How to use the Bookably Host Assistant

The Host Assistant is your AI co-pilot for running a holiday rental on Bookably. You chat with it in plain English, and it helps you list properties, manage bookings, reply to guests, track payouts, and update your profile — all from one screen.

The core idea: chat first, with everything else built in

Most tools make you click through menus. The Host Assistant flips that around: you just say what you want, and the right tool appears inside the conversation.

Ask for your listings — a grid of your property tiles slides in. Ask to create a new listing — a guided form appears, step by step. Ask about a booking — the booking shows up with Accept and Decline right there.

Ask a question — “Is The Loft still live?”, “Any bookings awaiting payment?”, “What did Sarah say about pets?” — and the assistant just answers in chat. No surface to navigate; you get the specific answer you asked for.

We call the interactive in-chat panels surfaces. Surfaces are interactive — forms, calendars, tile grids, payout dashboards — but they live inside the same conversation. You never leave the chat to find them, and you can always go back to typing once you’re done.

Two ways to open a surface

You don’t have to memorise commands. Every surface has two equivalent ways in:

Just ask. “Show me my listings” or “What bookings need approval?” — the assistant figures out what you mean and opens the right surface.
Tap a chip. Suggested action chips appear above the input box: 📋 My listings, 📅 My bookings, 🔐 Complete Stripe verification, and so on. One tap opens the surface.

Pick whichever feels fastest in the moment. Long question? Type. Quick check? Tap a chip.

✨ The three AI helpers that do the heavy lifting

Three parts of the Host Assistant lean on AI in a way that genuinely saves you hours. They’re worth singling out.

1. AI drafting — it writes your listing for you

You shouldn’t have to be a copywriter to rent out your place. As you go through listing creation, the assistant generates first drafts for:

Your listing title — pulled from the property’s vibe, location and standout features.
Each room description — bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen, outdoor, entertainment, luxury features. One section at a time, in your property’s voice.
Your host bio — built from a quick chat about how long you’ve been hosting and what you care about.
Photo alt text + captions — generated as you upload, so your listing is accessible and search-friendly without extra work.
A photo quality review — flags blurry, dark, or unflattering shots so you know which ones to retake.

Every draft is shown to you for review before anything is saved. You’re free to ignore every suggestion and write your own — drafts are starting points, not defaults.

One ground rule: drafts never reveal your full street address (city, region, suburb and nearby landmarks only) and never reference photos in the narrative copy — that keeps your listing safe and natural-sounding.

2. The Pricing Assistant — a private revenue advisor

Open the Pricing section of your listing and you’ll find a chat window sitting above the form. It’s a dedicated AI helper that knows your current pricing config inside out, and it’s there to help you decide what to charge.

You can ask it things like:

“What should I charge per night for a 3-bedroom in Queenstown in peak season?”
“Set weekends 20% higher than weekdays.”
“Add a $250 cleaning fee and a 10% discount for week-long stays.”
“What would 15–21 January cost for 4 guests?” — it gives you a full quote breakdown, showing the math line by line.
“Set up guest tiers — base price for 2 guests, +$30 per extra guest up to 6.”

When it proposes a full pricing setup, the form updates automatically — no “Apply” button to hunt for. You can still tweak any field by hand.

A few touches worth noting:

All prices shown are GST-inclusive (15%). The Security Deposit is the one exception — that’s a refundable hold, not a charge, so it’s GST-exclusive.
The chat history is saved against your listing, so you can come back tomorrow and pick up the conversation where you left off.
It will warn you about pricing decisions that don’t add up — a discount that makes long stays cheaper than short ones, or a fee structure that doesn’t make sense.

3. The Calendar Assistant — talk to your availability

Open the calendar for any listing and you’ll see the same kind of chat widget sitting below the date grid. It can read your calendar and make changes for you in plain English.

Try things like:

“Block dates I’m away.” — then describe them (“the first two weeks of June”, “every Tuesday in July”, “Christmas to New Year”).
“What’s booked this month?”
“Set summer rates: $650 a night from 15 December to 28 February, with weekends $100 higher.” — seasonal pricing applied across the range in one go.
“Set weekend prices to $450 from now until end of February.”
“Unblock recent dates.”
“Why can’t anyone book the 14th?”

It knows the next year of your bookings, blocks, and prices, and applies changes the moment you confirm — the calendar grid refreshes in place. If you ask for something that overlaps a real booking, it warns you instead of silently failing.

The Calendar Assistant only handles calendar and pricing-on-dates questions — if you ask it about guest messages or listing edits, it’ll point you to the right place rather than guess.

What ties all three together

You’re always in control. The AI proposes; you confirm. Nothing goes live without you saying yes (the only exception is calendar changes you explicitly ask the assistant to apply).
They know your context. Each helper reads the live state of your listing — current copy, current pricing, current calendar — so suggestions aren’t generic, they’re for your property.
They stay in their lane. The Pricing Assistant won’t try to write your listing description; the Calendar Assistant won’t try to change your prices for the whole season. If you wander off-topic, they hand you back to the main chat.
History is saved. Conversations with the Pricing and Calendar Assistants persist on the listing — close the tab, come back next week, the thread is still there.

What you can do with it

Get set up (one time)

The assistant walks you through a 5-step signup, showing your progress as a row of pills under the chat. You can pause and come back any time — your progress is saved.

Create your account — log in or register inside the chat.
Build your host profile — name, photo, languages, country, a short bio. The assistant auto-drafts the bio for you if you’d rather not write one, and reviews your photo to flag if it isn’t a clear headshot.
Pick a package — choose the plan that suits the size of your hosting business. Pay by card inside the chat; no redirect.
Connect Stripe for payouts — the verification form opens right in the conversation. The assistant tells you what Stripe still needs and reopens the form when you ask.
Create your first listing — see below.

Create a listing

You don’t fill out one giant form. The assistant collects details in conversation across nine sections — from the basics and location, through your story, the facts, rooms & spaces, rules & safety, pricing & booking, calendar sync, all the way to tax & compliance — and writes the listing copy for you based on what you tell it.

Photos: drag in JPEG, PNG, WebP, AVIF, or HEIC files. The assistant generates the alt text, captions, and a quality review on the way in.
AI-drafted copy: for the title and the room descriptions, it writes a first draft from your inputs. You review and edit before it’s saved.
Progress bar: every field you’ve filled is marked reviewed; you can see what’s left at a glance.
Resume any time: start a draft, walk away, come back days later — it’s all there.

You can also edit a published listing the same way: ask “edit my Lake Vista listing” and the same flow opens with your existing data filled in.

Manage what’s already live

📋 My listings — a grid of tiles. Each tile has a ⋮ menu with Edit, Hide / Unhide (take a listing down or put it back), Feature (promote it where featured packages are available), Renew, and Delete. You can also ask the assistant directly: “Hide The Loft” → confirm → done. “Unhide my Lake Vista listing” → confirm → done. “Which listings are pending review?” / “Any listings expiring soon?” / “Is The Loft live?” — answers in chat without opening the grid. If you ask to permanently delete a listing through chat, the assistant will refuse and offer to hide instead (data preserved, fully reversible) — real deletion is reserved for the tile ⋮ menu or Bookably support, because of bookings, reviews, and payouts that may be tied to the listing.
📅 My bookings — filter by Upcoming, Awaiting approval, Past, or Cancelled. Accept or decline awaiting-approval bookings inline (decline asks for a reason). You can also approve or decline through chat: “Approve the booking from Sarah” → confirm → done. Each row shows the payment status and whether the payout has cleared.
Calendar — block off dates, unblock them, or block a range. Day-grid view per listing.
Messages — ask “show me my messages” and the assistant pulls up your threads. It can draft a reply for you to approve before sending.
Reviews — ask the assistant which bookings are eligible for a guest review, and submit one through the chat. Guest reviews of you stay private for 14 days (or until you’ve both submitted), then become visible to both sides.

Money

Stripe dashboard inside the chat — payouts, balance, history, and settings. No tab-switching to Stripe’s site.
Notifications — the assistant flags outstanding Stripe requirements (extra ID, bank-details confirmation) and surfaces a one-tap button to fix them.

Get help

Knowledge base — ask any “how do I…” question; the assistant searches Bookably’s host knowledge base and answers from it. It doesn’t make up Bookably-specific answers.
Contact a human — every error and dead-end gives you a way out ([email protected] / 0800 448 938).

The notification bar

Inside the chat, just above the messages, sits a thin notification bar. It only shows buttons for things that need your attention right now — a draft you haven’t finished, a booking awaiting approval, a check-in this week. Empty = invisible. Tap a button = the matching surface opens.

It’s the assistant tapping you on the shoulder, instead of waiting to be asked.

Tips for getting the most out of it

Talk normally. “Block out next weekend on Lake Vista” works as well as a precise command.
One thing at a time. If you ask for two things in the same message, the assistant will pick one and ask about the other.
You’re always in control. Anything the assistant is about to send or change (a guest reply, a price change, a booking approval or cancellation, hiding or unhiding a listing) is shown for your approval first. Nothing goes through until you confirm — and a confirmation is scoped to the specific action you were asked about, never piggybacked onto something else.
Mobile-first. The whole experience works on a phone — surfaces appear as a sheet that slides up from the bottom. The chat stays visible.
Drafts are saved on the server. Close the tab mid-listing, come back days later, and your in-progress draft is still there.

What it won’t do (yet)

Issue refunds — refunds are still handled by the Bookably team. Ask the assistant and it’ll route you to support.
Permanently delete a listing through chat — it’ll offer to hide instead (preserves all data, fully reversible). Real deletion lives on the tile ⋮ menu, or contact Bookably for help.
Edit a confirmed booking’s dates or guest count — cancel and re-book is the path; the assistant can do the cancellation, and if you ask separately it can also draft a message to the guest.
Speak languages other than English — for now.