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Sending pictures, attachments, documents, or links to guests
Sending pictures, attachments, documents, or links to guests

How to send pictures with automated messages? How to send links and attachments with automated messages?

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Written by Assistant
Updated this week

Pictures

Sometimes it is better to share a picture with your guests, instead of providing a lengthy description in the message text. It's possible to include a picture in your automated messages.

This feature is currently available for all platforms except for VRBO.

For Direct and Manual booking guests, the picture is sent as an attachment to the email.

It is possible to send pictures to your guests through the Hospitable inbox or automated messaging.

Pictures cannot be larger than 2 MB in size.

Please see the following sections for more information on how to send images.

Automated messages

Pictures can be included with all Scheduled messaging rules. They can not be sent with Event Messages!

Only one picture can be attached to each messaging rule.

As a URL

To send multiple images, other file types, or to include these attachments in other types of messages, you can:

  1. Upload the file(s) to a cloud storage service, such as Dropbox or Google Drive.

  2. Set the file sharing permissions to Anyone with the link.

  3. Copy the file URL.

  4. (Optional) Trim or customize the URL using a URL shortener such as bit.ly.

  5. Paste the final URL into your messaging rule template.

Note: See section about links and attachments for platform-specific limitations and caveats further down in this article!

Manual messages

Pictures can be sent manually from the conversation page with the guest. You access this through the Inbox page.

This works for all platforms. However, you might not be able to send the guest a picture before they have a confirmed booking with you on some platforms. You can check with the booking platform you are using to see if they allow this or not.

Attachments, documents, and links

When you send a link to your guests, it will be clickable for you in the Hospitable Inbox but not in the messaging rule template. For your guests, the links will be converted to clickable hyperlinks in the messaging platform of the channel they booked through (if the platform supports that).

Note: If a pre-booking message contains a link, the booking channel will block the message from being sent. Because of that, you should only include links in messages after a booking has been accepted.

To create a link to the file you want to send:

  1. Upload the file(s) to a cloud storage account such as Dropbox or Google Drive.

  2. Set the file sharing permissions to Anyone with the link.

  3. Copy the file URL.

  4. Paste the final URL into your automatic message template.

Pro tip: Setup your link with a URL shortener service like bit.ly, which allows you to track visits to that link, and allows you to have a more friendly URL.

Booking.com exception

Booking.com blocks all links and messages that contain links by default, at any stage of the reservation.

Hosts have to add the links they wish to send to a whitelist of links that Booking.com agrees you are allowed to send to your guests. These links cannot be in the following link formats:

To whitelist your links on Booking.com, please see their help article here.

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