When you are promoting something tied to a specific date — a live music night, a wine tasting, a spa takeover, a seasonal dinner — you usually want two groups of guests to hear about it: the guests who have already booked, and the guests who book between today and the event. A single Broadcast only covers the first group. This article shows you how to cover both with a Broadcast and a Journey Campaign working side by side.
How it works
A Broadcast is a snapshot. When you publish a Broadcast, Bookboost works out who matches your audience at that exact moment and sends to that list. Reservations created after the send are not part of it, because the list was already fixed.
A Journey is continuous. A Journey Campaign listens for an event — for example, a reservation being made — and sends automatically to every reservation that matches the trigger and your audience, going forward.
Together they cover the full window. The Broadcast handles everyone who has already booked. The Journey handles everyone who books from that point until the event.
Guests do not get the message twice. The Journey only fires for reservations made after you activate it, so the bookings the Broadcast already reached will not trigger it again.
Before you start
Your event has a fixed date, and you know which room types or rate plans (if any) the message should be limited to.
You have permission to create Audiences and Campaigns in Bookboost.
Check your Broadcast sending limit if the audience is large. Contact support at least 24 hours ahead if you need it raised.
Step 1: Build the audience
Go to Profiles > Audiences and create a new audience, or open the one you have already built.
Add a Guest Checks In reservation filter. Choose Exact and pick your event date, or Between if the event spans more than one night.
Add a room type filter if the message is only relevant to certain rooms, and select the room types you want. Repeat for any other criteria, such as Rate Plan or Properties.
Click Load preview. The guest count and the guest list only appear once you do this — before that the panel looks empty even when reservations do match.
Save the audience.
Note: Step 2 and 3 are an example. It depends totally on your needs.
Filters use AND logic, so a guest has to match every filter you add. If your preview comes back smaller than expected, remove one filter at a time and reload the preview to see which one is narrowing it.
Step 2: Send the Broadcast to current bookings
Go to Campaigns > Broadcasts and create your Broadcast, or open the draft you already have.
On the Time step, choose to send now or schedule a date and time.
On the Audience step, select the audience you saved in step 1. An audience is mandatory on a Broadcast.
Write your message content and publish.
This reaches every guest who matches right now. Their booking already exists, so they are in the snapshot.
Step 3: Set the Journey trigger and audience
In the new Journey, set the Trigger to After reservation was made.
Leave the timing at 0 so the message goes out as soon as the booking comes in, or add a delay if you would rather wait.
Select the same audience you used on the Broadcast, so the room type and check-in date conditions still apply.
Review the content, then activate the Journey.
From here, every new reservation that matches your criteria receives the message automatically, without you touching it again.
Step 4: Switch the Journey off after the event
The Journey keeps running until you stop it. Because the audience is pinned to a single check-in date, it will naturally stop matching anyone once the event has passed, but it is good practice to deactivate or delete the Journey afterwards so your campaign list stays clean.
If your audience looks empty
The most common reason a matching audience appears to have no guests is that Load preview has not been clicked yet. The count and the guest list are not calculated until you ask for them.
If you have clicked Load preview and the audience is still empty:
Check that the check-in date is the date you meant, and that the dropdown is set to the option you intended (Exact, Between, After, or Before).
Remove filters one at a time and reload the preview to find the one that is excluding everyone.
Confirm the data you are filtering on actually syncs from your PMS. Filters can only work with the fields your PMS sends to Bookboost.
Common questions
What if I want to use a different trigger?
"After reservation was made" fires once, at the moment of booking, so it never touches reservations that already exist in Bookboost. If you swap in a different trigger, check whether it can fire for bookings that are already in the system, if it can, guests the Broadcast already reached could receive the message a second time.
You can guard against that whatever the trigger. In your audience, add the Received Previous Campaigns filter, select the campaign you sent as the Broadcast, optionally set Within X Days, and tick Exclude selected. Anyone who has already received that campaign drops out of the audience, so the trigger no longer matters — they will not be messaged again.
Can I just schedule the Broadcast closer to the event instead?
You can, and that captures more bookings in one go — but it is still a snapshot. Anyone who books after that send still misses the message. If you want continuous coverage right up to the event, use the Journey alongside it.
Will guests who already received the Broadcast get the Journey message too?
No. "After reservation was made" fires on bookings created after you activate the Journey, so reservations that already existed will not trigger it.
Do I need a separate audience for the Journey?
No. Use the same audience on both. That keeps the criteria identical and means you only maintain one set of filters.
What if a guest changes their room type after booking?
"After reservation was made" fires once, at the moment of booking. So you need to know that the trigger you use won't affect reservations already in the system. Or ig you use You can choose in the audience the filter "Received Previous Campaigns" - filter on people who have received certain campaign(s) within a certain amount of days - and select the campaign you sent in the broadcast and exclude it. In that case, you'll stop messages if the guest has already received a campaign. No matter if the trigger affects the reservation, the guest won't be in the audience.
Can I do this without a Broadcast at all?
Yes, if the event is far enough out that most bookings have not been made yet — a Journey on its own will pick them all up. The Broadcast exists to cover the guests who booked before you set the Journey up.
Getting help
Please contact us through the 'Talk to Us' option on the left menu in the platform, or through the Bookboost Support email at support@bookboost.io if you have questions or need additional support.