How to Get Real Guest Names for Airbnb Bookings

Airbnb's calendar feed only gives you a generic placeholder for the guest's name. Once you set up email forwarding, Sane Host pulls the real first name from Airbnb's reservation-confirmed email and attaches it to the right booking — so your message templates stop greeting people as “Guest.”

1Enable email forwarding for the property

Open the property in Sane Host. Under the calendar source link, you’ll see a section for email forwarding. Turn it on. Sane Host will generate a unique forwarding address for this property — copy it; you’ll need it in step 2.

The address is property-specific on purpose: it’s how Sane Host knows which property a forwarded email belongs to.

2Forward Airbnb's reservation-confirmed emails to that address

In your email client (Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail — whichever you use for Airbnb notifications), set up a filter or rule that forwards Airbnb’s “Reservation confirmed” emails for this property to the address from step 1.

A typical Gmail rule looks like:

From: automated@airbnb.com (or similar — check the From: header on a recent confirmation email)
Subject contains: Reservation confirmed and the property nickname or address (so this rule only matches bookings for this property, not your other listings)
Action: Forward to the address Sane Host gave you in step 1

If you have multiple properties, you’ll set up one filter per property — each pointed at its own forwarding address.

🎉 You’re all set

From now on, when Airbnb sends you a reservation-confirmed email, your rule forwards it to Sane Host, Sane Host extracts the guest’s first name, and attaches it to the matching booking automatically. Your message templates can use {{guest_first_name}} and you’ll get “Hi Kimberly,” instead of “Hi Guest!” — without copying anything by hand.