Integration with Hostfully

Hostfully is a property management platform for vacation rentals and short-term rental agencies. Connecting it to ChatLab lets your chatbot answer questions about your properties, dates and prices from your live Hostfully data, look up a guest's reservation and pass booking requests to your team, instead of answering from static text you have to keep up to date.

Note: Hostfully requires the corresponding integration feature. If your plan does not include it, opening the Hostfully tile shows a short note with a link to contact us instead of the connection form.

Example conversation

The example illustrates the guest experience. The available actions and returned information depend on this integration and your configuration.

What the integration provides

Once connected, the chatbot gets five Hostfully actions. A separate AI room search action is available when the chatbot has the corresponding room-search capacity.

Hostfully - get properties - lists the properties of your agency. For each one the chatbot can show the name, description, photo, maximum number of guests and the property's Hostfully page link. Descriptions are fetched in the content language you choose when connecting.

Hostfully - find available properties - the guest gives a date range and the number of guests, and the chatbot returns the properties that are free for those dates, with the price for the stay and a booking link per property.

Hostfully - check availability - the guest asks about one specific property. The chatbot checks the property's calendar for the requested dates, returns whether it is free, which dates are taken if it is not, and the price for the given number of guests, plus a booking link.

Hostfully - get reservation status - a guest who already booked gives the reservation reference, and the chatbot reads the status, property, guest name and check-in and check-out dates from Hostfully.

Hostfully - create booking request - the chatbot collects the property, dates, number of adults and children and the guest's name, e-mail and phone, confirms them with the guest and creates a new lead in your Hostfully account. The guest receives a reference number and your team takes it from there in Hostfully.

Dates are understood from natural language, so a guest can write "next weekend" or "12-15 June" rather than a strict date format.

Before you start

You need a chatbot to connect the integration to. If you have not created one yet, follow How to create your first ChatLab chatbot first.

Then collect two values from Hostfully. Both are on the same page: log in to Hostfully, click your company name in the main navigation and choose Agency Settings.

1. API Key - in the API Key section of the Agency Settings page. API access is a Hostfully account feature; if the section is missing from your account, ask Hostfully support to enable it. See Hostfully API authentication.
2. Agency UID - at the very bottom of the Agency Settings page.

Optionally, prepare a third value:

3. Booking URL format - the address of your own booking page, with placeholders that ChatLab fills in for each answer:

   • {web_link} - the property's Hostfully page link
   • {property_uid} - the Hostfully property id
   • {date_from} - check-in date
   • {date_to} - check-out date
   • {guests} - number of guests

   For example:

   {web_link}?checkIn={date_from}&checkOut={date_to}&guests={guests}
   

   If you leave this field empty the chatbot still answers about availability and prices, and uses the property's Hostfully page link without dates.

Step 1: Connect Hostfully

1. Select your chatbot and navigate to the Connect tab.
2. Click Connect on the Hostfully tile.

3. Paste your API Key and Agency UID, pick the Default content language and optionally fill in the Booking URL format.

4. Click Connect.

ChatLab saves the settings and immediately runs a test call that lists the properties of your agency. If the API key or Agency UID is wrong, the integration is switched back off and the error is shown in the form, so a broken connection is never left half enabled. On success ChatLab loads your properties with their descriptions and photos into its own cache, so later answers are fast.

Default content language decides which language ChatLab reads property names and descriptions in when Hostfully has them in several languages. English, Polish, German, Spanish, French and Italian are available; the default is English.

Step 2: Review the Hostfully actions

Connecting switches four actions on for you: get properties, check availability, find available properties and get reservation status. Create booking request stays off, because it writes a new lead into your Hostfully account; switch it on when you want guests to send booking requests from the chat.

To review or adjust the actions, navigate to Settings > Actions and look at the Hostfully Actions group. You can also click Hostfully in the Filter by Platform panel on the right to show only this group:

• Hostfully - get properties - default action label "Getting properties..."
• Hostfully - check availability - default action label "Checking availability..."
• Hostfully - find available properties - default action label "Searching available properties..."
• Hostfully - get reservation status - default action label "Checking reservation..."
• Hostfully - create booking request - default action label "Submitting request..."

The screenshot above shows the group before the integration is connected: the actions and the optional AI room search are listed, but marked Not connected and unavailable to the chatbot. AI room search depends on room capacity and catalog auto-indexing; it is not guaranteed to activate with every connection. When AI room search is on, it takes over property discovery and the plain get properties action steps aside.

For each action you can edit:

• Action Label - the short message the guest sees in the chat while the action runs.
• Instructions - what the action does, which the AI uses to decide when to call it.
• User Instructions - your own rules on top of that, for example asking for the number of guests before searching, or mentioning your minimum stay.

You can also switch an individual action off if you do not want it. For example, you can leave availability and prices on but turn off reservation lookup.

The find available properties action also has a result-count setting: 1 to 10 properties, with a default of 5. It limits the returned list, so an answer is not necessarily a complete list of every free property.

Step 3: Test it

Open Overview, start a new test conversation and try questions that map to each action:

• "What apartments do you have?" - triggers Hostfully - get properties
• "What is free from 12 to 15 June next year for 2 adults?" - triggers Hostfully - find available properties
• "Is the Seaside Loft free next weekend?" - triggers Hostfully - check availability
• "What is the status of my reservation ABC123?" - triggers Hostfully - get reservation status
• "I want to book the Seaside Loft for those dates" - triggers Hostfully - create booking request, if you switched it on

Check that the property names and prices match your Hostfully data, that booking links open your booking page with the dates already filled in, and that a test booking request shows up as a new lead in Hostfully.

Managing the integration

Updating settings - open the Hostfully tile in the Connect tab, change the API key, Agency UID, content language or Booking URL format, and click Update Chatbot. ChatLab runs the test call again and refreshes its property cache.

Disconnecting - open the Hostfully tile and click Disconnect. The Hostfully actions stop being available to the chatbot and the cached property data is dropped. Your settings stay in the form, so connecting again later takes one click.

Tips

• Keep training your bot on your website content. The Hostfully actions cover properties, dates and prices; everything else a guest asks about (check-in hours, parking, house rules, pets) comes from your knowledge base. See Training your chatbot - basics and limits.
• Put booking rules such as minimum stay or a deposit policy into the action's user instructions, so the chatbot mentions them together with availability instead of leaving the guest to find out later.
• Add suggested questions like "Check availability" or "Show apartments" so guests discover what the chatbot can do.
• A booking request is created in Hostfully only after the chatbot has the guest's name, e-mail and phone and the guest has confirmed the details. If you also run a lead collection form, keep the two consistent so guests are not asked for the same data twice. See Lead collection.
• Each answer that calls a Hostfully action uses message credits like any other chatbot reply. See What is a message credit.

Related articles

• Integration with Beds24
• Integration with Hotres
• Integration with IdoBooking
• Integration with KWHotel
• Integration with Mews
• Training your chatbot - basics and limits
• What is a message credit

Room Catalog and Hotel Overview

If your account shows the Hotel tab, use Hotel > Rooms to review the room catalog and training status. AI room search is separate from date-based availability checks: it matches property descriptions, while availability actions check a requested stay. Automatic property indexing depends on catalog auto-indexing and assigned room capacity; otherwise, use Train rooms when available. Review the enabled actions and wait for training to finish before relying on AI room search.