Stop Sending Guest Emails Manually — Automate the Entire Journey
The email you forgot to send
It’s 11pm. You’re scrolling through tomorrow’s check-ins and realise you never sent the pre-arrival email to the family arriving at 2pm. The one with the door code, the Wi-Fi password, the parking instructions, and the note about the tricky gate latch.
You type it out from memory, attach the wrong PDF (that was the old check-in guide), and hit send. The guest replies at midnight asking which gate. You’re up until 1am.
This happens more often than any host wants to admit. Not because you’re disorganised — because manually sending the right email to the right guest at the right time, for every booking, across every property, is a task that scales terribly.
What guest email automations do
Airflow’s guest email automations replace manual guest communication with triggered, personalised emails that send themselves. You set them up once, and they run for every booking, every property, every guest — without you touching your inbox.
Five automations across the booking journey
| Automation | When it sends | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-Arrival | Three days before check-in by default; you choose the hours or days | Dates and booking reference, directions, the optional extras you offer |
| Check-In Day | The morning of arrival | A welcome and your own arrival message |
| Post-Checkout | After departure | Thank you, and an invitation to book direct next time |
| Review Request | After the stay | A request for a review while the stay is fresh |
| Balance Due Reminder | When a balance is coming due on a deposit booking | What is owed, the due date and a payment link |
The booking confirmation is separate: it goes out with every booking on every plan. The default Check-In Day email does not carry door codes or a WiFi password, because Airflow has no field for them. Put those in a document with guest access, or in your own message on that email. What to send a guest before arrival, and when sets out the timing.
Each trigger is independently configurable per property. Your beachfront villa might need different pre-arrival instructions than your city apartment. Set them up separately, and they’ll fire correctly for each resource.
Merge tags for personalisation
Every email supports merge tags that pull from your booking data:
{{guest_first_name}}— the guest’s first name{{property_name}}— the property they booked{{check_in_date}}— formatted arrival date{{check_out_date}}— formatted departure date{{booking_reference}}— the booking reference{{total_amount}}— booking total
“Hi {{guest_first_name}}, we’re looking forward to welcoming you to {{property_name}} on {{check_in_date}}” becomes “Hi Sarah, we’re looking forward to welcoming you to Villa Azure on 15 June” — automatically.
One automated task per send
Each automated email uses one automated task when it sends. There are no per-message surcharges or hidden fees — sends simply draw from the same monthly allowance as your booking processing (pricing).
The real cost of manual emails
“I only have 3 properties, I can handle the emails myself.”
Let’s do the maths. Three properties, average 80% occupancy, average 4-night stay. That’s roughly 220 bookings per year. If you send 3 emails per booking (confirmation, pre-arrival, post-checkout), that’s 660 emails per year.
At 5 minutes per email (finding the template, filling in the details, checking the dates, hitting send), that’s 55 hours per year. More than a full working week spent copying and pasting check-in instructions.
And that’s the optimistic version — the one where you never forget, never send the wrong details, and never have a guest arrive without a door code.
Use cases
The property manager who sleeps through check-in
Maria manages 5 apartments in Lisbon. Check-ins happen between 2pm and 8pm, and she used to be glued to her phone all afternoon sending door codes. Guests on different flights, arriving at different times, needing different instructions for different apartments.
Now, the check-in email fires automatically on the morning of arrival. Every guest gets the welcome and the arrival message Maria wrote for that apartment, and the access details sit in a document only that guest can open. Maria’s phone stays in her pocket. Her guests arrive informed and happy.
Time saved: ~12 hours/month. Missed check-ins: zero.
The safari lodge that nurtures every booking
A luxury safari lodge in Botswana uses the full automation sequence: booking confirmation with a packing list, pre-arrival email with transfer details, a check-in day welcome, and a post-checkout email followed by a review request.
The guest experience feels premium and personal — but it’s entirely automated. The lodge owner focuses on the in-person experience, not the email admin.
Guest satisfaction scores increased 15% after implementing automations.
The seasonal host who disappears in winter
Tom runs a holiday let in the Scottish Highlands. Bookings happen year-round, but he travels in winter. Before Automations, he’d miss emails, forget to send check-in details, and occasionally have guests arrive to locked doors with no information.
With Automations configured, his property runs on autopilot. Bookings come in, confirmation emails go out, pre-arrival details follow, and post-checkout review requests send themselves. Tom checks his portal once a week from wherever he is.
Peace of mind: priceless. And affordable — see current pricing.
What it replaces
The difference between Airflow’s automations and generic email tools is context. Mailchimp doesn’t know when your guest checks in. Sendinblue doesn’t know which property the guest booked. A virtual assistant costs hundreds per month. Airflow does it all — because the automations are built into the same system that manages your bookings. See current pricing.
What it costs
Guest email automations are on every plan and are switched on from your Airflow portal, listing by listing. There is no add-on fee: each email sent uses one automated task (pricing page).
Set up your first automation in under 10 minutes. Watch the emails send themselves. Wonder why you ever did it manually.
The bottom line
Guest communication is the single biggest time drain in running a booking business. It’s repetitive, error-prone, and scales linearly with your bookings. Every new property, every new booking, every new guest adds another email you need to remember to send.
Automations turn that linear cost into a flat one. Set it up once. Let it run. Focus on the parts of hosting that actually need a human touch.