Sharing a picture, a document, or a link with a guest is often clearer than a long block of text. This article covers how to attach a picture to an automated message, how to share other file types with a link, and what to do if an Action Centre alert tells you that a picture attached to a messaging rule can no longer be found.
Sending pictures
Hosts can send pictures to guests from the Hospitable inbox and from automated messaging rules.
Pictures must be no larger than 2 MB.
For Direct and Manual bookings, pictures are delivered as email attachments.
On connected channels, the picture is sent through the channel's own messaging system, so the guest sees it inside that channel's inbox.
From an automated rule
Pictures can be attached to any Scheduled messaging rule. Only one picture can be attached per rule.
📓 Event Messages do not support picture attachments. If you need to send an image around a specific event, use a Scheduled rule or send the picture manually from the Inbox.
To attach a picture to a scheduled messaging rule:
Go to Guest Experience → Messaging Rules.
Open the rule you want to edit, or create a new Scheduled rule.
Tick the box that says "Add a picture".
Click the Upload File button that appears.
Find and select the picture you want to add to the messaging rule → click Open.
This automatically attaches the picture to the messaging rule, and saves your changes automatically.
To remove a picture from a scheduled messaging rule:
Go to Guest Experience → Messaging Rules.
Open the rule you want to edit.
Click Delete below the picture.
Your changes are saved automatically.
From the Inbox
Hosts can also send a picture manually from any guest conversation in the Inbox. This works across all connected channels, though some channels may block picture sends before a booking is confirmed. If a manual picture send fails on a specific channel, check that channel's messaging policy.
Sending multiple images, documents, or other files
Hospitable rules accept one image per rule, and cannot attach non-image files directly. To share multiple pictures, PDFs, guidebooks, or any other file type, share them as a link:
Upload the file, or files, to a cloud storage service such as Google Drive or Dropbox.
Set sharing to Anyone with the link.
Copy the shareable URL.
Paste the URL into the rule template or into a manual message.
💡 Optional — shorten the URL with a service like bit.ly to keep messages tidy and to track clicks. Note that Booking.com blocks several shortener domains, listed further down.
Sending links
Links are clickable for guests in the messaging platform of the channel they booked through, when that channel supports hyperlinks. In the Hospitable rule template, a link appears as plain text, but it becomes clickable in the Hospitable Inbox and in the guest's inbox once the message is sent.
⚠️ Do not include links in pre-booking messages. Most booking channels block any message that contains a link before the booking is confirmed. Only send links after a booking has been accepted.
Booking.com link policy
Booking.com blocks all links by default, at every stage of the reservation. To send a link to a Booking.com guest, hosts must first whitelist the link on the Booking.com Extranet.
The following shortener domains cannot be whitelisted on Booking.com and will always be blocked:
For the current whitelisting steps, see Booking.com's help article on messaging security settings, here.
When a picture goes missing
A picture attached to a Scheduled message rule can sometimes become unavailable in storage — for example, after historical cleanup of duplicate rules. When this happens:
The scheduled message that would have carried the picture does not send, so the guest never receives a text without the image the rule was designed around.
Hospitable attempts to send once, and does not retry.
Hospitable sends you an email to let you know that the message could not be sent to the guest.
Hospitable notifies you via an Action Center alert for the affected rule.
How to clear the alert
Any of the following will clear the alert for that rule:
Reupload the picture to the rule.
Remove the picture from the rule (the rule will keep sending as text only).
Delete the rule.
🚨 Only one alert is raised per affected rule, no matter how many upcoming scheduled sends it has. Once the rule is fixed, upcoming messages will be sent normally.