Open an Airflow Account Without Leaving WhatsApp

Most people who run a holiday home do not sit at a desk. They are at the property, on the road, or at their other job. The phone is where the business happens, and for a great many hosts the app that is always open is WhatsApp.

Until now you could run an Airflow account from WhatsApp, but you could not start one there. You had to go to a website, fill in a form, and come back. That step is gone. You can now open an account, set up your listing and put your booking page live without leaving the chat.

Start on WhatsApp →

What happens when you message us

Send a message to Airflow on WhatsApp (+44 7450 300554) and say you would like an account. The assistant asks for five things, a couple at a time:

your name
the name of your business
what kind of business it is
your email address, which it reads back so you can check it
which plan you want

That is the whole form. The Free plan has no monthly fee, and it is the one most people start on. The paid plans and what they include are on the pricing page.

The card step

Every Airflow account has a card on file, including a free one. On the Free plan nothing is charged for the plan itself. The card is there for the things that are pay as you go: automated tasks, commission on bookings you take through Airflow, and any add-ons you choose later.

You never type card details into the chat. The assistant sends you a link to Stripe’s secure page, you add the card there, and Stripe brings you back to WhatsApp. If you send card details in a message by mistake, the assistant will tell you not to.

A minute or two later you get a message saying your account is ready. Your WhatsApp number is now linked to it, and a welcome email with your sign-in link is in your inbox.

Set up your listing from a link

This is the part that saves the most time. The first thing the assistant asks is whether your place is already listed anywhere online.

If it is on Airbnb, or you have your own website, paste the link. The assistant reads the page and tells you what it found:

the name of the place and where it is
bedrooms, bathrooms and how many guests it sleeps
how many photos it can bring across
whether there is a description, and whether a nightly price is shown

Nothing is saved yet. You reply YES, which also confirms the listing is yours to copy, and Airflow creates your listing with the description, the room details and up to twelve photos.

Two honest limits. The assistant only records what the page actually says, so if your price depends on the dates it will not guess one. And some sites block automated reading. Booking.com is one of them, so for a Booking.com listing you will be asked for another link or for the details by hand.

If your place is not listed anywhere yet, just say what it is called and which town and country it is in. That is enough to create it.

From draft to a live booking page

A new listing starts as a draft. Before it can take bookings it needs a photo, a price, a location, and the basics of the property. You can finish all of that in the chat:

tell the assistant your price per night
tell it how many bedrooms, bathrooms and guests
send a photo, and it goes into the listing’s gallery

Ask “what’s next?” at any point and the assistant looks at your account and tells you the one thing still to do. It is reading your real setup, not a script.

When nothing is missing, say publish. The same checks run as in the portal, and the reply is the link to your own Airflow booking page, ready to share with guests.

One warning the assistant will give you, and you should take seriously: if you already take bookings somewhere else, bring that calendar into Airflow before you go live. Otherwise your new page could sell a night you have already sold.

Every change asks first

Nothing in your account changes because of a misread message. Each change, whether it is creating the listing, setting a price or going live, comes back to you as a plain question, and it only happens when you reply YES. Reply NO and nothing changes.

What it costs

Setting up is free on every plan, including Free. That covers the sign-up conversation, creating your listing from a link, and getting it ready to publish.

After setup, on the Free plan the WhatsApp assistant is pay as you go, like the other automated tasks on that plan, and it needs Overages switched on in your billing settings. On the paid plans it uses the tasks your plan includes. The details are on the pricing page.

What you can do once you are set up

The same chat is where you run things afterwards:

forward a booking confirmation and it is added to your calendar
ask who is arriving next, or what you have earned this year
change your nightly price, block dates, or pause your listing
add more photos

There is more on that in Run Your Bookings From WhatsApp.

What it does not do yet

Booking.com links. The page cannot be read automatically. Airbnb and your own website work.
Other kinds of business. The chat sets up places to stay. Tours, experiences and other listing types are still set up in the portal.
More than one listing. The chat sets up your first. Add the rest in the portal.
The finer details. Editing your description, placing the map pin and connecting your inbox, payments or accounting are done in the portal.

Try it

It takes about ten messages to go from “hello” to an account, and one link to go from an account to a listing with your photos in it.

Start on WhatsApp →

Prefer a form? Sign up on the website →