Messaging

Sidedoor gives you a two-way chat with your guests, tied to the thing you’re talking about - a booking or an enquiry. You reply from inside the portal; the guest picks it up in the Sidedoor app (and by email), and their replies come straight back to you. There’s no separate messaging tool to learn and no phone numbers or personal email threads to juggle - every conversation sits next to the reservation or request it’s about.

Where you chat

There are two kinds of conversation, each opened from where that record lives:

• Booking chat - one conversation per reservation. Open a reservation on the Reservations grid and choose the Chat tab in its detail panel.
• Enquiry chat - one conversation per request. Open a request in the Requests inbox and choose the Chat tab in its panel.

Both work the same way from here on - the only differences are where the conversation lives and when it closes (see Read-only conversations below).

Sending a message

Type in the Chat tab and send. A message can be up to 4,000 characters. What happens next on the guest’s side:

1. In the app. If the guest is signed in to Sidedoor, your message appears in their conversation right away, and they get a notification on their device (if they’ve allowed push).

2. By email. If they’re not looking at the app, they get a venue-branded email - your venue’s name, logo and colours - with a short preview of your message and a secure magic link. One tap signs them straight into the conversation, so there’s no password to remember. The link expires after 15 minutes for security; after that they just open the app the usual way.

3. They reply. Their reply lands back in the same Chat tab, and your team gets a notification. Opening the conversation clears its unread marker.

The guest always sees messages as coming from your venue - its name and logo - never from the individual team member who typed them. So it doesn’t matter who on your team picks up the conversation; to the guest it’s one voice.

The guest needs a way to reach

The magic-link email only goes to guests we can reach. An anonymous enquiry (someone who left just a name and email, with no Sidedoor account) can still be replied to, but they won’t get an in-app sign-in link - reach them at the email address they left instead.

Live conversation

While both sides have the conversation open, it behaves like any modern chat:

• Typing - you see when the guest is typing, and they see when you are.
• Online / last seen - a small pill shows whether the guest is currently in the conversation, or when they were last there.
• Delivery ticks - your sent messages show a single tick when sent, a double tick once delivered to the guest’s device, and a coloured double tick once they’ve read it.

If a live connection drops, messages still arrive - the conversation catches up on its own the moment either side looks at it again, so nothing is lost.

Read-only conversations

A conversation stays open for as long as it’s still relevant, then becomes read-only (you can still read the history, but neither side can send):

• Booking chat closes once the reservation reaches a final state - cancelled, rejected, expired, no-show, completed or closed (an expired reservation is one that lapsed without being actioned). To the guest it’s filed under Archived.
• Enquiry chat closes once the request has Expired (the requested date passed without being actioned) or been Trashed. A Booked request stays fully chattable both ways - handy for confirming the final details. A Declined request is different: the moment you decline, the conversation becomes read-only and archived on the guest’s side, so they can’t reply. You can still send one last message - a closing note explaining the decision - if you want to, but that note doesn’t reopen a two-way chat; the guest still can’t write back.

Reopening a closed booking chat

If a booking chat has closed but you need to reach the guest again, just send them a message - replying to an archived booking conversation reopens it on both sides, so the guest can write back. (Trashing a request, by contrast, removes its conversation for good.)

What the guest sees

Your guests reach every conversation from Messages in the Sidedoor guest app ↗ - a single inbox that lists all their venue conversations, most recent first, each with your venue’s name and logo. Unread threads are highlighted, and closed ones sit under an Archived group.

Guests choose how they’re notified about chat messages from Profile → Preferences → Notifications → Chat in the app - a push on their device, an email fallback, or both (both are on by default). These switches only affect chat: they never change booking confirmations or reminders. See Notifications & preferences in the guest guide for the full picture.

Related

• Reservations - the grid where booking chats live.
• Enquiries & requests - the Requests inbox where enquiry chats live, and how an enquiry becomes a booking.
• Timed chat reminders - automatic messages tied to a booking’s timeline, separate from this one-to-one chat.