Hostfully
Vacation rental property management companies that run their portfolio, their booking site, and their digital guidebooks on Hostfully, across a base Hostfully puts at more than 62,000 properties.
A property, assembled from all three of its records
Hostfully keeps the physical facts, the written descriptions, and the amenity list apart, and TravelPal pulls all three into one property the AI answers from: address, room and bed counts, amenities, the check-in window, the checkout hour, minimum and maximum stay, and the property time zone so quiet hours run on local time. Hostfully publishes no house rules field, so rules come from your knowledge base rather than from a box that was never meant to hold them.
Leads, filtered down to the ones that are stays
Hostfully files bookings, inquiries, holds, owner blocks, duplicates and its own sample records in one record type called a lead. TravelPal provisions a guest only where the lead is a booking and its status is booked, so a held date is not greeted and an owner block is not treated as an arrival. Each real one brings the channel it came from, the channel's own confirmation code, the party count, and the guest's preferred language.
One thread per stay, with every sender named
Hostfully keeps one thread per reservation rather than one per guest, so history arrives as the conversation about that stay rather than everything a person ever wrote. Each message says who sent it: the guest, somebody at your agency, the owner, Hostfully's own platform automation, or an Airbnb-side user the channel does not identify. A platform receipt is never mistaken for one of your people.
Money lives in the order, so TravelPal reads the order
The rent, the cleaning fee, other fees, services and any adjustment sit on a separate order behind the lead, and TravelPal reads that order for the stay it is working on. It keeps Hostfully's own line ids and reads a refund as a refund rather than as a second sale, so a refunded extra does not land twice in your upsell numbers.
What TravelPal writes back
Every message goes out through Hostfully, never around it, so your own inbox shows exactly what each guest was told.
Replies on whichever of the two rails can reach them
Hostfully sends a direct message when the lead came from Airbnb, Vrbo, or Booking.com, and email for everyone else. TravelPal picks the rail from the lead's own channel rather than from a setting, so a booking-site guest gets email and an Airbnb guest stays inside Airbnb. Hostfully returns its own lifecycle status on each send, and TravelPal treats accepted as accepted rather than as delivered. See how the messaging works.
Sold time changes, written to the lead and then proved
A paid late checkout or early check-in moves the arrival or departure time on the lead's own pre-arrival details, the same field your guest would have filled in. TravelPal then reads the lead back and only calls the sale done if the new time is really there, so your cleaning schedule never runs off a change that did not land.
Extra nights through Hostfully's own alteration
An added night on a direct booking goes through Hostfully's alteration call, which checks the property's own availability and rebuilds the order at your rates. No availability override is sent, and TravelPal re-reads the dates afterward rather than trusting the response. Channel-owned bookings are refused, and so is a lead whose channel is not one Hostfully has published, since a channel TravelPal cannot name is never treated as direct.
The stay link as a Hostfully variable
Create one custom data field in Hostfully and TravelPal keeps each stay's private guest link in it. Because Hostfully exposes custom variables to its own message templates, the link can then be dropped into the scheduled messages you already send, under your own wording.
Connected in four steps
Hostfully switches API access on for your account, and TravelPal does the rest itself.
Ask Hostfully to open the API
API access is a paid add-on on the Hostfully plan, and Hostfully turns production access on for an agency by email. One note to your account manager covers both, and the same note is the place to ask for the personal-data access a key needs before it can move a guest's stated arrival or departure. Everything after that you do yourself.
Copy the key and the agency UID
Hostfully, then Agency Settings, is where the key is made. Paste it into TravelPal together with your agency UID, which is the identifier Hostfully gives your agency rather than anything you create. The key does not expire and there is nothing to rotate, so a mistyped paste costs one retry and no lockout.
Run on the sandbox first
Hostfully asks every integration to start on its sandbox, so that is where TravelPal points until you switch the environment to production. You get to read a full set of answers against test leads before a single live guest sees one.
Switch to production and the portfolio imports
TravelPal subscribes to Hostfully's booking and inbox events itself, imports your properties, and gives every booked lead from then on its own private guest link. Disconnect and it removes those subscriptions from your agency rather than leaving them behind.
The dashboard shows the connection the whole way: connected, last sync, and any error in plain words. The rest of going live is covered in what onboarding involves.
What the Hostfully connection will not do
Every property management system draws its own lines, and the ones Hostfully draws are worth knowing before you switch anything on. TravelPal works inside them rather than around them.
SMS and WhatsApp can be read, not answered
Those messages show in the Hostfully inbox and TravelPal reads them, but Hostfully's send carries two types only: a channel direct message, and email. So a guest who texted is answered on the rail Hostfully can actually deliver, and a guest with no email address on a channel without direct messages is held for your team instead of being written to somewhere they will not look.
The calendar is read, never written
TravelPal reads every night from Hostfully: price, availability, minimum stay, and whether the night is closed to arrivals or departures. Hostfully has no separate calendar write. Holding a night would mean creating a block record and later deleting it, and that delete is the same action that removes real bookings, so TravelPal does not touch it. Sales that need a night are checked against the calendar and then confirmed by the alteration itself.
Nowhere in the thread for a note to your team
Both of Hostfully's message types are visible to the guest, and the only notes on a lead are two free-text boxes that a save replaces whole, which would wipe whatever your staff last typed there. TravelPal does not write in them, and it never falls back to a guest-visible message to reach your team: what a person needs to see goes to your own channel and by email, and the thread waits.
Time writes depend on how your key is cleared
A guest's stated arrival and departure are personal data in Hostfully, and a key without that access accepts the change and quietly leaves the lead as it was. This is why TravelPal reads the lead back after every time change: if the time did not move, you are told the write failed rather than being shown a late checkout that only exists on our side.
Where the AI is not sure, it stops and asks your team rather than guessing. That is the same on every system: see the guardrails.
Hostfully integration FAQ
Does Hostfully have to switch anything on before I connect?
Yes, and it is one email. API access is a paid add-on on the Hostfully plan, and Hostfully switches production access on for an agency by hand once you ask, so your account manager can settle both in the same thread. Ask in that note for personal-data access on the key as well, since that is what lets TravelPal move a guest's arrival or departure time. After that you make the key yourself in Agency Settings and paste it into TravelPal.
Which Hostfully guests can TravelPal reply to?
Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com guests get a direct message inside the channel thread. Every other guest, including the ones who booked on your own Hostfully booking site, is answered by email. SMS and WhatsApp messages are readable in the Hostfully inbox but Hostfully's send does not carry them, so TravelPal answers those guests on a rail it can deliver rather than turning a text into something else.
What happens to my inquiries, holds, and owner blocks?
Nothing. Hostfully stores all of them as leads alongside real bookings, and a lead can read as booked without anybody having booked. TravelPal provisions only a lead that is a booking with the status booked, so inquiries, holds, owner blocks, duplicate copies, and Hostfully's own sample record are skipped rather than greeted.
Can TravelPal see the door codes in my Hostfully account?
No. Hostfully publishes lock and door codes through its API, and TravelPal never calls that part of it or subscribes to its updates. The house manual is kept out of what the AI reads for the same reason: it is the free-text box managers actually type codes and wifi passwords into. Hostfully's own wifi fields, its guidebook links, and the owner notes on a property are left out on the same rule. What a guest is told about getting in comes from what your team publishes for guests in TravelPal, not from Hostfully's code list.
Does connecting Hostfully cost extra with TravelPal?
No. The flat $25 per unit per month covers the connection, the messaging, and the upsells, and TravelPal takes no commission on what it sells for you. The API add-on on your Hostfully plan is Hostfully's own charge and TravelPal does not mark it up.
Not the system you run?
TravelPal connects to 33 property management systems. These are the ones nearest Hostfully in how widely they are used.
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