These 6 EMAILS will make you thousands on Airbnb

Smart Airbnb hosts know that emails make thousands on Airbnb every year — but most never tap into this income stream because they assume they can't access guest contact information. Airbnb intentionally withholds guest email addresses to keep transactions on its platform.

The good news: there's a workaround, and once you have a list, six specific email types can generate a consistent stream of repeat bookings.

Watch the full video above or keep reading for the complete breakdown.

How to Collect Guest Email Addresses

Before any email can make you money, you need addresses to send to. Airbnb won't hand them over, so hosts need a different approach entirely.

One of the most effective tools available in 2026 is Stafi — a device that connects to your existing Wi-Fi router. Instead of giving guests a password, it prompts them to enter their name and email address to connect. The setup is straightforward, and the payoff compounds over time.

Here's what makes Stafi particularly valuable: it captures the email of every guest who stays, not just the person who booked. A family of four traveling together? You potentially collect four addresses. A group of friends on a weekend trip? Same story. That's significantly more list-building power than any workaround involving Airbnb's messaging system.

For more detail on building a guest email list from scratch, this guide on collecting emails from Airbnb guests covers the full strategy step by step.

Once the list is growing, the next question is what to actually send. That's where the six-email framework comes in.

Email 1: The Welcome Email

The welcome email is the most overlooked piece of the entire sequence — and skipping it or sending a weak one can quietly sabotage every email that follows.

Here's why it matters beyond the obvious: every time you send emails to a list, those sends affect your sender reputation. Email providers like Gmail and Outlook score senders based on open rates, click rates, and spam complaints. A poor reputation means your future emails — including your revenue-generating discount campaigns — land in spam folders instead of inboxes.

The welcome email builds that reputation from day one. To make it work, choose one of these three approaches:

• Opt-in confirmation: Send an email that requires guests to click a button to confirm they want to hear from you. This immediately signals to email providers that the recipient engaged.
• Discount offer: Include a small discount guests can claim for their next stay. This drives clicks and builds goodwill simultaneously.
• Reply prompt: Ask guests to hit reply and share what they thought of their stay. A direct reply is one of the strongest engagement signals an email can generate.

Timing matters. Send this email either immediately after a guest opts into your list or right after checkout — while your property is still fresh in their memory. Waiting a week or two is too long.

Email 2: The Post-Checkout Email

The post-checkout email has two jobs: confirm the guest had a great experience, and turn that experience into a public five-star review.

Reviews are the lifeblood of any Airbnb listing. If your average rating drops below 4.3 stars, you risk Airbnb deactivating your listing entirely. Many guests don't know this — they approach Airbnb ratings the way they'd rate a hotel, where four stars feels generous.

A guest who had a genuinely great stay might leave you a four-star review without realizing the impact.

The fix? Include a rating scale in the email. Spell out exactly what each star level means on Airbnb. Make it clear, politely but directly, that a four-star review is actually harmful — not neutral — for independent hosts. Once guests understand the context, many who would have left four stars will reconsider and leave five.

Pro tip: Keep the tone warm and genuine. This isn't about manipulating guests — it's about educating them on a platform quirk they genuinely didn't know existed. Most guests want to support a host they liked. Give them the information to do it effectively.

Getting this email right also connects directly to your listing's long-term performance. For a broader look at mistakes that tank ratings, these 21 hidden mistakes that destroy Airbnb ratings are worth reviewing alongside this email strategy.

Email 3: The Things to Do Email

After the welcome and post-checkout emails, the goal shifts to staying relevant in guests' inboxes without being intrusive. At minimum, one email per month keeps your list warm and your bookings flowing.

The Things to Do email is one of the easiest monthly sends to create — because the location does the selling for you. This email highlights upcoming local events, activities, and attractions near your property. The implicit message: there's something exciting happening nearby, and guests need a place to stay.

A well-crafted Things to Do email might include:

• Three to five local events or seasonal activities
• Brief descriptions that create genuine excitement
• A direct link back to your booking page — ideally a direct booking website rather than your Airbnb listing

That last point is significant. Sending repeat guests to a direct booking site instead of Airbnb eliminates the platform's roughly 15% service fee. Hosts can pass some of that savings to guests as a loyalty discount, which makes the repeat booking even more attractive for both sides.

For a full walkthrough on setting this up, this guide to getting direct bookings covers the mechanics in detail.

Timing tip: Send this email when your target guests are most likely to be bored and looking for a reason to travel. For beach markets, that's typically winter. For sports-destination markets, it might be the off-season between major events. Think about when your past guests were most likely sitting at home wishing they were back.

Email 4: The Seasonal Email

The seasonal email is similar in spirit to the Things to Do email, but the focus shifts from the destination to the listing itself. This email is especially valuable for properties with a defined high and low season — think ski cabins, beach houses, or any listing where demand swings dramatically throughout the year.

A strong seasonal email has three components:

1. Photos of the property during the target season. A snowy mountain cabin photo in January. A sun-drenched porch photo in May. Visuals trigger emotion and make the booking feel tangible.
2. Specific reasons why the listing shines during that time of year. Don't be generic — highlight the fireplace, the proximity to the ski lifts, the summer farmer's market two blocks away.
3. Either scarcity or an incentive. If peak season is approaching, tell guests you're booking up fast and they should lock in dates. If low season is coming, offer a deal or upgrade as an extra nudge.

This email is one of the best tools for solving the two biggest seasonal challenges: filling vacancies during slow periods and maximizing nightly rates when demand is high. Used consistently, it functions like a built-in revenue lever that most hosts never activate.

Email 5: The Reviews Email

The reviews email does something the others don't: it reminds guests how they felt during their stay. That's more powerful than any feature list or discount.

The strategy here is to pull your most emotionally resonant recent reviews and feature them prominently in the email.

The goal isn't to showcase the best amenities — it's to surface reviews that paint a picture of a real experience: the laughter around the fire pit, the morning coffee with a mountain view, the weekend getaway that became a family memory.

Timing is critical with this one. Send the reviews email at least six months after a guest's stay. By then, the day-to-day memory has faded, but the emotional imprint remains. A well-chosen review can bring that feeling rushing back — and a guest who's suddenly nostalgic for that experience is far more likely to book again.

When selecting reviews to feature, skip the ones that list amenities like a spec sheet. Find the ones with a story. Those convert.

Email 6: The Discount Email (Most Powerful)

Understanding how emails make thousands on Airbnb in 2026 comes down to this one: the discount email. Done correctly, it's the single highest-converting email in the sequence. Done wrong — which is common — it wastes the most valuable asset in any host's marketing toolkit.

Four specific elements separate a high-performing discount email from one that falls flat:

1. Trackable Discount Codes

Use a unique promo code guests can enter on your direct booking website. This isn't just convenient for guests — it gives you precise data on how many bookings each email campaign generated. Without tracking, you're flying blind on what's actually working.

2. Real Urgency

The discount must expire. Give guests a specific date by which they need to book (not just stay) to access the deal. Open-ended discounts get saved and forgotten. A deadline forces a decision.

3. Scarcity Layering

Pair the deadline with a scarcity message: your calendar is filling up, and availability isn't guaranteed. This is especially effective for high-demand periods. Both urgency and scarcity trigger action independently — together, they're significantly more effective.

4. Flexible Date Options

This is where most hosts make a costly mistake. They send a discount tied to specific dates — usually the low-traffic dates they're desperate to fill — and wonder why conversion rates are low. Guests who wanted to visit in March don't care about a deal for February.

Instead, offer a discount that applies to any available dates in the calendar. Give guests the freedom to choose when they come. The conversion rate on flexible discount codes consistently outperforms date-restricted offers, because the offer meets guests where their own travel plans are, rather than asking them to rearrange their lives around your vacancy problem.

For more strategies on filling your calendar and boosting revenue, this breakdown of how to get repeat Airbnb bookings pairs well with the email approach covered here.

Putting It All Together

The six-email framework works as a system, not a collection of one-off sends. The welcome email protects deliverability. The post-checkout email builds your review profile. The monthly emails — Things to Do, Seasonal, Reviews, and Discount — keep past guests engaged and convert them back into paying customers.

In terms of priority, the discount email generates the most direct revenue. The reviews email creates the strongest emotional pull. The Things to Do and Seasonal emails are the easiest to write consistently. Run all six in rotation and the cumulative effect compounds over time as your list grows.

One operational reality worth acknowledging: knowing what to send is only half the battle. Building templates, setting up an email tool, writing compelling copy, and managing the sending schedule takes real time. Hosts who join the BNB Tribe community get drag-and-drop templates for all six emails, step-by-step setup guidance, and a discount on Stafi to accelerate list-building from the start.

For hosts who are newer to Airbnb and want to build a strong operational foundation before layering in email marketing, these 12 tips for new Airbnb hosts cover the fundamentals worth getting right first.

And if bookings have slowed down recently and you're wondering whether email is the right lever to pull, this guide on what to do when Airbnb bookings slow down offers a broader diagnostic framework.

Email marketing isn't glamorous. But for Airbnb hosts willing to build the system, it's one of the few revenue channels that gets more valuable over time — because every guest who stays becomes a potential repeat booking, and repeat bookings don't cost you a 15% platform fee.