WhatsApp for hotels and B&Bs in Italy: the messages guests expect

WhatsApp for hotels means guest messaging where guests already write. For a hotel, B&B, or agriturismo (farm stay) in Italy, that’s the free WhatsApp Business app on the property’s own number, a set of saved replies, and a simple routine from the first question to the thank-you after check-out. Italian guests, and many from the rest of Europe, will message you there before they think of email. Many American guests won’t, so the real job is to run WhatsApp and email side by side.

Imagine a Friday at 10:30 p.m. A message arrives: “Hi, do you have a room for this weekend?” You see it at 10 the next morning, and the guest has already booked somewhere else. WhatsApp only brings bookings when you treat it as a booking channel, not as a private chat.

Everything below works the same for vacation rentals (holiday lets, as British owners say), including the rules for guests who booked through Booking.com or Airbnb.

WhatsApp for hotels: who expects it, and who doesn’t

For Italian guests, messaging a business on WhatsApp is normal. They use it to ask about dates, parking, the dog, or a late arrival, and they expect an answer within hours, not days. Many guests from elsewhere in Europe do the same.

American guests are different. In a 2025 Pew Research Center survey, about a third of US adults said they use WhatsApp. So most of your American guests will look for your email address, or a phone number they can call.

Don’t assume, though. My own guided-hike project in Tuscany gets inquiries on WhatsApp from US numbers, as well as from Norway, Japan, Germany, and Australia. You can see the original messages in the case study.

So offer WhatsApp to everyone, but never as the only way to reach you:

• Show a WhatsApp button next to your email address and phone number, not instead of them.
• Ask on your booking form: “Can we message you on WhatsApp about your stay?” Their yes is also the opt-in that WhatsApp’s rules require before you message a guest first.
• Send the essentials by email too: the confirmation, the address, check-in times, and the cancellation terms.
• Reply on the channel the guest chose. If they emailed, answer by email.

How to set up WhatsApp Business for a hotel or B&B

WhatsApp Business is a separate app from the WhatsApp you use with friends. It’s free to download, and it adds what a property needs: a business profile with your address, hours, email, and website; an automatic greeting; an away message; saved quick replies; and labels to sort your chats (newer versions call them lists).

Five choices make the difference.

Use the property’s number, not your personal one. One number can’t run both apps at the same time. A second SIM or an eSIM works, and so does your landline: the Business app accepts a fixed number and verifies it with a phone call (not extensions or VoIP numbers). Someone else can then answer on your day off.

Let more than one person answer. You can link up to four devices to the phone, for example the computer at reception through WhatsApp Web.

Write the profile in English first, then Italian. Add your hours with the time zone (“8 a.m. to 9 p.m., Italian time”), your website, and the address the way guests will type it into Google Maps.

Sort chats with labels. A handful is enough: new inquiry, confirmed, arriving today, in house, checked out. Save each guest with their name and dates (“Sarah Miller, Jun 12–15”), so you know who’s writing when they come back.

Make it easy to reach you. Your chat link is wa.me/39 followed by your number, with no plus sign, spaces, or dashes (39 is Italy’s country code). Put it on your website, in your confirmation email, and in your email signature. If your Google Business Profile shows a Chat option (not every region has it yet), add the link there too. The app can also make a QR code to print for reception.

The messages guests expect, with templates

Most guests need three messages from you: one before arrival, a welcome, and a thank-you. Send anything else only when they ask or when something changes.

Write each message once, in English and in Italian, and save it as a quick reply. In a chat, type “/” and your saved replies appear: pick one, change the details, and send. The app stores up to 50. Fill in the words in brackets below, and cut what doesn’t apply to you.

Greeting and away messages

The greeting goes out automatically the first time someone writes, and again after 14 days of silence. The away message is sent outside your business hours, or on a schedule you choose. Neither replaces your answer, but the guest knows the message arrived and when you’ll reply.

Greeting: Hi, and thanks for writing to [property]. This is [name]. We usually reply within [two hours], from [8 a.m.] to [9 p.m.] Italian time. If you’re asking about a stay, please send your dates and the number of guests.

Away: Thanks for your message. We’re offline now and will reply from [8 a.m.] Italian time. Staying with us and need help right away? Call [phone number].

Quick replies for the questions you answer every day

/dates: Good news: [the double room] is free from [date] to [date]. It’s €[price] a night for two, breakfast included. You can book it here: [link to your booking page].

/checkin: Check-in is from [3 p.m.] to [7 p.m.]. Arriving later? Tell us your time and we’ll arrange it.

/parking: You can park [inside our gate, free of charge]. Please don’t drive into the old town: it’s a ZTL (a limited traffic zone), and rental cars that go in get fined.

/payment: To confirm, we ask for a deposit of [amount], by card through this secure link: [link]. If your bank account is in euros, a bank transfer works too: [IBAN]. The local tourist tax, €[amount] per person per night, is paid on arrival.

/id: Italian law requires us to register every guest’s ID details with the police, so please have your passports or ID cards ready at check-in.

Guests from abroad often don’t expect that last one, so send it before they arrive.

Before arrival

A few days before the stay, one message saves you several phone calls:

Hi [name], we’re looking forward to seeing you on [date]. What time do you think you’ll arrive? Here’s our location: [pin]. The entrance is [the green gate after the olive grove]; there’s a photo below.

Share the pin and the photo straight from the chat. Knowing arrival times also means you won’t have four couples checking in at once.

During the stay

Welcome: Welcome to [property]. The Wi-Fi password is [password], and breakfast is from [8] to [10:30] a.m. If you need anything, write to us here.

An offer, once: Tomorrow evening we’re hosting a tasting with [a local winery], €[price] per person. Would you like to join?

A problem, before they notice: There will be no hot water in [the west wing] for about [30 minutes] while we fix the boiler. We’re sorry, and we’ll message you as soon as it’s back.

What guests remember is often how you handled a problem, not the problem itself.

After check-out

Thank you for staying with us, [name]. If you have a minute, a review on Google helps a small place like ours a lot: [link]. Safe travels.

One message is enough, and only to guests who booked with you directly or chose to chat with you on WhatsApp: Booking.com and Airbnb ask their own guests for a review, and their rules on guest contact details apply (see below). And if a guest writes back to ask for a better price next time, here’s how to reply to a discount request without giving your margin away.

Booking.com and Airbnb guests: what’s allowed

WhatsApp can make the stay easier for guests who booked through a platform. It isn’t a way to take them off it.

• Airbnb keeps every message before the booking on Airbnb. After it, you can move to a chat app only if the guest asks, and you can’t use Airbnb’s messages to ask for their number. Its off-platform policy also forbids pushing future bookings off Airbnb, or offering a discount to do it.
• Booking.com’s General Delivery Terms forbid using the guest contact details it gives you for unsolicited messages. The phone number on the reservation is for the stay, not for offers. Once a guest has checked in, though, Booking.com says you’re free to invite them to book directly next time (its Digital Markets Act report, page 9).

So if a platform guest writes to you on WhatsApp, answer there; otherwise, stay on the platform’s messages. Guests who loved their stay will look you up by name next time, and that’s where direct bookings start.

Offers to past guests: ask first

The Business app can send one message to many guests at once. Broadcast lists reach only people who have saved your number; in some countries, WhatsApp also sells “business broadcasts,” paid per message, which reach guests who haven’t saved it. The rules don’t change:

• WhatsApp’s business messaging policy lets you message people only if they gave you their number and opted in, and you must stop as soon as someone asks.
• EU rules on marketing messages (the ePrivacy Directive) point the same way: consent first, and an easy way to say no.

The simplest way to get consent is a separate tick box on your booking form: “Send me news and offers on WhatsApp, a few times a year.” Then keep that promise: two or three messages a year (the grape harvest, a village festival, a winter offer), not one a week.

When the free app isn’t enough: WhatsApp and your PMS

With many rooms, or several people answering, the free app starts to feel small. Some PMSs (property management systems) and channel managers can send the confirmation, a pre-arrival message, and the thank-you on WhatsApp for you. They connect through the WhatsApp Business Platform, Meta’s version for software, and it isn’t free: since July 2025, Meta charges per message for the pre-approved templates a business needs to start a conversation. Replies within 24 hours of the guest’s last message are free.

Ask your PMS provider whether it offers WhatsApp, what each message costs, and where guests’ replies arrive. For a B&B with a few rooms, the free app is usually enough.

Mistakes to avoid with international guests

• Voice messages. They’re normal between Italians, but a guest from abroad may not be able to play one on a train, and an accent is harder to follow than text. Write instead.
• Italian only. Save every quick reply in English too, and always say “Italian time,” so a guest in New York or Sydney knows when you’ll answer.
• Card numbers in the chat. Never ask for them. Send a secure payment link from your booking engine or payment provider.

Where to start

1. Install WhatsApp Business on the property’s number, and fill in the profile in English and Italian.
2. Turn on the greeting and the away message, with your hours in Italian time.
3. Save five quick replies: dates, check-in, parking, payment, and ID.
4. Add your WhatsApp link to your website, your confirmation email, and your Google Business Profile, and ask for WhatsApp consent on your booking form.
5. Keep sending the confirmation and check-in details by email.

WhatsApp is often a guest’s first conversation with you. It should sound like your website and your social media: one voice everywhere, whoever is typing.