The conversation screen is where your team manages all guest communication. Every call, text, and voicemail for your Hello Hotel number lands here — visible to everyone on the team with access to that number. Nothing lives on individual phones or in personal inboxes.
The conversation screen has three panels that work together:
A scrollable list of all conversations, sorted by most recent activity. Each row shows the guest's name (or phone number), their reservation status badge, and a preview of the last message or call.
Use the filters at the top to narrow the list:
Open / All — toggle between conversations that are still active and all conversations including closed ones
Guest status filters — filter by Arriving, In-House, Departing, Future, or Past to focus on the guests that matter right now. These statuses come from your PMS data and update automatically.
Conversation status — filter by Unread, Follow Up, or all open conversations
Click a conversation to see the full timeline — texts (inbound and outbound), call logs (missed, answered, duration), voicemails (with transcription), automated messages, and internal notes. Everything appears in chronological order so your team sees exactly what happened and when.
New messages and calls appear live, without a refresh. On web, you can see which teammate is viewing the conversation, and a teammate typing a reply to the guest shows as "Jane is typing…" — so two people don't reply at once. Typing an internal note doesn't count.
The compose area at the bottom is where you type and send text messages to the guest. If a guest can't be messaged, the composer says why — no phone number on file, no email address, an address that bounced or unsubscribed, or no default email sender set up — so you know what to fix. See Internal Notes on Conversations for staff-only notes you can drop into the same timeline without sending anything to the guest.
The right panel shows everything you know about this guest, pulled from your PMS:
Guest status badge — Future, Checking In, Checked In, In House, Checking Out, Checked Out, Past, or No Reservation
Contact info — phone, email
Reservation details — stay dates, room number, reservation status
Guest tags — VIP, loyalty tier, or custom tags you've added. Edit tags inline from the sidebar, or open the Manage Tags dialog to rename, recolor, or delete tags across all contacts. See Managing Contact Tags.
Guest notes — internal notes your team has added
View in PMS — one-click link to the guest's profile in your property management system
If the caller isn't a known contact, the panel shows a minimal view with just their phone number and an option to create a new contact.
Every conversation has a status that helps your team prioritize:
Unread — new activity your team hasn't seen yet
Read — someone on the team has viewed it
Follow Up — flagged for follow-up. Use this for anything that needs a response or action but isn't urgent right now.
Closed — resolved and done. Closed conversations disappear from the default Open view but are always accessible under All.
Change a conversation's status from the conversation thread using the status controls. A closed conversation you open from a link — a dashboard row or a tag notification — shows its status controls too, so you can reopen it right there.
Need to close out a batch of resolved conversations or send a message to multiple guests? Use bulk select:
Click the checkbox icon at the top of the conversation list to enter selection mode
Check the conversations you want to act on
Choose an action: change status (close, mark as follow-up) or send a bulk message
Bulk messaging supports variables for personalization, so each guest receives a message addressed to them.
Click the search icon (magnifying glass) at the top of the conversation list to search by guest name or phone number.
Good to know: Search currently matches guest name and phone number. It doesn't search within message content — so you'd search for "Sarah" or "555-1234", not "pool hours."
Click the + button at the top of the conversation list to start a new text conversation. Enter a phone number or select an existing contact, then compose your message. If the number matches a known contact, their guest details appear in the right panel automatically.
Use guest status filters to focus your morning. Filter by "Arriving" to see who's checking in today and proactively text check-in instructions. Filter by "Departing" to follow up on checkout.
Follow Up is your team's shared to-do list. Anything that needs a response gets flagged. Check the Follow Up filter at the start of each shift.
Close conversations when they're done. This keeps the Open view clean and focused on active threads. Closed conversations aren't deleted — they're just moved out of the default view.
Everyone sees the same conversations. There's no "assign to me" concept. Your team works the conversation screen together, and the thread shows who sent what, so there's natural accountability.
