The AI email agent for vacation rental hosts

Direct bookings are won and lost in the inbox

Every host who takes direct bookings knows the pattern. A guest finds your website, emails to ask whether the last week of August is free, and then emails two other properties with the same question. Whoever answers first, with actual dates and an actual price, usually gets the booking. If your reply arrives the next afternoon, you are often replying to someone who has already booked elsewhere.

The cruelty of it is that direct-booking email is both your highest-margin channel and the one with no infrastructure behind it. The OTA platforms nag you about response times and give you saved replies; your own inbox gives you nothing. So the channel where you keep the whole booking value is the channel where enquiries wait longest, because you were cleaning a changeover, on a plane, or asleep in a different timezone from your guest.

An AI email agent closes that gap. InReply watches the inbox you already use, answers enquiries from your own information within minutes, around the clock, and puts anything it cannot handle in front of you. It is the always-on front desk your direct-booking channel never had.

What guests actually ask

Guest email is remarkably predictable, and it splits into three phases:

• Before booking. Is it available for these dates, what does a week cost, is there a minimum stay, do you take dogs, how many does it sleep, is there parking, is the hot tub open in winter, how far is the beach.
• Before arrival. What time is check-in, how do we get the keys, what is the address and how do we find you, what should we bring, is there a cot, what is the wifi like, where is the nearest supermarket.
• During and after the stay. How does the heating work, where do the bins go, can we have a late checkout, we left a charger behind, can we book again for next year.

You have answered every one of these before, probably this month. The answers live in your house manual, your listing text and your head. The problem was never knowing the answer; it was being available at 11pm to type it. That is precisely the job to hand to software.

Your house manual becomes the brain

InReply connects to your existing Gmail or Outlook inbox through secure OAuth: no new email client, no extension, no new address. You then load its knowledge base with what you already have: your house manual, your rates and seasonal pricing, your minimum-stay and pet rules, check-in and check-out procedure, directions, and the local recommendations you paste into email after email. (Whether sensitive details like door codes go in is entirely your choice; many hosts include the key-safe procedure but keep codes for confirmed-guest emails they send themselves.)

That knowledge base is the only thing InReply answers from. Ask it whether the cottage takes dogs and it quotes your pet policy; ask it something your manual does not cover and it does not improvise a guess, it leaves the email for you and flags it on the actions list. For a host, a wrong answer about occupancy or refunds is far more expensive than a short delay, so the system is built to say "a person will come back to you" rather than to invent.

Availability works the same, honest way. InReply does not read your booking calendar or your PMS. You keep availability notes in the knowledge base at whatever level of detail suits you ("July and the first two weeks of August are fully booked; autumn midweek breaks widely available"), and it answers and proposes dates from that. When a guest wants to commit, the thread lands with you to confirm against your real calendar and take payment however you normally do. The instant first response, which is what wins the booking, is automated; the final confirmation, which is what protects you from a double booking, stays human.

Honest scope: email, not OTA messaging

Being direct about what InReply is not: it does not integrate with Airbnb, Vrbo or Booking.com messaging, and it will not reply inside those apps. It works on email inboxes, Gmail or Outlook, connected via OAuth. If most of your enquiries live inside OTA apps, InReply is not the tool for that traffic.

If you run a direct-booking channel, though, that is exactly where it fits: website contact-form enquiries that arrive as email, returning guests who write to you directly, and the email-first traffic that a good direct-booking site generates. Many hosts are deliberately building that channel to reduce OTA commission, and its weak point has always been response speed. InReply fixes the weak point without touching your platform accounts. For the broader picture of AI handling a business inbox, see the email answering service guide.

Ghost Mode first, Autopilot when you trust it

Every plan includes Ghost Mode: each reply InReply writes is saved as a draft in your Gmail or Outlook, and nothing sends until you approve it. Most hosts start here, spending a week or two reviewing drafts against real guest emails and enriching the house manual wherever an answer comes out thin.

Autopilot sends automatically, controlled per playbook. A sensible progression: put house-guide and pre-arrival questions on Autopilot first, since the answers are factual and stable. Availability enquiries can follow once your knowledge base stays current. Anything involving money, refunds, complaints or negotiation can remain in Ghost Mode, or be routed straight to you, permanently. Playbooks also set tone, so replies sound like a warm host rather than a support desk.

What stays with you

The actions list is the other half of the product: every email that needs a human, because the knowledge base could not answer it or a playbook routed it there, appears as a visible item with urgent flagging. For hosts that typically means booking confirmations and payment, discount and special-occasion requests, damage reports, mid-stay problems ("the hot tub is showing an error") and complaints. If a co-host, cleaner turned manager or family member helps run the inbox, team members get their own logins with per-inbox access, and the flat monthly workspace price means adding them costs nothing.

Most independent hosts fit comfortably on Starter (£39/month, 500 credits, one inbox). Growth (£79/month, 2,000 credits, three inboxes) suits hosts running separate inboxes per property or brand, Scale (£149/month, 5,000 credits, five inboxes) covers small portfolios, and Business is custom for larger operations. Every plan starts with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required; see the full pricing breakdown.

InReply also serves other enquiry-heavy businesses, including property agents and gyms and fitness studios.

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