Third-party booking inbox

Overview

Not every guest booking comes through Planniac.

Guests often book tours, transportation, spa treatments, diving, excursions, and other services through external websites, operators, concierge teams, WhatsApp conversations, or reservation systems. Keeping track of these bookings alongside your guest’s stay can be challenging.

The Third-Party Booking Inbox solves this by allowing external booking confirmations and requests to be forwarded directly to Planniac. Planniac reads the email, extracts the important details, and presents the booking for review and matching before creating a Plann.

This helps your team manage guest services from one central place instead of juggling multiple inboxes and systems.

How it works

Each property receives a unique Planniac email address. You must request access to this from Planniac Support. We need to activate the feature for you.

When a booking confirmation, request, voucher, or service order is received from a third-party provider, simply forward the email to your property’s Planniac email address.

Example:

booking+yourhotel@planniac.com

Substitute yourhotel with your Cloudbeds/Planniac PMS ID.

Planniac will:

• Read the email
• Extract guest information
• Extract activity or service details
• Identify dates, times, pricing and payment status
• Suggest matching guests and activities
• Place the booking into the Needs Review queue on the dashboard

Nothing is created automatically until a user reviews and confirms the match.

Reviewing bookings

Navigate to:

Dashboard → Needs review

The Needs Review list displays all third-party bookings that require attention.

For each item, Planniac attempts to:

• Match the guest
• Match the activity or service
• Determine payment status
• Identify pricing and deposits
• Calculate confidence scores

Bookings with stronger matches require less manual work, while lower-confidence matches can be reviewed and corrected before creating a Plann.

Matching guests

Planniac uses multiple data points to identify the correct guest, including:

• Guest name
• Email address
• Phone number
• Reservation information
• Activity date
• Stay dates
• Information found in the email subject and body

Suggested matches are displayed for review. If no match is found, you can manually search for a guest or create a new outside guest.

Matching activities

Planniac also attempts to identify the correct activity or service.

The matching process considers:

• Activity names
• Similar wording and synonyms
• Provider information
• Email subject lines
• Email body content

You may accept a suggested match or select a different activity.

Payment and pricing

Planniac attempts to determine whether the booking has already been paid or if a balance remains due.

Examples of prepaid bookings include:

• Fully paid
• Prepaid
• Paid online
• Paid to operator
• Voucher basis
• Do not charge client

Examples where payment may still be due include:

• Hotel collect
• Balance due
• Pay provider directly
• Pay on arrival

The extracted payment information is displayed during review and can be adjusted before creating the Plann.

Viewing the original email

At any time, users can view the complete source email, including:

• To
• From
• CC
• Subject
• Full email content

This allows staff to verify details and refer back to the original booking confirmation whenever needed.

Creating the Plann

Once the information has been reviewed:

1. Confirm the guest match
2. Confirm the activity match
3. Review pricing and payment status
4. Create the Plann

The booking is then managed like any other Planniac activity.

Benefits

Using the Third-Party Booking Inbox helps your team:

• Capture activity bookings from sources like FareHarbor, Flybook, Whistle, or other upsell sites
• Keep all guest services logged in one system
• Reduce manual data entry
• Avoid missed guest requests
• Improve visibility across departments
• Track payment status accurately
• Create a unified guest itinerary regardless of booking source

Best practices

For best results:

• Add your Planniac inbox to the cc: line of upsell emails wherever possible
• Forward booking confirmations as soon as they are received
• Include the original email content when forwarding
• Review items in the Needs Review queue regularly
• Verify guest and activity matches before creating Planns
• Refer to the original email view whenever additional details are needed

By centralizing third-party bookings in Planniac, your team can spend less time searching inboxes and more time delivering great guest experiences.

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Review the steps

1. Send or forward the booking email to your property’s provided Planniac booking mailbox.
2. Open Dashboard → Needs Review. Parsed emails appear there after Planniac processes them.
3. Open the email using the email content viewer and review the guest request.
4. Check the extracted details, including the guest, reservation, requested activity, dates, and other booking information.
5. Use Sync if you believe a recent email is missing.
6. Select the requested service in Match activity.
7. Review pricing and add notes if the email price differs from your standard activity price.
8. Confirm the match using Match and Create Plann or Confirm & Match.

After confirmation, the request becomes a regular Plann and appears on the Planns page.