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Check-in and Check-out Short Codes
Check-in and Check-out Short Codes

There are shortcodes for the check-in and check-out time of reservations, but how do these work?

Jenn Tomaszewski avatar
Written by Jenn Tomaszewski
Updated over 4 months ago

Everyone wants to check-in early and check-out late, right?!

Well, we are there to help you communicate the correct check-in and check-out time and date to your guests while remaining flexible when you can be.

For this, we have a number of shortcodes which enable you to customise your guest and team messages!

  • %check_in% / %check_out%: populates the check-in or check-out date of the booking.
    ​Example: “Friday, April 26”

  • %check_in_day_of_month% / %check_out_day_of_month%: populates a two-digit number for the day of the month that the check-in or check-out occurs on.
    ​Example: “26”

  • %check_in_hour% / %check_out_hour%: populates the check-in or check-out hour. Example: “15:00” or “3:00 PM”. See more here.

One example of how to pair these shortcodes would be to say "Your check-in is on %check_in% at %check_in_hour%".

From the examples above, this would populate: "Your check-in is on Friday, April 26 at 3:00 PM".

Check-in and Check-out time/hour

The check-in and check-out time that we populate in the %check_in_hour% and %check_out_hour% shortcodes is pulled from the reservation data. This in turn is created from the listing’s details on the booking platform.

For example:

  • If your check-in and check-out times on Airbnb are 16:00/4:00 PM and 11:00/AM respectively, then that is what the shortcodes will populate for your Airbnb guests.

  • If your check-in and check-out times on VRBO are 15:00/3:00 PM and 12:00/PM, then that is what the shortcodes will populate for your VRBO guests.

If you don’t have check-in and check-out times defined on the booking platforms, then we will default to 15:00/3:00 PM and 11:00/AM for those shortcodes!

Changing the reservation check-in and check-out times

You may change the check-in or check-out time in relation with a particular guest and set a different check-in or check-out time without affecting your listing's defaults.

To do so:

  1. Go to the Inbox

  2. Open the conversation

  3. From Web: on the left panel showing your listing's picture, click the check-in and check-out time, opening the time selectors.

  4. Click away of the time selector to save.

Doing this has a couple of consequences:

  • The %check_in_hour% and %check_out_hour% shortcodes in any scheduled message or team notification will be updated with the new time. Caveat: if you manually edited the contents of a scheduled message, or the timing of that message before you edited the check-in and check-out time on the reservation, then the message will not update with the new times that you just edited on the reservation.

  • The start and end time of your smartlock door codes will update to the new times.

Time format

The short codes communicating check-in/check-out time support both 12h and 24h time format. We use the most appropriate format for the country your guest is coming from.

For example, if your guest is coming from US or UK, we will use the 12h format, but a guest coming from Germany will receive the check-in/check-out time information in the 24h format.

We believe this is smarter way to communicate the time format and ensure that there is no conflict in their experience - while being attentive to details.

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