Touch Stay integrates with Hostaway to import your properties and then automate the sending of invitations for confirmed bookings.

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Article content:

1. Connect your accounts
2. Match properties
3. Import properties
4. Check Your Guidebook Content
5. Set up your Memo Message Templates
6. Synchronise your reservations
7. Connecting custom field codes with Hostaway
8. Set the reply-to email as the Hostaway's Unified Inbox
9. Share your guidebook link from Hostaway's Unified Inbox

Step 1. Connect your accounts

First, you need to authorise your Touch Stay account with Hostaway. From within your Touch Stay Account page, go to the Integrations tab and click “Connect” underneath the Hostaway logo.

Next, in a separate browser tab or window login to Hostaway and navigate to the Settings from the left hand menu and then select Hostaway API. Here you will create a public API key and add that to Touch Stay (you can find more information about Hostaway API keys in this article).

• Click on Create
• Give your API key a name (e.g. “Touch Stay”)
• Click Create once more
• Copy and paste both the Account ID and API Key into the boxes in the Touch Stay connection screen. Hostaway will show the key only once, make sure to copy and paste it before closing the window!

Step 2. Match Properties

Once authorised, you can match any existing Touch Stay guides to your Hostaway listings. Use the drop-downs to select the correct Hostaway listing for each Touch Stay guide. When complete, click “Match Selected”. If you don’t have any to match, then just click “Skip” without choosing any Hostaway listings. If you don’t see any guides on this step then they are already matched and you can move on to Step 3.

Step 3. Import Properties

If you have any remaining unmatched listings from Hostaway then the next screen allows you to import those into Touch Stay. Simply check the ones you want to import and click the “Import Selected” button. If you don’t want to import any, or don’t have any remaining, then just click “Skip” whilst leaving the selections blank.

Touch Stay will import the following:

• Property Name
• Property Address
• Photo

Step 4. Check Your Guidebook Content

Matching or importing rentals won’t automatically sync reservations from Hostaway, so now is the time to check the content of your welcome books and make sure they’re in tip-top shape and ready to share with your guests.

If you’re new to Touch Stay then check out the Getting Started page for hints and tips on the quickest way to build out your welcome book content.

Step 5. Set up your Memo Message Templates

To send out messages to guests from bookings that come from Hostaway you’ll first need to create some message templates using Memo. The bookings from Hostaway will then follow your message workflow and any default settings as defined by the templates that you create.

See the Memo help articles for how to add message templates and create a notification journey for your guests.

You can also connect your door lock codes and expected check-in/out times from Hostaway by using custom field codes and add them to your Memo templates. See this article for more details about connecting custom field codes.

Step 6. Synchronise your reservations

Once your welcome books are ready and Memo message templates are in place then you can start syncing with Hostaway.

The sync settings can be found on the Integrations tab under the Settings option for Hostaway, select “Reservation Sync Settings”.

Here you can choose whether to import all your future reservations or have Touch Stay only import new reservations. 

• If you are new to Touch Stay then choose the “All reservations” option
• If you are already using Memo, Touch Stay's guest messaging tool, before you connect your Hostaway ccount then it's st to choose the option “New reservations only” to prevent duplicate reservations being imported.

Next, select the guides to start syncing by using the checkboxes (note the “Select All” option at the bottom left) and click Submit.

If you have selected “All reservations” then all your future dated bookings from Hostaway will now be imported and will generate invitations and schedule email or SMS messages based on the reservation details and your Touch Stay message template schedules. All future reservations for guides with the sync active will also now be imported automatically. 

Step 7. Connecting custom field codes with Hostaway

You can connect custom field codes created in Touch Stay to additional fields through the Hostaway integration. This will then mean any values/data for these fields set in Hostaway will pass into Touch Stay and can be added to your Memo message templates. The available fields are as follows:

• Door code (data type: Text)
• Check-in Time (data type: Number)
• Check-out Time (data type: Number)
• Hostaway Email (data type: Text), when added as the reply-to email in your Memo templates any replies will go to your Hostaway inbox
• Channel Reservation ID (data type: Text)
• Hostaway Reservation ID (data type: Text)

To connect any of these fields to Touch Stay head to the Integrations tab and within the Hostaway Settings select “Custom Field Mapping”.

Next, click on the “+ New Custom Field” button:

From here you can select the Hostaway field to connect, choose a name for your custom field code and any substitute value. Substitute values are used in the case of data missing when the field code is used, see this article for more detail about field codes.  

Once the custom fields have been created, then any future bookings which sync from Hostaway will have the relevant data automatically populated on the invitation record.

Step 8. How to set the reply-to email as the Hostaway mailbox

If your account uses the Hostaway integration then it’s possible to set the reply-to email on your Memo email templates to be your Hostaway inbox. If a person then replies to one of your Memo emails, their reply will appear in your Hostaway inbox for that reservation. If this sounds useful to you, then these are the steps to follow.

Create a custom field code to hold the Hostaway reply-to email. 

From the Account page Integrations tab and within the Hostaway Settings select “Custom Field Mapping”.

Next, click on the “+” button:

Select the Hostaway field called “Hostaway Email”, choose a name for your custom field code (e.g. hostaway_email) and the substitute value. The substitute value should be set to a fixed email address and will be used if your Memo email template is ever added to a manually created invitation. Manual invitations won’t be connected to Hostway and will therefore not have a reply to email set and hence a substitute value is required as a back up instead.

Add the field code to your Memo templates

The final step is to add the field code to your Memo email templates. Head to the Memo page and in the add/edit email template screen you must place the field code between the < > tags in the “Email from name” section. Be sure to do this for all your email templates.

Step 9: Share your guidebook link from Hostaway's Unified Inbox

Touch Stay now sends the unique invitation link for each reservation back to Hostaway. You can then add this to any Hostaway message templates and automate the sending of the guide link through the Hostaway unified inbox.  

Your Hostaway account will have a new Custom Field created for Reservations called “Touch Stay Guide Link”. Touch Stay now automatically sends the guidebook link to this field for every reservation that is imported into Touch Stay. You can then add this Custom Field to any Hostaway message template using the Custom Field {{reservation_touch_stay_guide_link}}. 

In the Hostaway message template screen, place your cursor where you would like the guidebook link to go and then click on the icon at the top right corner of the message template box:

Next, find the {{reservation_touch_stay_guide_link}} Custom Field in the column for “Reservation custom fields” and click on it to place this Custom Field into your message:

And that’s it! Simply use the above to add the link to your Hostaway message templates as part of your communication flow with your guests.

Notes:

- WARNING: A note about Hostaway message timing: there will be a slight delay between the booking arriving in Hostaway and the link being sent back from Touch Stay whilst our respective systems process the booking, generate the link and pass it back. Therefore we recommend NOT adding your "Touch Stay Guide Link" custom field to Hostaway messages that are sent out as soon as the booking is received. Instead, we recommend adding a message ~1 hour later or perhaps the next day that's dedicated to introducing guests to everything they'll find in your guide book.

- What happens if I’m already using Memo?

If you’re already using Memo but want to now change to using Hostaway to send the links then you would need to archive the relevant Memo message templates. This prevents them from being added to any future bookings that come in and you can then activate a new message flow in Hostaway. See this article for more details about archiving your Memo message templates. Note that archiving message templates won’t affect any existing invitations, if you want to cancel any Memo messages that are already scheduled then that will need to delete the template instead.