Smartbnb: Gives You Everything To Be A Pro in The Airbnb Business & When To Stay Away From It

Prayas Choudhary

Published in

STRSpecialist.com

13 min readDec 30, 2019

WHAT IS SMARTBNB?

Smartbnb is an automation tool for Airbnb hosts.

In a nutshell, smartbnb does all the heavy lifting for Airbnb hosts. It integrates with your Airbnb account and sends messages to guests on your behalf — based on the settings you choose and message templates you feed it.

But this is not all…..smartbnb does a lot of other tasks which you wouldn’t believe can be automated with such ease and precision.

Here is my 360-degree smartbnb review and a breakdown of all its positive and negative features.

1. SMARTBNB REVIEW SUMMARY

RATINGS

Overall 4.6/5

Reliability5/5

Ease Of Use 4.5/5

Customer Support 4.5/5

Value For Money 5/5

2. KEY FACTS ABOUT SMARTBNB

SMARTBNB SUPPORTED PLATFORMS

Airbnb
HomeAway (currently in beta phase, so not fully functional yet)
*Booking.com (coming soon)

SMARTBNB PRICING

Billing Currency: Euros (€)
Free Version: ✓
Trial Period: There is a limited-time 14-day risk-FREE trial going on
Click here to start your FREE trial
Onboarding Fee: ✕
Volume Discounts: Yes, if you speak to smartbnb customer service

Price Plans:
You only pay for active listings that have accommodated guests at least once in that month.

0–2 active listings: €15
3–9 active listings: €8
10–19 active listings: €7
20–46 active listings: €6
50+ active listings: €5

SMARTBNB ACCESS

✓ Website
✓ Android App
✓ IOS App
✓ WebApp

SMARTBNB SUPPORT

✓ Online Webchat
✓ 24 hours
✕ Phone

CLOSEST SMARTBNB COMPETITORS

3. KEY FEATURES OF SMARTBNB

There is a lot to explore in smartbnb, and you can spend weeks if not months learning what it is capable of doing.

With its extendable ‘custom codes‘ — possibilities are endless; it’s up to you how much time you can spend uncovering the automation opportunities.

Here is a summary of the key features of smartbnb

1. GUEST MESSAGING ON AUTO-PILOT

Smartbnb allows you to automate messages for each step in a guests journey.
Messages can be set up based on four basic rules:

Reply to an event
Schedule a message based on check-in or check-out time
Reply to guest questions (this uses AI)
Guest reviews (covered in next topic)

1. RESPOND TO EVENTS

Under this rule, you can define messages which will be automatically sent for all nine booking events on Airbnb.

New inquiry (option to auto-approve all inquiries if you want)
New Pre-approval
New request to book
New reservation
New cancellation
Expired pre-approval
Inquiry/booking denied
New special offer
New payment issue

You can choose when you want the message to be sent, the three options are:

➤ PREPARE (but never sent automatically) — smartbnb will prepare the message for you, but you will have to send it manually.

➤ SEND — this will automatically send the message instantly when the event occurs.

➤ DELAY — in this option, you can set a timed delay (in minutes) between the event occurrence and when the message gets sent.

2. SCHEDULED MESSAGES

This messages under this rule are primarily used to send check-in and check-out instructions.

The four options are:

1. Before check-in
2. After check-in
3. Before check-out
4. After checkout

You can define different message which will be sent X number of days before or after the chosen event.

For example, a messaging strategy can be to:

Send check-in instructions 7 days before check-in
Send check-in reminder message 1 day before check-in
First-morning message 16 hours after check-in
Check-out reminder message 16 hours before check-out
Send Review reminder 8 hours after checkout

3. RESPOND TO QUESTIONS

Smartbnb can detect your guest’s most common questions directly from their messages, and respond with an answer that you have configured.

This feature is driven by artificial intelligence and works based on the sample of queries that are fed to it for a scenario.

More example sentences you can feed into the question, the stronger it becomes to detect them and answer automatically.

There are a few common out of the box questions smartbnb has configured for you to use, such as guest asking about:

WiFi
Parking
Discount
Early check-in
Late checkout-0ut

All the above questions have a ‘strong’ detection strength, are very reliable and works nicely 95% of the times in my experience.

You can also create your questions for smartbnb to detect, but you will need to feed it sample questions, tons of them to make it robust and reliable to work.

2. AUTOMATIC REVIEWS

Smartbnb allows you to automate guest reviews with a high degree of personalisation.

REVIEW SCHEDULE: In the review configuration screen, the earliest, you can schedule a review to go out is after 24 hours of check-out.

This is an intentional feature as it is not advisable to write a review for guests until after 24 hours of checkout as few things if broken may need some time to be detected like broken furniture or an appliance.

BAD REVIEWS: Usually, you would not want to rush writing a negative review.

It is best to send it at the last second, so as not to encourage your guests to write a review that may be negative too.

…and to handle this smartbnb have included the “Bad review” button in the reviews editor.

Pressing this button after saving the review will reschedule the publication of your review 20 seconds before the review period is due to expire. — How clever is that?

3. SMARTBNB SHORT CODES

So how does smartbnb personalize messages? …the answer is ‘Shortcodes’.

Shortcodes are placeholders for information held by Airbnb on booking, and by using them, you can customize your message templates with your guest’s details (such as their first name) and other information about their inquiry or reservation (such as their check-in date) etc.

You can see the full list of 74 smartbnb shortcodes available for use in message templates.

4. SMARTBNB CUSTOM CODES

Custom codes make smartbnb REALLY smart.

They are just like shortcodes, but two key differences are:

Shortcodes are replaced by some data from Airbnb whereas in custom codes you can write your own text.
Custom codes can be tied to a specific condition which has to be met for the value of the code to be displayed in your message. There are 27 conditions you can choose from when creating your custom code.

When you set up a conditional custom code and use it in a message, the system will check the condition of the code just before the message is sent.

If the condition is met it will add your configured text at the place else it will leave it as blank.

5. TEAM MESSAGING

How many times do you check your calendar to make sure you don’t miss a cleaning?

Smartbnb has got this covered, and you can configure text or email alerts to go out for automatically:

……..days or hours before check-in/check-out to your cleaning and laundry team

How cool is that?

And this just the basic functionality of team messaging module.

There is SO MUCH MORE YOU CAN DO in this module to automate your operations such as sending a notification to cleaners as soon as you get a booking or a booking gets cancelled.

..or if you want, you can assign each task to different team members..this module is my personal favourite because there is so much you can do.

6. MULTILINGUAL

Smartbnb allows you to define message templates in multiple languages.

Which language is used for a guest?

Before any message is prepared, smartbnb detects the language in which the guest is viewing your listing.

If you have added a template for that language, Smartbnb will send it;
If you haven’t created a template for that language, it will send a message in your “fallback” language. By default, it is English, but you can switch to any other supported language.

7. CALENDER SYNC

Smartbnb calendar sync enables you to immediately synchronise your bookings, alterations, and cancellations on Airbnb and HomeAway, in near real-time.

For this to work, you will need to group the two listings.

8. UNIFIED SMARTBNB INBOX

If you have multiple Airbnb and HomeAway accounts, Smartbnb inbox lets you access all of your messages in one place.

Instead of logging into separate accounts, you can handle all your guest communication from smartbnb inbox as it syncs real-time with your accounts.

It is cleverly designed and lets you do much more than just reading and responding to messages such as:

You can pre-approve, accept or decline bookings from smartbnb inbox.
Read, and unread messages can be viewed separately.
The search function allows you to search inbox with the guest name or reservation code.
Filter conversation using multiple options available, including a date range search.

9. GROUP LISTINGS

Smartbnb allows you to group multiple listings, and they are treated as one entity in all aspects.

This is incredibly useful if you list properties on both HomeAway and Airbnb and want to consolidate their management.

Once the properties are grouped, you can configure messaging, and it will work for all the properties in that group.

You can add tags to the group, sync calendars, schedule stealth mode and active heartbeats in the group page.

10. SMARTBNB MARKET REPORT

Smartbnb market report is like a weather report for your listing, letting you know where it appears in the search results.

Here is an example of the summary from a report. This report was edited for a listing in Edinburgh, Scotland, with a capacity of 4 guests.

It shows how the listing matches with others listings in the area in terms of price.

But the most interesting is the last ‘Ranking‘ column which shows you where this listing appears in the search results for a different combination of its available dates.

Smartbnb market reports are incredibly handy, especially when you are new to the market and struggling to understand where you stand in the first few months.

11. SMARTBNB DATA MATRICES

Do you know your occupancy rate in the last few months?
What is your occupancy rate for the next few months?
What is your average revenue per night?
How many last-minute bookings did you receive in the last one year?

If you are not using smartbnb, the answer is always going to be ‘NO’ for these questions.

Smartbnb ‘matrices’ module provides analytical data about all the activity on your Airbnb account.

Though this module is currently being redesigned to make it even more powerful, the existing version is powerful enough to give you key indicators of how your listing is performing such as:

Financial

Overview
Revenue per night
Revenue per reservation per night
Revenue per guest per night
Revenue
Cash flow

Guests

Overview
Guests by countries
Guests per night
Guest book

Reservations

Overview
Occupancy rate
Active Listings
Requests to book
Check-ins
Check-outs
Status
Early vs late bookings
Average reservation

And so much more…

You can filter each report for a date range, and listing and you can export the output to PDF, Excel, CSV, JSON format.

12. SMARTBNB USER MANAGEMENT

Smartbnb User management allows you to share access to your Smartbnb account.
You can add users to your account and select that you would like them to access.

You can invite other people to join your Smartbnb account, with their separate email and password;
You can control the permissions for invited users, with full or limited access to features and properties.

Here are some ideas you can put into motion with user management:

Share the calendar of specific properties with your cleaning team.
Divide your inbox between your guest experience team.
Allow property owners to view their properties performance on Metrics.

13. HEARTBEATS

Smartbnb heartbeats automatically send a signal every 2 hours to Airbnb that your listing is still active.

But how will it help you?

It helps you get more inquiries and bookings as updating your listing frequently hacks the Airbnb search algorithm.

Here is an example of a listing without Heartbeats.

And here is a listing with Smartbnb Heartbeats on.

14. SMARTBNB STEALTH MODE

As the crackdown on Airbnb continues in cities across the world, people who still want to continue using Airbnb but may face action from authorities if caught.

Stealth mode is a smart idea to avoid the prying eyes in such jurisdictions.

It unlists the property during business hours (when it is likely to be found by local councils), and then put it back online in the evening when it is more likely to be seen by guests.

4. WHEN NOT TO USE SMARTBNB!

smartbnb doesn’t do EVERYTHING for Airbnb hosts and leaves a few functionalities untouched which may be a deal-breaker for some people.

Here is a list of things which smartbnb doesn’t do..

✕ Channel management

A channel manager is a tool that maintains the availability and prices of your property on multiple booking websites (OTA’s), so you don’t double book it.

It generally a good idea to list your property on multiple websites, especially the few main Airbnb competitors such as:

It is cumbersome to maintain availability and pricing over multiple websites and keep them in sync all the time, and this is a significant drawback.

..and for this reason, most of the hosts don’t list on multiple platforms.

Smartbnb doesn’t help you achieve the channel manager role, and you will need to use a channel manager separately if you list on multiple OTA’s.

Although smartbnb does provide calendar sync between Airbnb and HomeAway, it doesn’t sync prices which is a significant drawback.

✕ Automatic Invoicing

Automatic invoicing calculate charges automatically based on the criteria you define and generate customised invoices.

This is an increasingly popular feature, especially for professional co-hosts managing multiple properties.

smartbnb doesn’t support this currently, but I hope they come up with something similar when the new matrices module is launched.

✕ HomeAway Pricing Sync

smartbnb can sync availability between Airbnb and HomeAway, but it doesn’t sync prices.

..and this does leave a gap.

Unless you are using 3rd party pricing tool BeyondPricing which supports pricing for Airbnb and HomeAway both.

If not, the only option left for you is to choose a channel manager to sync the prices on both these platform which defeats the purpose of smartbnb calendar sync.

5. UPCOMING SMARTBNB FEATURES

Smartbnb shares its roadmap to its registered users where they list all upcoming features users can expect in the short term.

Here is the list of top 10 ideas they are working on to roll out soon:

Booking.com integration
Integrating Booking.com with Smartbnb would allow for the use of Smartbnb’s automated messaging, channel management features, and more to use for Booking.com listings.
Smart lock integration
The ability to integrate natively with a smart lock solution would be beneficial for hosts.
Schedule messages based on the day of the week
Hosts may want to schedule messages based on days of the week. For example, if the trash needs to be taken out on Tuesday, they would always want any guests staying on Tuesday to receive a message informing them of this.
Manually schedule messages
While you can change the scheduled time of messages by editing the check-in/check-out time of a reservation, there are some use cases where it would be helpful to schedule a message manually, or manually change the timing of a scheduled message.
Direct booking website
Creating a web-based booking system that hosts could embed on their website.
Whatsapp integration
Ability to communicate with teammates via Whatsapp would be a great addition to the email and SMS methods that are currently supported.
Send a message to all currently staying guests
Hosts sometimes need to notify all their now staying guests about events in the area or extreme weather conditions, for example. This feature would help to send out the message in bulk to all currently staying guests.

6. CONCLUSION

Value for money
Very reliable
Unique and innovative features
Market leader
10/10 for customer service
Constantly rolling out more cool features
No pricing sync between Airbnb and HomeAway
No phone support
Pricing starts from EUR 15 for two listings, even if you have one listing.
Newly launched iOS App doesn’t always work

I’ve been a professional Airbnb host for five years and managing 100+ properties in 10 countries with drastically different time zones and smartbnb does all the heavy lifting for me.

I don’t think I could scale my Airbnb business without smartbnb, and it plays the most significant role in my success so far.

I did try a few other competing products during this time, but none of them could match the power and reliability of smartbnb.

In my opinion, this is the best Airbnb automation tool in the market.

There’s currently a 14-day free trial available for all new users (no credit card needed). To access the offer Click Here.