All Collections
Guest experience
Automating your messages
Tutorial: Answers dependant on calendar availability
Tutorial: Answers dependant on calendar availability

How to accept or deny early check-in and late check-out requests automatically depending on your calendar availability.

Assistant avatar
Written by Assistant
Updated over a week ago

Allowing an early check-in or late check-out is an easy way to provide extra value to your guests whose travel schedules are often not in sync with your standard check-in and check-out times.

By combining the power of the Questions flow and custom codes you can set up Hospitable to accept or deny these requests automatically based on your calendar availability. You can also use this set up to offer guests the ability to book the night before check-in or after the check-out to facilitate their early check-in or late check-out request. 

The outcome of this set up

If a question about early check-in is asked, the system will check if the night before check-in is available and select the relevant answer depending on this condition. 

If a question about late check-out is asked, the system will check if the night after check-out is available and select the relevant answer depending on this condition. 

Answering early check-in questions

As your answer will depend on your listing's vacancy for the night prior to check-in, you will set up two custom codes with the following conditions: 

Let's name these codes %%accept_early_check-in%% and %%deny_early_check-in%% in this example. If you wish to name the codes differently, feel free to do so. 

Create a custom code %%accept_early_check-in%% and write your answer to the early check-in question into the text field of the custom code. This answer will be used to accept an early check-in request in case the night before the planned check-in is available. Select the condition  "The night before the planned check-in is available" and save your code. 

Create a custom code %%deny_early_check-in%% and select the condition "The night before the planned check-in is not available". Write your answer into the text field. This answer will be used to deny an early check-in request in case the night before the planned check-in is not available. 

Once you have the two codes set up and saved, go to the messaging command centre Questions tab in order to put these codes into use. 

For this, create a rule for early-check in questions and enter these two codes and these two codes only into the template of this rule. Your template should look like this: 

Save the template, review your rule settings and activate the rule when you are ready. When an early check-in question is detected, the system will check your availability for the night before and select the relevant answer automatically. 

Answering late check-out questions

This set up follows the same logic as that of the early check-in question, only this time you will need to use the following custom code conditions: 

Once you have set up your custom codes, create a rule for late check-out questions under the Questions flow and enter these two codes and these two codes only into the template just as you did before with the early check-in rule. 

Keep in mind

The conditions for these custom codes will be checked at the moment the question is asked. The availability of the night before check-in or night after the check-out will not be influenced by your answer. 

Did this answer your question?