Guest Messaging and Operations in One System

Written by Punn Kam, ex-Google AI engineer and Y Combinator repeat founder. He is the co-founder of Conduit, an AI agent platform built for hospitality, serving 300+ hospitality brands in 140+ languages. Last updated October 7, 2026.

Guest messaging and operations belong in one system because most operational work starts as a message and ends as one. In Conduit that loop runs on events. A message, a booking change, or a task update starts an agent or a workflow, the agent creates or updates the task, and the guest hears what changed.

Why does operations work start in the inbox?

Hospitality operations work (cleaning, maintenance, inspections, scheduling) usually reaches a property manager or hotel team as a message. A guest texts that the apartment wasn't cleaned, a hotel guest calls the front desk because the faucet won't shut off, or a cleaner replies to a work order saying the dishwasher leaks. Each of those messages already holds what a task needs: the property, the reservation, what broke, a photo, and how urgent it is.

The messaging side knows who the guest is and where they're staying. The operations side knows who covers that building and what's already booked for the unit. Split those across two vendors and somebody retypes the facts from one screen into the other, then retypes the outcome back when the job is done.

How does a guest message become a task and a reply?

Conduit turns a guest message into a task and a reply through four linked parts: an event, an agent or workflow that handles it, a task, and a message back to the guest. Take one leak, reported late in the evening, in a workspace on the Full Suite package.

1. A guest sends a WhatsApp photo of water under the kitchen sink. The inbound message starts the guest-facing agent.
2. The agent reads the conversation, asks whether water is still running, and creates a maintenance task on the guest's property and reservation with the photo attached.
3. The task goes to the default plumbing assignee for that property as a work order by SMS or email, with accept and decline links.
4. The plumber accepts, and the task moves to a scheduled status. The status changed trigger runs a workflow that sends the guest the arrival window.
5. The plumber marks the job done. The task completed trigger runs the agent, which tells the guest the leak is fixed and asks them to reply if anything still looks wrong.

Nobody on the team relays an update in that sequence. A person steps in when the agent escalates, for example when the repair needs owner approval.

What can start an agent or a workflow in Conduit?

Conduit starts agents and workflows from events inside Conduit and from the third-party systems it connects to, so a booking change, a cleaning status, a Jobber visit, or a missed call can each kick off work without anyone watching a dashboard. The triggers available today:

• PMS reservations created or modified, and offsets from check-in or check-out time.
• PMS cleaning-status changes, for Guesty and for PMSs connected through Calry.
• Jobber jobs and visits.
• Inbound webhooks from any system that can send one.
• Conduit tasks created, assigned, changing status, or completed.
• Calls completed or missed, and escalations.
• Cron schedules.

You build some common guest messages yourself from a trigger. Conduit has no prebuilt "your unit is ready" message, for example, but the cleaning-status trigger plus a short workflow or an agent sends one when the PMS marks the unit clean.

How far can you configure a Conduit agent?

Conduit agents are configured one by one. Each agent has its own instructions, model, and guardrails. Each connection has a per-tool allowlist, so a guest-facing agent can look up a reservation in your PMS without being allowed to change it. An agent can hand work to sub-agents. Each agent runs in Autopilot (sending on its own) or Copilot (drafting for a person to approve), and per-channel overrides let the same agent behave differently on Airbnb and on WhatsApp.

Skills are named, versioned instruction packs attached to an agent. A skill holds how your company handles one kind of situation: a lockout at 11pm, what to offer after a long outage, which repairs need owner approval before anyone is dispatched. To change how the agent handles that situation, you edit the skill.

When should a workflow do the job instead of an agent?

Conduit workflows are deterministic: a fixed sequence of steps built from conditions, filters, waits, send message, create task, run tool, HTTP request, and CRM steps. Use a workflow when the outcome should be identical every time, like creating an inspection task at every checkout. Use an agent when the step needs judgment, like deciding whether a message is a repair request and how urgent it is.

The two mix in both directions. An agent can call a workflow as a tool, so a guest agent that recognizes a lockout can run your lockout workflow exactly as written. A workflow can contain AI steps, so a fixed checkout sequence can include one step where a model writes the message. Teams end up with deterministic steps where the rules are known and agent judgment where they aren't.

Which PMS and operations systems can Conduit agents act on?

Conduit agents act on outside systems through tools, and the depth varies by system. Breezeway has close to 50 tools in Conduit, including its task tools, so an agent can create and update Breezeway tasks from a guest conversation. Guesty, Mews, Hostaway, Streamline, Opera, RoomChecking, and Jobber also have deep tool sets. Conduit connects with Cloudbeds, Lodgify, Hostfully, Beds24, and other PMSs as well.

With those tools you can keep a task system you like: Conduit runs messaging and agents, and the agent creates the Breezeway task or Jobber work order.

What do you lose when tasks live in a separate tool?

Keeping tasks in a separate tool costs context and follow-through, and both are decided by the API between the two tools. A task is only as rich as the fields the task tool's API accepts, and guest photos and the reservation link are the usual losses. A task update only reaches the guest if the task tool publishes an event for it and someone builds the rule that turns that event into a message.

The maintenance task guide compares how Breezeway, Operto Teams, and Turno take photos through their APIs, and the guest update guide compares the task events they publish.

Which other tools combine messaging and operations?

Several platforms sell messaging and tasks together, and some already create tasks from messages. Guesty lists a message-to-task dispatcher agent, Breezeway's Concierge "suggests the task that closes the loop", Hostaway has a task manager next to its AI replies, Hospitable creates tasks from check-in and check-out events, and Akia lists tasks alongside its messaging agents.

When you compare them, ask whether the guest's photos reach the task, and whether any task change can start a message to the guest, the owner, or the next staff member.

How does Conduit run work in the background?

Conduit runs background work with durable state and retries. Workflows run on Temporal, which keeps each run's state durable and retries failed steps. Agent runs dispatch with retries, and stuck runs expire. Agents can run on a schedule (once, on an interval, daily, weekly, or monthly), and an agent can schedule its own follow-up, such as checking the next morning whether the plumber closed the task.

Durable runs let an agent own a loop that spans days, such as a repair that waits on parts or an owner who answers two days later.

Where do AI inspections fit?

AI inspections find operations work in the footage of a turnover walkthrough. Through Conduit's RapidEye integration, RapidEye's AI reviews turnover walkthroughs and reports findings (damage, missed cleaning, or a lost item, each with a severity), and each finding becomes a Conduit ops task. From there it follows the same chain as a guest report: a lost item can start a message to the guest who just left, and damage can start a repair task and a note to the owner.

Conduit tasks hold photos, receipts, and checklists with required photos, not video files.

Where is Conduit taking background agents?

Conduit is building toward operations agents that run in the background and understand scheduling requirements: who covers which property, who is off, how long a turnover takes, and which arrivals can't move. When a cleaner texts at 6am that they're sick, the agent would rework the day, move the cleaner's turnovers to people with room, and tell any guest whose check-in time changes. That is the direction, and no such agent ships today.

The pieces such an agent needs already exist in Conduit. Conduit tracks staff availability and time off, the schedule grid detects conflicts, and agents have tools to reassign tasks and set due dates. A manager handles a sick call now by reassigning from the grid, or by telling an agent which tasks to move. The planning step, where the agent builds the new day itself, is the part still to come.

Should you replace your task management tool?

Operators don't need to replace a working task management tool to connect it to guest messaging. A team that runs on Breezeway or Jobber can keep that tool and let Conduit agents create tasks or work orders there. Expect thinner tasks and some status changes that still need a person to relay them.

If those gaps are where your team loses hours, moving tasks into Conduit removes them. Conduit's Full Suite package, at $48 per unit per month, adds tasks and workforce, scheduling and dispatch, agentic operations workflows, and inventory management to everything in Guest + Devices. Portfolios of up to 25 units can start on the $899 per month Startup plan (see pricing). For the wider field, see the best hospitality operations platforms and our Operto review.

FAQ

Operators deciding whether to run guest messaging and operations in one Conduit system, or to keep a separate task tool connected to it, usually ask the questions below. The answers cover triggers, agents versus workflows, skills, and what Conduit can and can't do about scheduling today.

Can I keep my current task management tool and still use Conduit?

Yes. Conduit agents can create Breezeway tasks or Jobber work orders from a conversation. What the task carries, and which updates reach the guest, then depends on what that tool's API accepts and which events it sends.

What events can start a Conduit agent or workflow?

Conduit agents and workflows can start from inbound messages, PMS reservation changes, check-in and check-out time offsets, PMS cleaning-status changes (Guesty and Calry-connected PMSs), Jobber jobs and visits, inbound webhooks, Conduit task events, completed or missed calls, escalations, and cron schedules.

What is the difference between a Conduit agent and a workflow?

A Conduit workflow runs the same fixed steps every time, while an agent decides what to do from the conversation, its instructions, and its skills. Agents can call workflows as tools, and workflows can contain AI steps, so one flow can use both.

What are skills in Conduit?

Skills in Conduit are named, versioned instruction packs attached to an agent. Each one describes how your company handles one kind of situation, such as a lockout or a repair that needs owner approval, so changing that behavior means editing the skill.

Can Conduit rework the schedule when a cleaner calls in sick?

Not on its own today. Conduit tracks staff availability and time off, flags schedule conflicts, and gives agents tools to reassign tasks and set due dates, but a background agent that replans the day around a sick call is the product's direction and has not shipped.