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Before BenStay was a software company, it was one guesthouse in Kyoto that I was running myself — answering the same questions at midnight, adjusting prices by hand, and copy-pasting the same listing update across multiple OTAs. The automation we now offer other operators started as tools we built to keep our own operation from burning us out.
A few years into running guesthouses in Tokyo, I noticed something that should have been obvious sooner: I was answering the same questions over and over, just from different people. “How do I get in?” “Where’s the nearest station exit?” “Can I leave my bag before check-in?” Different guests, same script, every single day.
A few years into running guesthouses in Tokyo, I noticed something: the properties with the fastest message replies weren’t just getting better reviews — they were getting more bookings, even at the same price as similar listings nearby. That wasn’t a coincidence.
It’s 11pm. You’re about to sleep. Your phone lights up: “Hi, where is the entrance? I’m outside but I can’t find the door.” You’ve answered this exact question forty times this year.
The pre-arrival message is one high-impact operational habit a short-term rental operator can develop to reclaim their evenings. Spend an hour building a good one, set it to send automatically, and you can reduce a significant share of inbound guest messages before they arrive.
When you have one property, manually updating your nightly rate on Airbnb takes ten minutes. When you have three properties across two platforms, it takes an hour. When you have five properties across four OTAs, you either automate or you burn out.
Japan makes this harder than most markets. You’re not just managing Airbnb and Booking.com — you’re probably also on Jalan (じゃらん) and Rakuten Travel if you want domestic Japanese guests, which means four pricing dashboards that don’t talk to each other.