How to sell paid extras (upsells) with the AI assistant?

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How to sell paid extras (upsells) with the AI assistant?

The Upsells automation lets you sell paid extras to your guests: an early check-in, a late checkout, a breakfast basket, a bottle of champagne, an airport transfer, anything you want to offer during the stay. Your welcome guide displays the extras. The AI assistant presents them in conversations and guides guests to purchase them online. Payments go straight to the property's Stripe account, with no commission taken by Nowistay.

For early check-in and late checkout, the feature goes further than a simple sale: once the guest has paid, the booking's arrival or departure time is updated automatically, the cleaning mission is rescheduled, and your team is notified. Nothing to do manually.

Before you start

Three things must be in place on each property where you want to sell extras:

  • The property must be connected with Nowistay PMS.
  • The property must have an active AI Channel Manager subscription.
  • A Stripe account must be connected to the property.

If something is missing, the Upsells settings show exactly which properties are not eligible and why: "property(ies) not eligible (PMS, subscription or Stripe missing)".

Step 1: Open the Upsells automation

Open the Automations page from the side menu and find the Upsells row. Use the property selector to choose where the AI is allowed to propose extras, and click the gear icon to open the catalog.

The Upsells row on the Nowistay Automations page

Step 2: Create your extras

Click Add an extra. Each extra you create appears in the list with its photo, price and scope. You can edit or delete an extra at any time; an extra that has already been purchased is archived instead of deleted, so past purchases keep their history.

The Upsells catalog with extras: breakfast basket, early check-in, a bottle of champagne and late checkout

The extra settings explained

The editor below shows every setting of an extra. Here is what each one does:

The extra editor with all settings: name, description, photo, type, price, approval, deadline and properties

Name and Description

Write them in your own language. Nowistay translates them automatically into all the languages of the welcome guide, so each guest sees the extra in their own language.

Photo

Optional, but strongly recommended: the photo is shown in the welcome guide and on the guest's extras page. Images are optimized automatically for fast loading.

Type

  • Service / product: anything you deliver during the stay (breakfast, champagne, transfer, equipment rental...). The guest can choose a quantity for instant extras.
  • Early check-in: sells a specific arrival time, set in Check-in time sold (e.g. 13:00); for example, you can sell arrival at 14:00 instead of 16:00. After payment, the booking's check-in time is updated automatically and your smart lock codes follow.
  • Late checkout: same principle with Checkout time sold (e.g. 14:00). After payment, the checkout time is updated and the cleaning mission is rescheduled automatically.

Price

The amount the guest pays. The guest is always charged in the currency of their booking (with the property's currency as fallback), so the label shows you which currency applies.

Requires approval and Approved by

Turn on Requires approval when you or your team must confirm availability before the guest can pay. As the setting says: "The guest requests it; you or your team approve before payment." This is the natural choice for early check-in and late checkout, which depend on the cleaning schedule.

Approved by chooses who receives the approval requests for this extra. Pick a specific team member, or leave Automatic (assigned cleaner, then you): the request then goes to the cleaner assigned to the booking, and to you if nobody is assigned.

Order deadline (hours)

How long before check-in (or before checkout, for a late checkout) the guest can still order. For example, a breakfast basket with a 24 hour deadline can no longer be ordered the morning of the arrival. Leave it empty for no deadline. The deadline is enforced everywhere: on the extras page, and by the AI, which knows an expired offer can no longer be sold and tells the guest why.

Available on all properties / Properties

Sell the extra everywhere, or only on the properties you select. Only eligible properties can be selected.

Active

Turn an extra off at any time without deleting it. Inactive extras disappear from the guide, the extras page and the AI's catalog.

Step 3: Show your extras in the welcome guide

Two building blocks are available in the welcome guide editor:

  • Add a Boutique page (extras catalog): one click in the guide's table of contents creates a page that displays your full catalog, with photos, prices and a purchase button per extra.
  • Extra (product) block: inserts a single product card anywhere in the guide. Perfect for placing the paid early check-in offer directly on your arrival page.

When a guest taps a purchase button, the guide opens their personal extras page. If they arrived through a personalized welcome guide link, their booking is already identified. Otherwise, they use the phone number on their reservation or their 6-digit access code. The voice option is not required to access or buy extras.

Display the shop QR code in the property

Guests who never opened the welcome guide before arriving can still discover your extras: print a QR code that opens the Boutique page directly and display it in the property, at the entrance, in the kitchen or next to the printed guide.

  1. In the Upsells catalog, next to Add an extra, click the QR code icon Download the shop QR code.
  2. Choose the Property. Only properties that are eligible for extras and whose welcome guide contains a Boutique page can be selected; the others show why, for example No Boutique page in the welcome guide.
  3. The Shop link appears with a copy button and an open button, followed by the QR code. Click Download to save it as a high-resolution PNG with the Nowistay logo, ready to print.
The shop QR code view: property picker, shop link with copy and open buttons, and the QR code with its Download button

This link is generic: it is the same for every guest of the property and opens the Boutique page of the welcome guide, not a personal page. To see and book extras, the guest identifies with the phone number of their booking or their 6-digit code, as described above. The QR code stays valid as long as the Boutique page exists in the guide, so keep that page once you have printed the code.

Step 4: Share the welcome guide in your automated messages

Use {{welcome_guide_url}} in your automated guest messages. Nowistay personalizes this welcome guide link for each booking: it includes access to available extras and adds voice access only when the voice assistant is active. If you offer no extras, the same variable still opens the welcome guide. You do not need a separate link for each feature.

In your automated guest messages, click Insert variable and select {{welcome_guide_url}} under Property. The Extras group also contains:

  • {{upsells_access_code}}: the booking's 6-digit guest identification code, available without the voice option.
  • {{upsells_link}}: a direct link to the guest's personal extras page. It remains available if you want to share that page separately.
  • {{upsells_list}}: the extras currently available for this stay, with prices.
  • Per-extra variables, such as {{upsell.<key>.name}}, {{upsell.<key>.price}} and {{upsell.<key>.link}}: select the actual extra in the picker to insert its name, price or link.

Example: “You can browse and purchase our extras in the Boutique in your welcome guide: {{welcome_guide_url}}. If you open the general guide link and are asked to identify your booking, your code is {{upsells_access_code}}.”

How the AI sells your extras

In Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo and Expedia conversations, the AI explains the extra and its price, then directs the guest to the Boutique in their welcome guide to purchase. It does not send a direct extras or payment link in those conversations. On direct channels, such as email or WhatsApp, it can share the guest's personal extras link.

The AI assistant knows your catalog: exact names, prices, availability, deadlines, and what each guest has already bought. It never invents a price, and the catalog always wins over older text in your guide. On booking-platform channels, a typical early check-in conversation looks like this:

Guest: "Hi! Any chance we could check in around 2pm? Our train gets in early."

AI: "Early check-in from 2:00 PM is available as a paid option (25.00 EUR). I have sent the request to our team to check availability. As soon as it is approved, you can complete the purchase in the Boutique in your welcome guide. Once paid, your arrival time is updated automatically."

And for an instant extra:

Guest: "Could we order the breakfast basket for our stay?"

AI: "Of course! The breakfast basket is 15.00 EUR. You can order it in the Boutique in your welcome guide. It is delivered on arrival."

The AI also answers follow-up questions from the purchase history ("Is my early check-in confirmed?" "Yes, your early check-in at 2:00 PM is paid and confirmed."), and if an extra can no longer be ordered because its deadline has passed, it says so and falls back to a normal availability request to your team instead of selling something impossible.

When a paid offer is available for the requested schedule change, the AI routes the request through it, even if the guest simply announces "we will arrive at 11am". If the offer is no longer available, the AI follows the normal availability-request flow with your team.

Approval and team coordination

When a guest requests an extra that requires approval, here is the full flow:

  1. The approver (the team member set in Approved by, or the assigned cleaner) receives the request by email and WhatsApp, with the extra's name, price and the guest's dates, and two buttons: accept or refuse.
  2. On acceptance, the guest automatically receives a message explaining how to complete the purchase: through the Boutique in their welcome guide on Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo or Expedia, or with their personal extras link on direct channels. Nothing is charged yet.
  3. Once the guest pays, everything happens at once: the booking time is updated (for early check-in / late checkout), the cleaning mission is rescheduled, and the team member receives a "paid extra to prepare" notification.
  4. On refusal, the guest is informed politely and nothing is charged.

The request also appears on the team member's dashboard with a payment badge, so your team always sees whether an accepted extra has actually been paid before providing it. An approved extra that is never paid expires automatically and the approver is told not to provide it.

What guests see and how they pay

Each booking has its own personal extras page: the catalog with photos and prices, a purchase or request button per extra, and the history of their purchases with the granted times.

The guest extras page with the catalog and purchase history

Payment happens on a secure checkout page. The money goes directly to the property's Stripe account; Nowistay takes no commission on your extras.

Track everything from the booking

Open a reservation from Bookings, then find Guest access code in the Extras section. Use the copy icon to share it manually, or insert {{upsells_access_code}} in an automated message to send each guest their own code. Extras access works without the voice option. This identifies the booking; it is not a door or smart lock code.

The same section shows Personalized guide link: use its copy icon to share the complete welcome guide URL for this booking. When the Voice assistant section is available, it provides the same guide link. Voice access is included only when voice is active.

Every booking has an Extras section showing each purchase with its amount, granted time and status: Awaiting approval, Approved - awaiting payment, Paid, Declined, Expired, Cancelled or Refunded. You can approve or decline requests from here too, and Copy extras link gives you the guest's page to share manually whenever useful.

The Extras section of a booking with two paid purchases

Refunds

To refund an extra, issue the refund from your Stripe dashboard. Nowistay detects it automatically: the purchase is marked Refunded, and if it was an early check-in or late checkout, the booking time change is reverted.

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