📬 Centralize Your OTA Guest Messages in Bookboost
Efficient and timely communication with your guests is key to delivering great hospitality. Bookboost allows you to centralize guest messages from OTAs like Booking.com and Expedia directly into your Unified Inbox, ensuring your team never misses a message—no matter where the guest booked.
To enable this functionality, you'll need to complete two simple steps:
- Activate guest message email notifications from your OTA accounts (Booking.com and Expedia).
- Redirect those email notifications to Bookboost, so they appear just like any other guest conversation in your inbox.
This guide will walk you through both steps, with specific instructions depending on your OTA (Booking.com and Expedia) and email provider (Outlook, Gmail, or iCloud). Once set up, you’ll be able to respond to OTA messages in real time from Bookboost, improving response times, boosting guest satisfaction, and eliminating the need to manage multiple platforms.
1️⃣ Activate Guest Message Notifications in the OTAs
🟦 Booking.com Setup
- Log in to Booking.com Extranet
- Go to Messaging Preferences
- Navigate to the Property tab (or Inbox, depending on setup)
- Select Messaging preferences
- Update Settings in the General Section
- Under General settings, enable:
Email me when… “A guest sends a message”
- Save and Apply
- Verify Email Domains
@mchat.booking.com@guest.booking.com
You should begin receiving emails from:
🟨 Expedia Setup
- Log in to Expedia Partner Central
→ Expedia Partner Central
- Go to Message Center Settings
- Open Guest Relations → Message Center
- Select Settings
- Add Authorized Email Addresses
- Add your operational inbox email
- This ensures delivery of guest messages via masked Expedia domains like:
@m.expediapartnercentral.com
- Save Changes
- Verify by monitoring for incoming guest emails or testing with a sample reservation.
2️⃣ Redirect OTA Emails to Bookboost
Once you’re receiving OTA messages in your email inbox, the next step is to redirect them to your Bookboost Unified Inbox.
Redirection (instead of regular forwarding) ensures that original sender details are preserved—this is key for correctly identifying and replying to guest messages in Bookboost.
You can find your custom Bookboost redirect email under:
Settings → Integrations → Email
If you're managing multiple properties: From Integrations, please select the correct property in the top section. All marked in the following screenshot:
📤 Redirect Instructions by Email Provider
🔵 Outlook
- Open Outlook
- Go to File → Manage Rules & Alerts
- Click New Rule
- Choose: “Apply rule on messages I receive”
- Add conditions (e.g., sender contains “Booking.com” or “Expedia”)
- Select action: ✅ “Redirect it to people or public group”
- Click “people or public group”, enter your Bookboost redirect email
- Name your rule (e.g., “Redirect OTA Messages to Bookboost”)
- Finish and apply the rule
🔴 Gmail
- Go to Gmail > ⚙️ Settings → See all settings
- Open Forwarding and POP/IMAP
- Click Add a forwarding address
- Enter your Bookboost redirect email
- Gmail sends a code to Bookboost → check the Bookboost Inbox
- Enter the code in Gmail and click Verify
- Choose “Forward a copy of incoming mail to…”
- Choose what happens to Gmail’s copy (e.g., keep, archive)
- Save your changes
⚪ iCloud
- Go to iCloud.com
- Click the Mail icon
- Go to ⚙️ Settings → Preferences
- Under General, scroll to Forwarding
- Enable “Forward my email to” and enter your Bookboost redirect email
- Optional: Tick “Delete messages after forwarding”
- Save changes
🔗 Apple Support: Automatically forward email in Mail on iCloud.com
🎯 Final Tip
Once all steps are complete, test the flow from each OTA. Make sure that:
- The email lands in your inbox
- It’s automatically redirected to Bookboost
- You see it appear as a guest message in your Unified Inbox