Hostaway Integration

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

The steps to complete your integration:

• Step 1: Connect your Touch Stay & Hostaway accounts
• Step 2: Match Hostaway properties
• Step 3: Import Hostaway properties
• Step 4: Complete guide creation (new Touch Stay customers only)
• Step 5: Personalisation settings
• Step 6: Sync reservations
• Step 7: Sharing guide links through Hostaway

Step 1. Connect your accounts

First, you need to authorise your Touch Stay account with Hostaway. Go to the Integrations page in your Touch Stay account, go to the Partners 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. Go to the Match tab on the Integrations page.

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.

Go to the Import tab on the Integrations page. 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
• Cover photo

Each unit imported will create a new Touch Stay guide.

Step 4. Complete guide creation (new Touch Stay customers only)

Matching or importing listings won’t automatically start syncing reservations from Hostaway, so now is the time to check the content of your guides and make sure they’re ready before you sync reservations with Hostaway.

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. Personalisation settings

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 in Hostaway will pass into Touch Stay and can be added to your guide or 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)
• Guest first name
• Guest last name
• Arrival date
• Departure date
• Guest contact phone number*
• Guest contact email address*

*Some OTAs and booking sites do not always provide the guest email address or phone number so the availability of these two data points are dependent on the platform the guest used to complete their booking.

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 reservations which sync from Hostaway will have the relevant data automatically populated on the invitation record.

Step 6. Sync reservations

Once your guides are ready then you can start syncing with Hostaway.

Go to the Sync reservations tab on the Integration page. Select the guides you want to sync using the checkboxes.

Use the “Select All” option at the top right of the page to select all in one go. Click Sync selected to submit.

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 reservations 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. Sharing guide links through Hostaway

Touch Stay sends the unique 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 {{reservation_touch_stay_guide_link}}. 

In the Hostaway message template screen, place your cursor where you would like the guide 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 drop it 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.

Warning:  Do not delete the {{reservation_touch_stay_guide_link}} custom field in the Hostaway Custom Fields page. If you delete it, you will need to contact Touch Stay support to have it added back in.

Notes:

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 the {{reservation_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 reservations 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.