AI guest messaging on Rentals United threads
TravelPal reads your bookings from Rentals United and answers guests in their channel threads. Connect it only if Rentals United is your channel manager and holds the guest thread.
One Rentals United connection works in both directions. Each item is explained below.
What TravelPal reads from Rentals United
Rentals United is used by property management companies that run their own distribution. They send one set of units out to Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo, Expedia, and more. Rentals United counts sixty-plus booking channels in its own network.
Properties, with the captions put back on the photos
TravelPal reads the name, street, coordinates, your own description, house rules, the check-in window, and the check-out time. It also reads both guest counts Rentals United keeps. One is the guests the price covers. The other is the most the unit sleeps. Rentals United stores photo captions in a separate list, so TravelPal joins them back to the photos. A guest never sees a gallery with no labels. TravelPal leaves out the arrival instructions box on purpose. Rentals United has no door-code field. So a lockbox combination or a staff member's personal number ends up in that box. Put what you want a guest to have in your knowledge base instead.
Reservations, and the agent that created them
Rentals United puts no channel name on a reservation. It names the address that created the reservation. TravelPal checks that address against the agent list Rentals United keeps for your account. So it knows an Airbnb booking from a Booking.com booking before the first reply. If the creator is not a known agent, TravelPal treats the booking as unknown, not as direct. Direct is the only kind of booking where TravelPal would ever change dates. The guest's language comes from the same record, matched to Rentals United's own language list. The first reply is in the language they booked in.
A lead is not a booking
Rentals United keeps eight reservation statuses, and TravelPal uses them as it finds them. Confirmed bookings and approved requests are real stays, and they get a concierge. A request or a lead does not. Rentals United says a lead is a conversation a guest started that holds no availability. Nobody wants an arrival message sent to a person who never booked.
One reservation can cover several units
One Rentals United booking can name more than one property. It comes back with a separate stay block for each. TravelPal does not guess which unit the guest is in. It leaves a booking like that to your team. It does not send the check-in instructions of whichever property was listed first.
The thread, read from its first message
Rentals United returns message history newest first, one page at a time. TravelPal reads the whole thread, in order, before it answers. So the concierge joins a stay mid-conversation. It does not repeat a question your team already handled. Rentals United also sends its own automatic messages under the same host name your people use. No field tells the two apart. TravelPal treats both as your side of the thread. It stays quiet and does not talk over either.
No availability read, and no made-up nightly price
TravelPal does not read availability or a price per night from Rentals United. A property in Rentals United is priced by a daily, length-of-stay, or full-stay model. Under the last two, one night has no price of its own.
What TravelPal writes back to Rentals United
Every message goes out through Rentals United, never around it. So your Rentals United inbox shows exactly what each guest was told.
Replies go out on the thread the channel owns
Rentals United sends each message over the channel of its own thread. TravelPal answers an Airbnb guest inside Airbnb and a Booking.com guest inside Booking.com. It also answers Vrbo and Expedia guests inside their own threads. This is where your team would have typed. You do not choose a way to send, and nothing is redirected. The guest is answered where they wrote.
Everyone else through the email proxy
Rentals United does not connect natively to every channel. For those channels it works as an email proxy and passes email to the guest. TravelPal uses that proxy whenever the booking has an email address. Rentals United does not send SMS or WhatsApp messages, so nothing on this connection claims to.
No thread yet means nothing is sent
A reply needs a thread that already exists. In Rentals United, the only way to open a new thread always makes an email thread. Emailing a person who booked on Airbnb is not the same as answering them. So TravelPal waits for the guest's own thread. It does not start a side conversation that your channel inbox will never show.
Connected in four steps
Rentals United turns on API access for your account. TravelPal does the rest itself.
Ask Rentals United to turn API access on
Rentals United gives API keys after a signed commercial agreement. Guest messaging is a separate product with its own price. Their documentation says their sales team quotes access to the Guest Communication API. Send one email to your account manager. Ask for API keys and for guest communication in the same message.
Copy both keys from API keys
In Rentals United, open API keys. You get an access key and a secret key. The same pair works for properties, reservations, and messaging. You paste one pair, not two. Rentals United rejects a wrong key at once, on a read of a static dictionary. A mistyped paste costs only a retry.
Say whose properties we should read
You may connect TravelPal to your Rentals United account as a Vacation Rental Service. If so, add your Rentals United username, and TravelPal reads the inventory shared with that sub-user. If the keys belong to the account that owns the properties, leave it blank. TravelPal then reads that account's own properties.
The notifications register themselves
TravelPal registers the reservation handler URL and subscribes to new threads and messages. It removes both if you ever disconnect. You set up nothing else inside Rentals United. Properties import in the background, and TravelPal reads each one in full. The list Rentals United returns has only an id, a name, and a location. After that, every stay gets its own private guest link.
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 Rentals United connection will not do
Know the limits of Rentals United before you turn anything on. Every property management system has its own limits. TravelPal works inside them, not around them.
The import reaches back one week and no further
Rentals United lists reservations by the date they were last changed, not by arrival date. It will not accept a range older than seven days. A guest who arrives Friday and booked a month ago is not in that list. The API has no list by arrival date to ask instead. Everything from the day you connect and after arrives on its own. Connect a week before the arrivals you want the concierge on.
Some threads are with the channel, not with your guest
A Rentals United thread can be a conversation with Booking.com's own staff and not with the person staying. One reservation can have both. TravelPal answers only the thread whose recipient is the guest. It leaves the channel's thread to your team. Sometimes a new message is pushed before its thread can be read. TravelPal holds that message and does not answer it. The notice says which thread the message belongs to, not who is on the other end.
No team-only note, and no line to record a sale on
Rentals United delivers every message in a thread to the person on the other end. So a thread has no place for a note meant for your team. There is also no folio and no extras line. Rentals United publishes only one offer object, an Airbnb pre-approval. It has no price and no dates. Sale notes, and anything held for a person, reach your team in your own channel and by email. You collect the money the way you already do. See what TravelPal sells.
Dates and calendar stay with the channel that owns them
Rentals United can change a stay inside itself. It says plainly that it does not pass that change to the sales channel. Then Airbnb or Booking.com would hold different dates than you do. Its availability write covers a unit on every channel at once and reports nothing about what it moved. An undo could release a block your own team set. So TravelPal writes no dates and no blocks here. A date change goes back through the channel that owns the booking.
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.
Rentals United integration FAQ
Should I connect Rentals United or my property management system?
Connect Rentals United when it is your channel manager and the guest thread lives in it. Your reservations may sit in a property management system that pushes inventory into Rentals United. Then connect that system instead. It holds the reservation, the folio, and the record your team works from. The integrations page lists every system TravelPal connects to. There is no reason to connect both.
Do I need Rentals United's permission to connect TravelPal?
Yes, and it is one email. Rentals United issues API keys under a commercial agreement. Its guest communication product has its own price, quoted by its sales team. Ask your account manager for API keys and for guest communication access in the same message. When you have the access key and the secret key, there is nothing more to approve.
Which guests can TravelPal answer on Rentals United?
TravelPal answers Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo, and Expedia guests inside their own channel threads, which Rentals United carries natively. It reaches guests from the other channels through the email proxy Rentals United runs. This works whenever the reservation has an email address. Rentals United does not send SMS or WhatsApp messages, so TravelPal offers neither.
Will my existing bookings be there on day one?
Partly: only the recent ones. Rentals United lists reservations by last change and refuses a range older than seven days. So the first import picks up what changed in the last week, not everything on the books. Everything created or changed after you connect arrives by itself. Connect a week before the arrivals you want covered.
Does connecting Rentals United cost extra?
Not from TravelPal. What Rentals United charges for its own guest communication product is between you and them.
Not the system you use?
TravelPal connects to 33 property management systems. Below are the systems closest to Rentals United in how widely they are used.
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Rentals United is a trademark of its owner. TravelPal is not affiliated with or endorsed by Rentals United.