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 whose trigger event happens while the Journey is active and which matches your audience.
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.
With this trigger, guests do not get the message twice. After reservation was made only fires for bookings created after you activate the Journey, so the reservations the Broadcast already reached will not trigger it again.
This is specific to that trigger. Most other triggers, meaning anything tied to check-in, check-out, cancellation, or a reservation update, will fire for bookings that already exist, because those events are still ahead of the guest. If you use a different trigger from the one in this guide, read Does a Journey apply to reservations that already exist? first.
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: the filters in points 2 and 3 above are examples. Which filters you actually need depends entirely on your campaign.
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: Create the Journey for new bookings
Go to Campaigns > Journeys and create a 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.
What this does not do
The Broadcast will not catch later bookings. Scheduling it closer to the event captures more of them, but it is still a snapshot taken at send time. The Journey is what covers the rest.
The Journey does not stop itself. It stays active until you deactivate it, even once the event has passed.
Filters only work on data your PMS sends. If a field does not sync into Bookboost, you cannot build an audience on it.
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. Most other triggers can fire for bookings that are already in the system. If they do, guests the Broadcast already reached could receive the message a second time.
Before switching, check Does a Journey apply to reservations that already exist? to work out whether your trigger will reach existing bookings.
You can guard against duplicates 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, and 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?
Not with the setup in this guide. "After reservation was made" fires on bookings created after you activate the Journey, so reservations that already existed will not trigger it. If you change the trigger, this no longer holds. See the question above.
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?
The Broadcast has already been sent, so a later change does not affect who received it. For the Journey, the audience conditions are applied when the trigger fires, so a change made before that point is taken into account. A guest who moves into a matching room type can still qualify, and one who moves out of it will not.
If you want certainty that no guest is messaged twice across the two campaigns, use the Received Previous Campaigns exclusion described above. It works regardless of what changes on the reservation.
Getting help
Open Talk to Us in the left menu of the platform, or email support@bookboost.io.