Host Confidently with Ad-Hoc Guest Verification

ad-hoc guest verification
By The Hospitable Team

Imagine your sunny beachfront property was just booked for a month through Airbnb. Great news! Now, normally your guests stay for a few days to a week, but you’re excited to accommodate any longer reservations as well! 

This is a great example of a scenario when you may want to have extra confidence and security when vetting your guests, but there are plenty of other instances that could arise. You may live in an area where you legally need to provide extra verification, like running guests through a sex offender registry, or you may want to add extra security to all bookings that come from a specific online travel agency (OTA) channel. 

The bottom line is that you want to control your sense of confidence and security when hosting guests, and you’d like to have it without breaking the bank.

That’s why we’re excited to introduce Ad-Hoc Guest Verification! Now, you can affordably control your guest verification process regardless of the channel through which the reservations were booked.






How’s It Work?

Simply navigate to an upcoming booking conversation within Hospitable and click the Request Verification button on the left panel. After a few clicks and accepting the small processing fee (the first one’s on us 😉), we’ll ask your guest to complete a quick verification, powered by Autohost.

We request guests to confirm their basic personal information, upload an identification card, take a quick selfie, and share the reason for their stay. You can also run their name through a sex offender registry for added security. 

As they complete this process, Hospitable will pause all scheduled messages and not share smart lock codes with the guests. This effectively creates an online check-in process, similar to when a guest first arrives at a hotel. Guests provide their identification and, in return, are able to access their room and begin their stay.

Hospitable will notify you when the guest has completed their verification and if it needs further review. If that is the case, you will be able to troubleshoot the provided risks with the guest and approve their stay or decide not to let them check in. Once the verification is approved, the scheduled messages and smart lock codes will continue being sent as normal. If in the end, you decide not to allow check-in, then you can reject it and go through your OTA to cancel the reservation. 

You can visit our help center article for a full overview of ad-hoc guest verification or ask any questions to our support team through the chat located at the bottom right of the screen once you’re logged into your Hospitable account!

ad-hoc verification

Why Use It?

There are three main reasons why Ad-Hoc Verification could be a great solution for you!

  1. Add consistency and transparency to your guest verification process. Did you know that every OTA has different guest vetting methods? For example, Airbnb only verifies guests when they create an account, and Booking.com and Vrbo allow certain steps to be optional. 
  2. Increase your confidence with hosting at an affordable rate. You don’t need to have a third-party guest verification subscription to use Ad-Hoc Verification. Through our partnership with Autohost, you’ll have a pay-per-use fee structure, allowing you the flexibility of adding extra protection when you want it most. 
  3. Better return on investment and peace of mind. There are few better feelings than knowing you’ve made a good investment, especially when you know your investment is well protected. By verifying your guests, you’ll sleep easier knowing who you’re hosting, all while saving time on customer service interventions and mitigating property damages.

What Do You Think?

We would love to hear your thoughts on Ad-Hoc Verification. Is there something you’d like to see in the coming iterations of the feature? Fill out the form below!

Stay tuned for more product updates!