A guest assistant that answers in the guest's own language
It answers from your property sheet, in the language the guest speaks on the phone, and checks the calendar for free dates and what they would cost, and passes you a request instead of confirming a booking.
The phone rings at five to midnight on a Sunday. It is a German caller, polite, and they ask three things at once: is there a cot, can they arrive after ten, and is the pool heated. You are in bed and the call goes unanswered. By the time you ring back on Monday morning, in an English you had to run through a translator to be sure of the grammar, the family from Düsseldorf has phoned two other houses in the village and been answered by one of them in their own language. That is the situation described in the piece on the German-speaking guest who calls at midnight, and it is the problem this feature is aimed at.
StaySuite's assistant answers in the language the guest speaks on the phone, from the information you have given it about the house. This article describes what it does, what it will not do, and how to check whether it suits your guests.
It starts from your property sheet
The assistant is not a general chatbot guessing about holiday lets. When someone asks about houses, prices, capacity or extras, it is instructed to look the answer up in your actual portfolio first, and to say only what that lookup returns in the same conversation. For specific dates it also checks the single calendar and your seasons. It is told never to invent a nightly price, a capacity, an address or an extra, and not to round numbers. If the lookup comes back empty, it says so naturally and suggests other dates or another property. It asks first for the dates and the number of people, and what the stay is for (a family with children, a group of friends, a couple), because that changes which house fits.
It introduces itself as an AI assistant. If a guest asks whether they are talking to a person, it says that it is not, and offers to take their details so that someone gets back to them.
Their language, without being asked
The assistant's instructions say that if the person speaks another language, it answers in that language, because many guests are from abroad and switching language is half the booking. It does not ask the guest to choose a language before they begin. That is an instruction in its prompt, not something we have measured language by language, so we will not give you a list. If most of your guests come from one particular country, open the demo and try it in that language before you decide.
0bookings the assistant confirms: it checks the calendar and quotes a price, but takes a request and you decide
By phone
The same assistant answers the phone. It reads back a phone number digit by digit, or an email address letter by letter, and waits for the guest to confirm it before saving or sending anything. It will not dictate a web address down the phone. Instead, when a guest likes a house, it offers to send the property sheet with the photos by text message or by email, whichever they prefer, and sends exactly the link stored for that house. It does not offer to send things by WhatsApp, because it cannot send that way, and offering a thing it would then have to take back is worse than not offering.
Every conversation is saved in your panel so that you can read what was said and by whom. The articles on recorded conversations and on keeping your phone number cover that side in detail.
What it will not do, by design
This is the section to read most carefully, because it decides whether the assistant is safe to leave alone at midnight. It checks the single calendar before it says anything about dates: your bookings, your blocks and the nights imported from Airbnb, Booking.com and Vrbo. If those nights are free, it says so and tells the guest what they would cost with your seasons, with a breakdown of nights, cleaning and tourist tax, and the deposit separate. If any imported calendar has gone more than three hours without being read properly, it does not say the dates are free: it says it cannot check right now and passes the request on. It will not tell a guest that a stay is booked or confirmed, however the guest phrases the question. When someone wants to book, it gathers the arrival and departure dates, the number of people, and a phone number or an email address, and then records a pending request that stores the price the guest was told, and tells the guest that you will confirm it as soon as you can.
That wording matters, and it is enforced where it counts. The assistant has no tool that creates a confirmed booking. It can only record a pending request, and a request does not occupy your calendar. So if the model got something wrong, the worst outcome is a request you decline, not a house sold twice.
- It does not confirm bookings, take payments, promise discounts or accept cancellations.
- Its availability check is only as fresh as the calendar: it is not a real-time channel manager, and it does not claim dates are free when an imported calendar has not been read properly for more than three hours. It does not take online payment either.
- It speaks in the guest's language, but your panel is not yet fully translated: at the time of writing, most of the panel is in Spanish, with the calendars tab available in English and German. You read the conversation in the panel, so check the demo to see whether that works for you.
- The price it quotes is the one your seasons produce. Anything beyond that, such as a discount, is yours to agree with the guest.
- It is an AI. It will make mistakes in understanding, as any model can, which is why it passes everything it is unsure about to you.
Who it suits, and which plan
It suits an owner whose guests come from several countries and who cannot answer in four languages at any hour, which means most owners on the south coast and in the Spanish interior who rent to visitors from northern Europe. It suits you less if nearly all your guests are Spanish and already message you in Spanish during your waking hours. The assistant is part of every plan: €29 a month for one property on the annual rate (pioneer price, excluding VAT), €49 for up to three, and €99 for the manager plan with up to ten.
Try it as a guest would. Open the demo and write to it at your own odd hour in the language your visitors use, ask it about the pool, a late arrival and a cot, and then look at your panel to see what it passed on. It is a far cheaper way to find out than losing a booking you never saw.