It is 1:10 a.m. A guest's flight was late, they are standing at the door, and the code you sent three days ago is somewhere in a thread they cannot find. Or it is a Tuesday at 11 p.m. and someone asks where the extra towels are. You are asleep, your phone is on silent, and the message sits.
This guide is for the owner or manager who is tired of being the after-hours inbox. It covers how to sort what comes in at night, how to answer most of it before it is asked, and how to decide who gets woken up.
Why it keeps happening
Guests do not message on your schedule. They travel, arrive late, cook dinner at 9 p.m. and notice the hot water is off at 6 a.m. The messages are predictable: arrival, access, Wi-Fi, parking, heating or cooling, checkout. The answers exist, but they live in a PMS field, a property note, a spreadsheet or your head. At a few units that works. At twenty it means every night is a possible interruption, and your team replies from memory at inconsistent speeds.
The fix is not to answer faster. It is to move the answers to where the guest is, and to be explicit about the few things that deserve a human at night.
What Airbnb measures, and what it does not
Airbnb's help center article "Improve your response rate and response time", checked October 2, 2026, defines response rate as the percentage of new inquiries and reservation requests you responded to within 24 hours in the past 30 days. Reply to new inquiries within 24 hours. For reservation requests, accept or decline within 24 hours; sending a message alone does not satisfy that requirement. Letting a request expire counts as a non-response.
That is a 24-hour window for inquiries and requests. It is not a promise that a guest mid-stay will wait until morning for a locked door. Treat Airbnb's metric as one input, and set your own standard for guests who are already in your property or about to be.
A checklist that works without software
1. Sort by urgency before you automate anything. Write three buckets.
- Now, human: anyone locked out or unable to get in, no heat or cooling in extreme weather, no water or power, safety concerns, anything involving a neighbor or the authorities.
- Soon, can wait for a reply window: a broken appliance, a cleanliness complaint, a late checkout request.
- Answerable from what you already know: arrival time, Wi-Fi, parking, door instructions, checkout steps, trash, quiet hours.
2. Pre-answer the third bucket. Put those answers in the messages that go out before arrival, and make the arrival-day message the one a tired guest can find: access instructions first, one line, in the thread. If guests ask the same question more than twice, the pre-arrival message is missing something.
3. Give the first bucket a path. One phone number or contact for emergencies only, stated in the pre-arrival message, and a person who answers it. Decide in advance who that is and who covers when they cannot.
4. Tell guests when to expect a reply for the second bucket. Choose a reply window your team can meet, such as "We reply to non-urgent messages by 9 a.m."
5. Keep a morning review. Ten minutes at the start of the day to read the night's messages, fix any wrong answer, and add the missing fact where the next guest will find it.
6. Write the answers once, per property. Parking, Wi-Fi and check-in steps differ between units. A generic template that says "see your guidebook" at midnight helps nobody.
How InnSync handles the after-hours inbox
InnSync is built around the idea in step 2 and the sorting in step 1. Carmen, InnSync's AI assistant, writes replies from the live booking and the property's details: the guest, the dates, the unit, its rules. She is an AI assistant and says so; she is not presented as a person.
Your team chooses how much she sends on her own. In Review Mode, every reply waits for your team to view, edit and approve it. When a question needs a person, she sends it to your team instead of improvising.
An illustrative exchange, not a customer example:
Guest: Can we get in around 2 tomorrow? Reply: Standard check-in is 4:00 PM, and the home is occupied until 11:00 AM. A turnover is scheduled after checkout, so I have sent your 2:00 PM request to the team for review.
The reply uses the booking and the schedule, and the exception goes to a person. InnSync also handles the routine around the booking, such as cleaning confirmations and check-in messages sent at the right time, and carries SMS and WhatsApp alongside the booking-platform inbox, so the guest can use the channel they already have.
It does not replace the emergency contact in step 3. Set that up deliberately whatever tool you use.
If you use Guesty or another PMS
- Guesty: InnSync connects to Guesty; reservations, units and guests arrive from it.
- Hostaway: Keep Hostaway. InnSync runs the operation around it — the connection is set up with you during onboarding.
- Hostfully: Keep Hostfully. InnSync runs the operation around it — the connection is set up with you during onboarding.
- OwnerRez: Keep OwnerRez. InnSync runs the operation around it — the connection is set up with you during onboarding.
- Lodgify: Keep Lodgify. InnSync runs the operation around it — the connection is set up with you during onboarding.
- Hospitable: Keep Hospitable. InnSync runs the operation around it — the connection is set up with you during onboarding.
Once your booking data is available, start in Review Mode so your team can review, edit and approve Carmen's replies before they are sent.
Your PMS stays the source of bookings and property data.
Next step
See how replies are written from the booking, and how Review Mode works, at tryinnsync.com/us/use-cases/ai-guest-messaging, or start with the US overview.