Airbnb cohosts support property owners with the operational aspects of managing short-term vacation rentals, with the owner maintaining primary decision-making authority. Cohosting duties may include managing guest communication, such as responding to inquiries, sending check-in and check-out instructions, addressing guest concerns during their stay, restocking essentials to keep the property guest-ready, and ensuring a seamless guest experience.
For more on this topic, see our Cohosting vs. Property Management support article and Airbnb's Add co-hosts to your listing article.
Preferences
OwnerRez allows users with multiple Airbnb channel integrations connected to designate a specific primary host for messaging. There are two areas in the app where you can designate a specific primary host for messaging.
- Account > Preferences > Messaging > Send Airbnb Messages As
- Properties > specific Property > Listing Content > Channel Rules > Messaging > Send Airbnb Messages As. This setting affects how designated primary hosts are displayed for templates and triggers for that property.
When cohosts are designated a specific primary host for messaging for a specific property (Properties > specific Property > Listing Content > Channel Rules > Messaging > Send Airbnb Messages As), all templates and triggers will be sent from that cohost.
Requirements
In order to optimize Airbnb Messaging as a cohost in OwnerRez, you must have permission on the Airbnb platform to respond to guests (e.g., you must be the owner or cohost of an Airbnb listing) and be actively connected to OwnerRez.
OwnerRez will attempt to use the selected account for any Airbnb messages you manually send within OwnerRez. If your preferred account is not a participant in the conversation, OwnerRez will send your message as the primary host, if possible, or the first available host otherwise.
We compare the set of Airbnb users in the conversation thread against the user preferences. If the preferred user appears in that set, they have cohost messaging permission.
- For a message to be sent as a specific Airbnb user, both conditions must be met:
- Airbnb Permission: The user must have permission to respond (owner or cohost of the listing)
- OwnerRez Connection: The user must be actively connected to OwnerRez. When a preferred user has permission but isn't connected to OwnerRez, we still queue the message under their account. However, it will fail due to the disconnected credentials.
- When a user/property has a preference:
- Preferred account (if they have conversation permission)
- Primary Host (if connected to OwnerRez)
- Listing Owner (if connected to OwnerRez)
- First connected cohost, if Airbnb channel integration is configured to Options > Message Filtering > Receive all messages and configured in Preferences, including unmapped listings.
- When a user/property has no preference:
- Primary Host (if connected to OwnerRez)
- Listing Owner (if connected to OwnerRez)
- First connected cohost (with exact configuration requirements as above)
If the primary Airbnb host isn't connected to OwnerRez, the system automatically returns to any available connected account following the priority order above.