AI guest messaging for Rent Manager short-term units
TravelPal connects to Rent Manager on your own API host, imports only the properties you have flagged as short-term rental, and answers those guests by text from your own number or by email. It reads the units, the short-term reservations, the tenant contact details, and the text history in both directions, so the concierge joins a stay already knowing what your team has said. Rent Manager holds no channel inbox, so every reply goes out on a rail the guest can actually be reached on.
One connection, running both ways. Every item on it is detailed below.
What TravelPal reads from Rent Manager
Rent Manager is the back office for United States residential portfolios that run on long-term leases, tenant accounting, and owner statements, with a furnished short-term block flagged off to one side.
Only the short-term side of your portfolio
Rent Manager carries a short-term rental flag on a property, and that flag is the gate. TravelPal keeps the flagged properties and imports the units under them. Long-term apartments, leases, tenant accounting, and owner statements are never read, so connecting a large residential portfolio does not fill the concierge with doors no guest will ever message about. A unit named 4B or Site 112 arrives with its building name in front of it, and its short-term marketing description, occupancy, and address are what the AI answers from: see how the knowledge base works.
Reservations arrive on a sweep, not a ping
Rent Manager does not push anything out, so TravelPal asks. It walks your short-term reservations on a schedule and picks up new bookings and changed dates from that walk. Each stay carries the booked arrival and departure window rather than the arrival your team records when the guest actually turns up, and the guest is quoted the confirmation number they were given, never the internal record number.
The text history, merged into one conversation
Rent Manager keeps texts you received and texts you sent in two separate lists, each numbered on its own and neither aware of the other. TravelPal reads both, keeps the ones on the guest's own number, and puts them back in time order, so a stay reads as one conversation instead of two halves. Give it the user id of the Rent Manager user it signs in as and it can also tell its own texts apart from your team's.
A guest who rebooks is the same person
A short-term reservation in Rent Manager hangs off a tenant record, and a returning guest books again under that same record. TravelPal joins to it, so a second stay starts from what the first one taught it: the dog, the late flight, the ground floor unit they asked for. See how guest messaging works.
What TravelPal writes back
Every message goes out through Rent Manager, never around it, so your own inbox shows exactly what each guest was told.
Texts from your own number, on the guest's record
TravelPal sends through Rent Manager's own texting, from one of the text numbers provisioned on your account, and files every message against the guest's tenant record. Your team opens that tenant in Rent Manager and sees exactly what the guest was told, sitting where a teammate's text would sit.
Email when there is no textable number
A guest with an email address and no textable number is emailed instead, through Rent Manager's mailer, from your own address or the system one. Email is also the rail that leaves no trace on the tenant record, so the text number is what keeps your Rent Manager history complete.
Sales and held questions reach your team
Rent Manager publishes no note that only your team can read, and its short-term reservation cannot be written to, so nothing TravelPal sells is stamped onto the booking. What a guest buys, and anything the concierge holds for a person, lands with your team in your own channel and by email, carrying the stay, the unit, and the amount, and somebody on your side posts the charge. See what it sells.
Connected in four steps
Rent Manager switches API access on for your account, and TravelPal does the rest itself.
Ask London Computer Systems to switch Web API access on
Web API access is switched on for your account by London Computer Systems, the company behind Rent Manager, so the connection starts with one email or call to your account manager. Have your company code with you while you are there: it is the subdomain in your own API host, the acme in acme.api.rentmanager.com. Rent Manager runs no shared host, so that code is part of the connection.
Create a dedicated Web API user
Make a Rent Manager user for the connection rather than reusing a person's login, and give it Web API access. Paste its username and password, your location id, which is usually 1 if you run a single location, and the user's own id. That last one is what lets TravelPal recognize its own texts in the history.
Point it at a sending text number
Choose one of the text numbers provisioned on your Rent Manager account. That is the number guests see and reply to, and replies are the half of the conversation email cannot give you. A from address for guest email is optional: leave it blank and Rent Manager's system address is used.
Check the short-term flags, then confirm the clock
Only flagged properties import, so set the flag before the first sync and nothing else comes across. Then confirm the time zone for each one. Rent Manager stores an hour offset rather than a named zone, and an offset cannot tell Chicago in July from New York in January, so TravelPal asks you instead of guessing. Quiet hours, arrival messages, and checkout reminders all run off that answer.
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 Rent Manager connection will not do
Every property management system draws its own lines, and the ones Rent Manager draws are worth knowing before you switch anything on. TravelPal works inside them rather than around them.
There is no channel conversation to answer in
Rent Manager is not connected to Airbnb, Booking.com, or Vrbo, and holds no inbox for them. A guest who booked on a channel is reached here by text or email from the contact details on their tenant record, not inside the channel's own thread. If most of your short-term bookings are answered inside the channel apps today, that part of your messaging stays where it is.
Text carries replies, email does not
SMS is the one rail on Rent Manager whose incoming side TravelPal can read. Without a provisioned sending number the concierge falls back to email and is speaking one way: a guest who answers is answering into a mailbox, and your team picks that up by hand.
A cancellation is not visible on the booking
A Rent Manager short-term reservation carries no status field and no canceled date, and nothing is pushed to us when one changes, so on the record a canceled stay still reads like a live one. At setup we agree how a cancellation actually shows up on your side, a removed row, a tenant change, whatever your team does today, and the concierge keys off that instead of messaging somebody who is not coming.
The booking record is read only
Rent Manager's short-term reservation can be read but not written back, and it publishes no short-term availability to check against. A paid late checkout therefore does not move the departure time on the record, and extra nights are not sold on Rent Manager at all. TravelPal sells what it can confirm without touching the booking, and hands your team the rest in writing.
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.
Rent Manager integration FAQ
Do I need Rent Manager to turn anything on before connecting?
Yes, and it is one email or call to your account manager. London Computer Systems switches Web API access on for the account. Everything after that is yours: you make a dedicated Web API user and its password inside Rent Manager, then paste those with your company code, which is the subdomain in your own API host, and your location id.
Will TravelPal import my long-term apartments?
No. TravelPal reads only the properties flagged as short-term rental in Rent Manager and the units under them. Long-term leases, tenant accounting, and owner statements are never read, and no resident of a long-term unit is ever messaged.
How does TravelPal reach a Rent Manager guest?
By text from one of the text numbers provisioned on your account, filed against the guest's tenant record, or by email when there is no textable number. Rent Manager holds no Airbnb, Booking.com, or Vrbo inbox, so there is no channel thread to reply inside, and text is the rail whose replies come back into the conversation.
Can TravelPal change a Rent Manager reservation?
No. Short-term reservations are read only over the Rent Manager API. A late checkout the guest paid for is confirmed to them in the thread and sent to your team with the stay, the unit, and the amount, and your team enters the change and the charge in Rent Manager.
Does connecting Rent Manager cost extra?
No. It is priced on the short-term units that come across, not on every door you manage in Rent Manager.
Not the system you run?
TravelPal connects to 33 property management systems. These are the ones nearest Rent Manager in how widely they are used.
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