Pre-stay

The pre-stay message goes to the guest before arrival and takes them to a page for preparing their stay, for example with the online check-in. The hotel sets how many days before arrival it goes out; ReGuest then creates it for every confirmed reservation and sends it. Pre-stay is under Autopilot › Auto Messages, card “Pre-stay”. In some hotels, the “Autopilot” menu does not yet show “Auto Messages”. There, Pre-stay is under Autopilot › Pre-stay Messages, and the settings are under Settings › Messaging Automation. The example and the pages below describe “Auto Messages”.

The message then appears in the “Messages” tab, with the status “sent” after sending.

The “Auto Messages” overview shows one card per automatic message. The “Pre-stay” card carries the text “Automatic pre-stay messages for optimal preparation of your guests” and a status: “Active”, “Test mode”, “Deactivated” or “Not active”. In “Test mode”, the message goes by e-mail to the author at the hotel instead of to the guest. If Pre-stay is not enabled for the hotel, the card is greyed out and refers you to support.

The card leads to the “Messages”, “Report” and “Settings” tabs.

The tab lists the scheduled and sent pre-stay messages with the columns “Send automatically”, “Guest”, “Facility/Hotel” and “Arrival”. The filters “Period”, “Filter by name...” and “Facility/Hotel” narrow the list down to a period, a guest or a property. A message has the status “prepared”, “sent”, “stopped”, “deleted” or “read”.

“Send now” sets the sending time of a message to now.

The page shows a single pre-stay message. Under “Name”, “E-Mail”, “Arrival” and “Reservation”, the page shows the guest and their stay. The “Send information” box shows the message's “Status”, and under “Will be sent on” and “Time” the time of sending; “Send now” sets it to now.

The “Message” box shows “Author”, “Template”, “Title” and “Content”. The content of a pre-stay message can be adjusted for the individual guest, via “Customise content for this guest...”.

The tab shows key figures for the last 7, 30 or 90 days or for a freely chosen period, among them “Messages”, “Click rate” and “Online-check-in-rate”. “Click rate” is the share of opened messages.

In the “Global settings” box, “Activate pre-stay message” switches the pre-stay message on. The “Pre-Stay Info: Days before arrival (1-30)” field sets how many days before arrival it goes out. If “Manually approve pre-stay messages” is switched on, ReGuest creates new messages with the status “stopped”; they only go out when someone activates them by hand.

With the Upseller licence module, ReGuest sends several pre-stay messages per stay, the trigger messages. The list in the “Trigger messages for multi pre-stay” box then replaces the “Pre-Stay Info: Days before arrival (1-30)” field.

On the “New Trigger Message” or “Edit trigger message” page, “Adjust sending time” sets when the message goes out. Under “Activation timing”, you can choose “After sending the booking confirmation” and “Before arrival”, each with the field “Sending time: Days (0 - 30) / Hrs”. A new trigger message is set to 72 hours before arrival. If the time falls on the day before arrival, the message goes out on that day at 7 a.m.

Under “Additional actions on the pre-stay-platform”, a trigger message sets which actions the guest's pre-stay page shows: “Online check-in”, “Upselling (additional services)”, “Wish list”, “Generic message” and “Online check-in reminder”. With “Wish list”, the page shows the tile “Your wishes in advance” with “To the questionnaire”, through which the guest states their wishes for the stay. With “Generic message”, it shows a message with a title and text that the hotel stores under “Content of the generic message” per language, optionally with an “Image”; it only appears if a text in the guest's language exists. “Online check-in reminder” shows the same tile “Online check-in” as “Online check-in”; a trigger message that carries only this action does not go out if a message with “Online check-in” was already activated in the last 24 hours. The guest only sees the tile of an action once the trigger message that carries it has been sent.

In the “Settings” tab, “Global settings” box, “Activate short-notice booking messages” with the field “Maximum days between booking and arrival” sets a number of days. If there are at most that many days between the confirmation and arrival, only the message for short-notice bookings goes out.

Depending on how the hotel has set it up, the pre-stay page shows tiles such as “Online check-in”, “Book additional services”, “Your wishes in advance” and “Confirm contact information”.

When does the pre-stay message go out? As many days before arrival as the field “Pre-Stay Info: Days before arrival (1-30)” states. If a reservation is confirmed at such short notice that this point in time has already passed, ReGuest schedules it for five minutes later.

Why did no pre-stay message go out? The message has the status “stopped” because “Manually approve pre-stay messages” is switched on, or there is no matching template, or the reservation is no longer confirmed. Such a message can be activated by hand. How many templates exist is shown in the “Templates” box in the “Settings” tab. “Edit templates” in the “Templates” box leads to the templates.

Why does the guest not see an online check-in? The online check-in is not set up for the hotel, the template hides it, or, with trigger messages, no sent trigger message carries the action “Online check-in”. ReGuest support can tell you whether the online check-in is set up for the hotel. With trigger messages, “Online check-in” under “Additional actions on the pre-stay-platform” puts the action on the guest's pre-stay page. “Edit templates” in the “Templates” box leads to the templates.

Where does the text of the message come from? From the template of the offer, otherwise from the default template for the guest's language. Without a template, ReGuest creates no message.

As of: 2026-10-24.