Families ask the same things before and during a stay: a crib, a high chair, safety equipment, an extra bed, more towels. This guide lists what parents ask for, how to answer before they ask, and how to send the right message only to bookings with children or with more than two adults. It also covers how to handle requests during the stay without being the only dispatcher.
Sign up free. Target guest messages by the number of adults and children, and let the AI co-host log crib and towel requests for you or your cleaner.
Start free trialFamilies with young children ask for four things: a safe place for the baby to sleep (a crib or travel cot), a high chair, reassurance about safety (stairs, sockets, balcony, pool) and enough beds and towels for everyone. The fastest way to answer is to say clearly in your listing and welcome guide what you provide, then send a short family message only to the bookings that include children. Most of the back-and-forth disappears before the stay even starts.
Families are good guests to have: longer stays, bigger groups, and guests who come back when the place worked for them. They also send more questions than a couple on a weekend break, often at the worst moment: the night before arrival, or once the bags are unpacked and the parents realise there is no high chair. This guide covers what parents ask for, how to prepare the property, how to target your messages by the number of adults and children, and how to handle the requests that still come in during the stay.
None of these is hard on its own. The pain comes from repetition and timing: the same crib question from every family, and a promise you cannot keep if nobody checked that the travel cot is really in the storage cupboard.
List every piece of family equipment in your listing’s amenities and in the description, with its condition: “travel cot with fitted sheet”, “high chair”, “stair gate on request”. Say just as clearly what you do not provide and what is not suited to small children (a steep staircase, an unfenced pool, a balcony with a low railing). Parents prefer to know before they book; a surprise on arrival ends up in the review. The equipment families look for also helps your listing stand out: see our list of profitable Airbnb amenities.
Decide once, per property, whether the crib and high chair are always set up, available on request, or rented for a fee. “On request” works when your cleaner sets them up before arrival; “paid” makes sense when the equipment costs you storage, cleaning and replacement. Whatever you choose, write it the same way in the listing, the confirmation message and the welcome guide.
A short “Travelling with children” page answers most mid-stay questions: where the cot and high chair are stored, how to unfold and fold the travel cot, which doors and windows lock, the nearest pharmacy and playground, the local emergency number. Our welcome guide tips show how to structure it.
Airbnb, Booking.com and most booking channels pass the number of adults and children with each booking. That is enough to stop sending the same generic message to everyone: the couple on a city break does not need crib instructions, the family of five does.
A good setup uses three messages:
Keep one line in the confirmation sent to everyone, such as “a travel cot and a high chair are available on request”. Platforms do not always count babies as children (some report infants separately, some not at all), so a family travelling with a baby can show zero children on the booking.
Nowistay’s automated guest messages take conditions on the guest count. In Automations, open the Guest Messages templates, create or edit a message, then under Conditions click Add condition and choose Number of adults or Number of children with one of four operators: Equals, Does not equal, Greater than or Less than. A few examples:
When a template has several conditions, all of them must be met. A booking for which the platform reports no children counts as zero children; a booking with no reported number of adults never meets an adults condition, so the message waits and is skipped when its send window closes. If you only need to know whether any child is coming, the simpler Children in the booking condition (Exists or Does not exist) does it. Automated guest messages run on properties connected through the Nowistay PMS.
The same conditions work for your team. Set Send via to Team member and pick your cleaner: when a family books, they receive an email (and a WhatsApp message if you switch it on) asking them to set up the cot and the high chair before arrival, and the guest receives nothing. Step by step: How to set up automated guest (& team) messages. For the whole sequence of messages around a stay, see automated guest messages at every stage of the booking journey.
Even with a clear listing, requests come in once the family has arrived: a second pillow, more towels, a sheet for the travel cot, a mid-stay clean. The loop is always the same: read the message, decide whether it is a job for the cleaner or a question you can answer, message the right person, wait for their reply, then answer the guest. Three things go wrong at scale:
Whatever tool you use, each request needs one owner, a deadline and a written trace, and the guest needs a quick answer, even if it is only “we’re on it”.
Nowistay’s AI co-host answers questions on its own from your property information and welcome guide. When a guest asks for an item or a service, the AI Guest Inquiries automation turns the message into a Request filed under a category: Comfort items (extra pillow, crib, etc.), climate, food and beverage, or services. For each category, you choose who approves first: Host (the default) or Cleaner first, in which case the cleaner assigned to the booking receives the request by WhatsApp and email with Accept and Refuse buttons, and it comes back to you if they do not answer within 30 minutes.
An accepted request becomes a note on the cleaning mission for that booking, so your team prepares it. Every request is listed in the Guest requests drawer of the Bookings page, where you can Accept, Refuse or Mark as handled. The AI answers the guest’s message as usual but does not confirm the outcome of a request, so tell the family yourself once it is sorted. If a parent mentions something at the door or by phone, you can log the request on the booking yourself, and your team gets the same follow-up. Details: Track guest issues, requests, and time changes with AI Inquiries.
If you rent out the crib or the high chair, sell it as a paid extra: the Upsells automation lets you add a service or product (an equipment rental, for example), with an approval step if you want one, shown in the welcome guide’s shop and offered by the AI co-host. Payments go to the property’s Stripe account with no Nowistay commission, and a Paid extras condition on a guest message sends the setup details only to the guests who paid. Guide: How to sell paid extras (upsells) with the AI assistant.
Spend an hour sorting last month’s guest messages into four groups: questions (they belong in the welcome guide or the listing), comfort items (a labelled drawer), family equipment (set up before arrival, triggered by the number of children) and real requests that need someone (a routing rule to a named team member). Run the same tally a month later: what you fixed at the source should have dropped out of the count.
Try Nowistay free for a month, no credit card. Alert your cleaner automatically when a booking includes children, and turn accepted requests into notes on the cleaning mission.
Try Nowistay free
Over 25 years of experience in real estate investing and a recognized expert in short-term rental automation. Bassel helps property managers increase revenue, cut operating costs, and deliver 5-star guest experiences using AI-powered tools he built from firsthand hosting experience.
