Connect your Airbnb booking emails

Every confirmed Airbnb booking sends you an email. With this guide, that email also reaches Operent, and the booking shows up in the system on its own: with the right property, dates, guest and amounts. No typing, and no sharing your password with anyone.

Before you start

• Use Gmail on a computer. The mobile app doesn't have the forwarding and filter options.
• Have your properties set up in Operent. Each Airbnb listing will be linked to one of them.
• Operent reads Airbnb confirmations in English or Portuguese, with amounts in pounds, euros, dollars or reais.
• Using Outlook? Coming soon.

What leaves your inbox, and what never does

Your own Gmail decides what gets forwarded, through a filter you create and can delete whenever you like. Operent never goes into your inbox: it only receives what the filter sends.

And on the Operent side, three more safeguards:

• Only email that really came from Airbnb gets in. Operent checks the digital signature of every message. A fake email, or one you forward by hand, is rejected.
• The forwarding address is private and yours alone. It's shown only once, and you can pause the connection or replace the address at any time.
• An email never touches the money. It can create the booking, but it doesn't record a payment, a receipt or an owner payout.

Step 1 · Link each listing to a property

In Operent, open Bookings, click the more actions button (⋯) and choose “Connect Airbnb by email”. You can also start from the Homepage, on the “Forward Airbnb emails” card.

In the first step, “Link your listings”, you tell Operent which property each listing is. For that you need the listing number, which is in the Airbnb address bar and shows up in two ways:

1. Paste the number into “Airbnb listing ID”.
2. Under “Operent property”, choose the matching property.
3. Click “Save mapping”. Repeat for each listing.

Step 2 · Generate your forwarding address

Under “Generate your forwarding address”, click “Create connection”. Operent creates a unique address that looks like airbnb+…@….

Step 3 · Set up Gmail

With the address copied, open Gmail on your computer. There are three parts:

1. 3.1

   Add the forwarding address

   • Click the Settings cog, then “See all settings”.
   • Open the “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” tab.
   • Click “Add a forwarding address”, paste the address from step 2 and continue with “Next” and “Proceed”.

   Don't forward everything.

   On the “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” tab, leave “Disable forwarding” selected. The “Forward a copy of incoming mail to” option would send all your email, and that's not what we want. Only the filter forwards.

2. 3.2

   Confirm the address

   • Gmail sends a confirmation email to the new address, which means to Operent.
   • Go back to the connection screen in Operent. Within a few seconds you'll see “Gmail confirmation pending”.
   • Click “Retrieve Gmail confirmation”. Operent opens that email and shows the “Open link in Google” button.
   • Click it: Google opens the confirmation page, and you just confirm. Then come back and click “I confirmed in Gmail”.
3. 3.3

   Create the Airbnb filter

   • In Gmail, open the “Filters and Blocked Addresses” tab and click “Create a new filter”.
   • In the “From” field, type [email protected] and click “Create filter”.
   • Check “Forward it to”, choose the Operent address and confirm with “Create filter”.

Step 4 · Turn on automatic creation

Back in Operent, on the connection, click “Enable automatic creation”. That's what allows Operent to create bookings on its own. You don't need to wait for the first email to turn it on, and you can turn it off at any time.

How to tell it worked

• Until an Airbnb email arrives, the screen shows “Waiting for an Airbnb message at this address…” and the Homepage shows “Waiting for the first Airbnb email”. That's normal: it only changes when the next booking confirmation arrives.
• When it arrives, step 3 turns green with “Airbnb email received”, and the booking appears in Bookings.
• If something doesn't match, for example a listing with no linked property, the booking isn't created blindly: the Homepage shows “An Airbnb email needs review”.

What Operent does with each email

• Booking confirmed: creates the booking with property, dates, guest and amounts, if automatic creation is on.
• Booking cancelled by the guest: goes to review. Operent doesn't cancel anything on its own.
• Airbnb notices (reminders, reviews and similar): logged, with no action taken.
• The same email twice: recognised, and the booking isn't duplicated.

Common problems