Effective communication with your guests is key to a smooth experience, and Hospitable offers the flexibility to automatically detect and adjust the language of your conversations. You can also manually change the language for each guest if needed, ensuring that your messages are always clear and understood.
Detecting Guest Language
Default Setting
By default, Hospitable determines the language of the conversation based on the language in which your guest is viewing your listing on the booking platform. This is in our opinion the most reliable and the most user-friendly way to communicate with your guests. It also presents less risk, since your guests will also be paying and booking in that language.
Prioritize The Language Of The Conversation
We can detect the language of the conversation with your guest based on the first message they sent.
If you'd like, you can activate the option to Prioritize the language of the conversation instead of using the default language detection of the platform they viewed your listing on.
To enable this setting:
Go to Settings on the bottom left
Click Preferences
Click Guest Experience
Toggle on or off "Prioritize the language of the conversation" feature
How does it work?
We check the first message in the conversation sent by the guest. We determine the language used and then set the language of the conversation. It is later used to generate automatic messages.
Your guest may send you a greeting in one language and then continue the message in another language. We will take into consideration the language used in the first few words in of the message, so this may return a false detection.
We are only able to detect the language if the conversation starts with the message sent by the guest. If the conversation starts from the message sent by the host or an event (for example a "New reservation" before the guest messages the host), we will use the language we detected the guest viewing your listing in.
Language Detection Hierarchy
The language used in the conversation thread with your guest is prioritized in the following manner:
"Prioritize The Language Of The Conversation" (if enabled, and the guest sent the first message in the conversation thread).
The language the guest viewed your listing in.
Your Fallback language setting (this is set under Settings > Guest Experience).
Optional: Override the Detected Language
You can also manually override the detected language of the conversation within the conversation thread.
At the top of the thread page, beneath the guest name, click on the language dropdown selector.
Select the preferred language for this conversation.
All future automated messages will now be sent in the new language, if available.
How Guest Language is Used in Messaging
Hospitable will use the message template in the detected language (if available) for all automated messages sent to the guest.
If you don't have a template in that language, our system uses your Fallback Language. However, if you don't have a template in the Fallback Language, we will not send a message.
Guest Message Translations
Guest messages can be auto-translated into the host's preferred language. This is on by default for all users.
For Airbnb guests, translations are shown only when Airbnb sends them. This requires that auto-translations be enabled on your Airbnb profile.
For all other guests, including Vrbo, Booking.com, Agoda, and Direct, Hospitable handles the automatic translation for you.
Only incoming guest messages are translated. Messages that you send manually in the inbox do not get translated automatically.
To disable this setting for a particular reservation, click on the translation icon next to the guest's name in their conversation thread.
This will change the setting for your view in the Inbox. Team members (secondary users) that your have invited to your account will not be affected and can control whether or not they see translated messages separately from you.
