When a guest books through an OTA, the OTA keeps their real email address and phone number to itself and gives you a masked one instead. A profiling form asks the guest for those details directly. What they submit lands on their profile in Bookboost, so from that point you can reach them without going through the OTA at all.
There are two parts to it: a form in the Guest App, and a journey that sends the link to guests who booked through an OTA.
Create the form
In the Guest App, go to Forms and create a new form.
Add the fields you want the guest to fill in.
A profiling form needs five things at minimum:
An introduction. A short line telling the guest why you are asking. They booked through an OTA, so a message from the property directly is unexpected.
An email address field.
A phone number field.
A consent checkbox. Without it you have their contact details but no permission to market to them.
A confirmation message. What the guest sees after they submit.
Send it to OTA guests
Go to Journeys and create a new journey. Filter it to the guests who booked through an OTA.
Inside the journey, go to Guest App and then Forms, and copy the token link for the form you created.
Paste the token link into the journey's message.
The token link is what ties a submission to the right guest. A guest who opens a form through their own token link has their answers written onto their existing profile rather than creating a new one.
Asking for more than contact details
Once the form is doing its job, you can add fields that make the stay itself better:
Nationality or preferred language
Estimated time of arrival
Whether they are travelling for leisure or for business
Room type or amenity preferences
Keep the form short. Every extra field is another reason for a guest to close the page before they reach the consent checkbox.
What this does not do
It does not retrieve anything from the OTA. The guest fills the form in themselves. Nothing is pulled from Booking.com, Expedia, or anywhere else.
It does not give you marketing consent on its own. If the form has no consent checkbox, or the guest leaves it unticked, you have their address and no permission to use it for campaigns.
It does not reach guests who have already stayed. The journey sends the form to guests it matches from the point you switch it on.
It does not replace a masked address automatically if the guest ignores it. A profiling form is an invitation, and some guests will not accept it.
What to do next
Once the journey has been running for a week, look at how many of the guests it reached actually submitted. A low rate is usually the introduction rather than the form: guests who do not understand why the property is asking tend not to answer.
Getting help
Open Help at the bottom of the left menu and choose Talk to Us, or email support@bookboost.io.