Setting Up Guest Messaging in Six Languages

Six languages follow the property, not the person reading the screen. Get that order right and the templates almost write themselves.

Last updated: November 1, 2026

Language in guest messaging is a property setting before it's a writing task. Set language, time zone and currency on the unit, write each template in the language you actually operate in, then translate. Do it in that order and six languages become six versions of three messages, not six separate jobs.

Key Takeaways

• The unit holds the language, not the reader. Language, time zone and currency follow the property, so a Thai unit answers in Thai whatever device you're holding.
• Six, not seven. The list is en, zh-CN, zh-TW, ja, th and ms. Korean isn't there yet, and a missing language falls back to English.
• Write the template before you translate it. A fuzzy message translates into six fuzzy messages, and you'll fix the same sentence six times.
• Three messages carry the stay. Before arrival, during the stay, departure. Everything else is an exception you'll write once and reuse.
• The inbox is Airbnb only. Conversations from other channels get answered where the booking came from, so don't promise one window you can't keep.

What follows the property

The first decision isn't a language, it's a location. Language, time zone and currency follow the unit, which is the correct default and the one most hosts get backwards. A host sitting in Seoul answers a message about a flat in Bangkok, and the guest should see Thai times, Thai currency and a Thai message, not whatever the host's phone is set to.

That one setting removes the most common bug in multilingual hosting: a check-in time expressed in the host's time zone. A guest reading "check-in from 15:00" in a city eleven hours away will do the arithmetic wrong roughly half the time, and the message that follows costs more than the message that would have prevented it.

Currency follows the same rule, and it's worth checking the small things. A currency without minor units shouldn't be showing decimals, and a price quoted in the unit's currency shouldn't be re-quoted in yours halfway through a conversation.

Now the honest part. The list is six languages: English, simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese, Japanese, Thai and Malay. Korean isn't on it yet. That matters because Korea is a large source market for plenty of hosts. A host who assumes every Asian market is covered will write a Korean template, save it, and then watch the unit fall back to English the moment the guest's language is set. Missing means English, not a machine attempt.

So the operating rule is simple. Check which of the six your units actually need, and treat anything outside the six as an English conversation you'll handle personally. That's a staffing question, not a software question, and it's better answered in month one than at eleven at night.

Templates before translation

Here's the order that saves the most time: write the message in the language you run the operation in, make it unambiguous, and only then translate it.

The reason is boring and total. Translation multiplies whatever is in the source. A template that says "the key is in the box" translates six times into six ways of not saying where the box is. A template that says "the lockbox is on the left of the blue door, code sent at 14:00, turn the dial twice" translates into six usable messages, because the work was done before the translation.

So write the source version with the four things a message needs. One action per sentence. One time, in the unit's time zone, in 24-hour format. One place, described by what the guest can see rather than by a street name. One fallback, meaning what to do if the first thing fails.

Then translate, and keep the translations side by side rather than in six folders. When the door code changes, you want to change it in six places in one sitting, not discover in March that the Thai version still has last year's code.

Avoid compound sentences in the source, because they're where translations drift. "If you arrive after 22:00, please let me know and I'll leave the key with the neighbour, but only if you've paid the deposit." That's three conditions in one sentence, and by the third language they've merged.

Then put the templates where the conversations actually happen. The inbox on localsbnb.com connects Airbnb, which is where most of these conversations start, and that's the window you answer in for those bookings. Conversations from your other channels stay in those channels, so keep the same three templates copied where you'll need them rather than promising guests a single thread you can't deliver.

The three messages that matter

Almost every guest message you'll ever send is a version of three. Write those three properly in each language and the rest is variation.

Before arrival. The address in a form a taxi driver recognises, the access method, and the one question that decides the first night. Not a brochure: three lines, in the order the guest needs them. This is the message where translation errors cost the most, because a guest standing outside a building at midnight can't ask a follow-up question and wait an hour for the answer.

During the stay. One check-in message on day one, and one path for problems. The check-in message asks the single question that surfaces most issues early: is everything as expected. The problem path says who to contact, how, and what happens next. Keep the problem path identical in all six languages, because a guest in trouble shouldn't be reading a different process from the one you actually run.

Departure. The time, what to do with keys, and what to leave behind. This one is short and gets skipped, and it's the message that decides whether the cleaner walks into a five-minute job or a forty-minute one. Bin day, towels, dishes, the door: name them, don't imply them.

Three messages, six languages, eighteen templates. That's the whole library for most units, and it fits on two pages you can read at a glance.

Testing it on a real booking

The test isn't reading the templates back to yourself. It's running one booking through them.

Start with the setting, not the text. Open the unit and check that language, time zone and currency are what a guest in that city would expect. If you have two units in two countries, check both, because a copied unit carries a copied setting.

Then send the three messages to yourself, in each language, and read them on a phone rather than a laptop. Half of the errors in translated templates are layout errors. A long compound noun becomes a two-line paragraph in Thai. A 24-hour time gets clipped by a narrow card, and a code drops to the next line and reads as part of the sentence above.

Then take one real booking in a language you can't read, and answer it with the template plus one sentence of your own. That last sentence is the test. If you can't write it, the guest is about to have a conversation with a form, and you'll feel it in the review.

Before you write, know who's actually in the unit. A read-only question gets you today's arrivals, who's in-house and who's leaving, without opening four dashboards, which is usually the difference between a message that names the right guest and one that doesn't.

Finally, log the result. One line per booking for the first month: language, which template, what the guest asked that the template didn't cover. After ten bookings you'll have the fourth and fifth message you actually need, written by evidence rather than by imagination.

FAQ

Which languages are supported?

Six: English, simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese, Japanese, Thai and Malay. Korean isn't available yet, and any language outside the list falls back to English rather than being approximated. Check the list against your actual guest mix before you promise a guest their own language.

Does the software translate messages for me?

No, and you don't want it to for the three messages that matter. You write the template, you translate it, and the unit's language setting decides which version a guest sees. Machine translation on a door code or a check-in time is the kind of help that creates a phone call.

Can I answer every channel from one inbox?

Not from ours. The inbox connects Airbnb, so bookings that come from other channels get answered in those channels. Plan the templates around that rather than around a single window, and keep copies where each conversation actually happens.

Six languages, three messages each, one property setting underneath them all. localsbnb.com holds the unit's language, time zone and currency so the translation has a home, and the Airbnb inbox is where the conversation lands when the guest replies.

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This article is general guidance for hosts and isn't legal, tax or insurance advice. Platform messaging rules, translation quality and language support change, so confirm what your software currently supports and what each channel expects before you rely on a template for a guest's arrival.