Our AI replies to most guest messages automatically. But about 20% of the time it hands a thread back to you — because a guest is frustrated, because the question is outside the apartment guide, because something ambiguous came up. When that happens, where should the notification go?
We tried four options before settling on one. Here's the tour.
Email doesn't cut it
Email was our first instinct because it's the default assumption for SaaS notifications. But email has fundamental problems for this kind of real-time escalation.
The biggest is latency of attention. You might have email notifications on, but you probably don't treat every email as urgent. They pile up in a list. You triage on your own schedule. An urgent "guest is stranded at the door" email might wait 45 minutes before you see it — by which point the guest has left a 2-star review.
Email also has terrible action affordances on mobile. There's no "one-tap approve" — you have to open the email, click a link, wait for the web app to load, log in if needed, then take action. That's 30-45 seconds of friction for a 5-second decision.
And finally, email filters. Your escalation about a guest complaint might end up in promotions, because your Gmail rules think "sunset studio" is a newsletter. You'd never know.
SMS is too limited
SMS bypasses the email problems — every SMS reaches you instantly, most people treat SMS as important — but SMS has its own constraints. No rich formatting, so an escalation message is just a wall of plain text. No inline buttons — you can only send links, and clicking a link takes you back to the "open the web app" friction. And SMS is expensive per message, which means we'd have to be stingy with notifications — which defeats the whole point.
Push notifications are out of band
Push notifications work when you're in the app. Short-term rental hosts aren't in the app most of the time. They're in Smoobu, in their calendar, at a dinner, in the supermarket. A push notification arrives, disappears in 3 seconds, and you've missed it unless you happened to be looking at your phone at that exact moment.
They're also single-purpose: a push notification is fundamentally "look at the app for more." It doesn't let you act in place. You open the app, navigate to the relevant thread, and take action — same friction as email.
Why Telegram wins
Telegram combines the good parts of all three channels and adds a few unique properties.
Instant delivery. Telegram is effectively real-time — messages arrive in under 2 seconds. You see them the moment they're sent, even if your phone is locked.
Rich cards. Telegram supports Markdown formatting, inline buttons, images, structured messages. An escalation card can pack a lot of context into a scannable layout.
Inline buttons that act in-chat. This is the killer feature. A Telegram button can trigger a backend action without opening anything — the user taps "Pause 1h" in the chat, the AI pauses for an hour, and a confirmation appears inline. No app switch. No loading screen.
Swipe-reply is a real feature. If the user swipe-replies to a bot message with text, we can route that text as a reply to the original guest via Smoobu. The host types "Hey Sarah, the code is actually 4827 — try holding the handle down" in Telegram, and that message appears in Smoobu as if the host had typed it there. Seamless.
Persistent conversation. Every escalation stays in the Telegram thread as a history. You can scroll back through every decision you've made, every guest interaction you've handled. It's a natural audit log without any work.
Your short-term rental command center, already on your phone.
Escalations land in Telegram with approve / edit / take-over buttons. No new app to install.
What an escalation card actually looks like
Here's a real card we send (guest name changed):
🚨 Escalation — Sunset Studio
Guest: Sarah M. (arriving tomorrow, Thu 24 Apr)
Language: English
"The door code you sent doesn't work. I'm outside in the rain. The numbers just beep red. What do I do?"
Suggested reply: (AI's best guess, for reference)
"The door unlocks with code 4827 — please try again, holding the handle down for 3 seconds after entering the code."
[ 🔕 Pause 1h ] [ ✅ Solve ] [ 💬 Reply ]
You see this card on your phone, in your pocket, while you're at dinner. Three paths: silence the AI for an hour so it doesn't send the suggested reply while you're calling the locksmith. Mark it solved (e.g., because you just called the guest and talked them through it). Or tap Reply and swipe-type a response that gets sent to the guest immediately.
The command-based flow
Beyond escalations, Telegram is the place where hosts issue commands. We support:
/status— snapshot of all apartments, current guests, any escalations pending/pause— pause AI on a specific thread for 1 hour (useful if you're handling something)/stop— pause AI per-apartment for a longer window (e.g., going off for a weekend)/start— resume everything paused by/stop/guide— append a note to a specific apartment's guest guide, on the fly
The /guide command is our favorite. You notice something about an apartment — the kitchen faucet needs to be turned clockwise to get hot water, say. You tap /guide, pick the apartment from an inline menu, and swipe-reply with the note. It appends to the apartment's guide, and the AI has that context for every future guest who asks about hot water.
Months of guide refinement happen through these micro-corrections. You never open a laptop. The guide gets smarter because you're actually there, noticing things, and the friction to add them is three taps.
The trade-off: Telegram adoption
The honest downside is that Telegram isn't universal. Some hosts don't have it installed. Some prefer WhatsApp. We've occasionally heard "I just don't use Telegram, is there another way?"
Our answer: we also send email notifications in parallel for every escalation. If you never open Telegram, you'll still see the escalation via email — with a bit more latency, and without the inline buttons, but functional. Hosts who opt out of Telegram get the best of the email experience. Hosts who set it up once never go back.
For the 90% of hosts who do use Telegram, it's the single best short-term-rental-host tool we've ever deployed. And that's not an exaggeration — it's been by far the most complimented feature in user interviews.
See the Telegram command center in action.
One setup. Every escalation in your pocket. One-tap actions included.