Emergencies at your property: what the AI does and what you need to set up

By GuestChat Team · 2 October 2026

Nobody wants to think about it, but it happens: a gas smell at midnight, smoke in the kitchen, a leak that starts soaking the apartment below. At that moment what matters is that a person finds out right away. That's what the AI is built for, not for handling the emergency on its own.

What it detects

The AI watches messages for serious situations: a gas smell, fire or smoke, a medical emergency, someone who got in without permission, violence or a flood. It recognizes them in several languages and in the natural ways people say them, not just exact phrases. When a message fits, a second check confirms whether it really is an emergency, so you don't get alarmed by an “I'm dying of hunger.”

What it does when it's serious

It opens an urgent report and alerts you immediately, without waiting in the normal alert queue.
If the guest is staying at the property and their virtual key is active, the report goes up to the highest severity.
If you have SMS turned on for these cases, you get a text message on your phone.
It keeps talking to the guest as usual, so they're never left without an answer.

What it doesn't do, on purpose

The AI doesn't give emergency instructions or tell the guest which service to call. It's a deliberate choice: in a situation like that, an automated system shouldn't give directions that may not fit what's actually happening. What it can do is give them a contact number of yours, and that's up to you.

What you need to have ready

Emergency Contact. In the property profile, under Basic Information. It's the phone number given to a guest who is staying at the property when there's a confirmed emergency, even on booking sites, where phone numbers are normally removed from messages. If it's empty, there's no number to give them.
SMS for very serious reports. In My Profile. It comes turned off because it rings at night. Turn it on and, in Send it to, enter the number with the country code; if you leave it empty, it uses the phone in your profile.
Email report alerts. Also in My Profile. If you have a team, on the Reports page you can add more addresses in the email alert settings.
Safety information in the property profile. Where the gas and water shut-off valves are, the fuse box, the first-aid kit. In the property information, each one in its own paragraph.

Only the first alert

The SMS goes out only with the first very serious report on each topic. If the guest insists or writes again about the same thing, you don't get another SMS: the rest keeps arriving by email. That way ten messages about the same leak don't wake you up.

Checklist

The Emergency Contact is filled in for every property, and it's a number someone really answers, at night too.
SMS is turned on and you've checked the number has its country code.
There's at least one email address someone reads every day.
The property information explains where to shut off the water, the power and the gas.
If a colleague covers your on-call shifts, they know how to open Reports and reply from the link in the email.

After the scare

Once everything is sorted, reply to the report and mark it as resolved. What you write there is saved as the way to fix that problem at that property, and the report stops sending reminders. And if the emergency came from something avoidable (an old boiler, a hidden shut-off valve), write it down: the best emergency is the one that doesn't happen again.