Most SaaS onboardings promise "5 minutes" and take an hour. We wanted to actually hit 10 minutes for a 5-apartment portfolio. Here's exactly what happens, step by step, so you know what to expect before you start.
The timing below is from real first-time sessions with hosts who'd never used Virtual Host AI before. Nothing is staged.
Minute 0–1: Account
Visit agent.virtualhost.at/register, enter email, set a password, confirm via the verification link we email you. Done. Our registration page is deliberately short — no company address, no VAT number, no "how did you hear about us" field. Those come later, at checkout.
Minute 1–2: Find your Smoobu API key
If you don't already have your Smoobu API key, this is the only part of onboarding that isn't in our app. Log in to Smoobu, go to Settings → API, and copy the key. It's a long random string. Smoobu offers this to every host on their paid plans — if you see a wall asking you to upgrade, you're on the wrong tier.
Paste the key into Virtual Host AI's Connections page. Hit Connect.
Minute 2–3: Apartment import
The moment the API key is validated, we fetch your apartments from Smoobu. For a 5-apartment portfolio, this takes about 3 seconds. For larger portfolios (20+ apartments), it's up to 15 seconds. Each apartment appears in the Connections page with its Smoobu name, an ID (last 6 digits), and a status badge showing "Discovered."
Apartments at this stage are not yet "active" — they're just discovered. No AI, no automation, no charge.
Minute 3–5: Upload your guide (or skip)
For each apartment you want to enable automation on, you need an apartment guide — the document the AI uses as its source of truth. You have three options:
- Upload a PDF. Drag your existing house manual PDF into the guide editor. Our smart guide import extracts typed fields (check-in time, Wi-Fi, parking, etc.) in under 10 seconds. Review, tweak, save. ~2 minutes per apartment.
- Paste plain text. If you have your guide as a Word doc or email, just paste the text. We'll process it the same way.
- Skip for now. You can enable AI later once the guide is in place. Calendar sync and Smoobu integration work without a guide.
Most hosts who've never documented their apartment guide find this step is the real time investment — maybe 15-30 minutes to write a guide from scratch if none existed. If you already have one, it's two minutes.
Minute 5–6: Subscribe to a plan
Open the subscription page and pick Basic, Pro, or Premium. Our pricing page has the breakdown; most hosts start on Pro (€26.90 per apartment per month) for Telegram escalations and calendar sync.
Quantity defaults to the number of apartments you've already imported. If you have 5 apartments, it preselects 5. Adjust if you only want to activate some. Confirm and you're redirected to Stripe Checkout — card details, VAT if applicable, one click to subscribe.
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From €22.90 per apartment per month. 14-day full refund guarantee.
Minute 6–7: Activate apartments
Back in the Connections page, each apartment now shows an "Activate" button. Click it to activate that apartment in your account. Repeat for each one you want running. Activation itself is free — it just marks the apartment as managed.
With your subscription active, each activated apartment consumes one slot from your quantity. Want to exceed that? The page prompts you to buy another slot.
Minute 7–8: Enable features per apartment
On the Properties page, each apartment has toggles: Autopilot (AI messaging), Calendar sync, Upselling (Premium only), Email notifications, Telegram notifications. Flip the ones you want on.
For Autopilot specifically, we require a guide to be present — otherwise the AI has nothing to answer from. If you skipped the guide step earlier, the Autopilot toggle stays disabled until you come back and upload one.
Minute 8–9: Connect Telegram (Pro and Premium)
Open the Notifications settings. Click "Connect Telegram." A deep link opens Telegram with our bot; you send /start, we recognize you, and the connection is live. Escalations will arrive here from now on.
If you're on Basic, skip this — your escalations arrive via email.
Minute 9–10: First guest message
If you have an active reservation with any open guest conversation, the automation pipeline picks it up within the next 15-second cycle. The AI reads the latest guest message, compares it against the apartment guide, and either replies directly or escalates to you.
You'll see the reply land in Smoobu within seconds. The first one is usually surreal — your Wi-Fi question just got answered by something you set up ten minutes ago.
What's actually happening in the background
Under the hood during those ten minutes, a surprising amount of infrastructure is bootstrapping:
- Your Smoobu API key is encrypted (separate key from JWT secret) and stored per-account
- Apartment rows are created with your Smoobu IDs as the global-unique anchor
- Guest reservations and message history are imported (up to 90 days back)
- Your apartment guides are parsed into typed fields
- Stripe customer and subscription objects are provisioned
- The 14-day FAGG clock starts (see our refund policy breakdown)
- The automation pipeline is now polling your inbox every 15 seconds
None of this needs your attention. The goal is that you never see any of it, only the outcome.
What takes longer than 10 minutes
Honesty: there are two scenarios where onboarding stretches.
You don't have apartment guides yet. Writing a proper guide from scratch — covering Wi-Fi, check-in, parking, house rules, local tips — takes 30-60 minutes per apartment. This is the single biggest time cost of onboarding. We can't shortcut it because the AI literally needs your voice to work. We can make extraction fast once the content exists. Most hosts write the first guide slowly, then use our bulk-apply flow to replicate the structure across remaining apartments.
You have exotic PMS setups. We integrate with Smoobu only today. If you use Hostaway or Guesty or Lodgify, there's no shortcut — we're not integrated with those yet. It's on the roadmap, no ETA.
What happens on day 2
After day-one onboarding, a typical host spends 5-10 minutes per day reviewing escalations on Telegram, approving upsell offers, and occasionally tweaking the apartment guide based on unusual questions. That's steady state. The 10-minute onboarding is real; the 10 minutes a day of light-touch management after that is also real.
If you want more context on what day-to-day feels like, see our case study of a four-apartment Vienna host.
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