Once upon a time, the various listing channels worked like old-time newspaper classified ads. When a guest wanted to make a booking, they simply sent you their contact information and you could take it from there.
Those days are over. Nowadays, the channels prefer to keep control of the guests and their information so as to be able to charge ongoing fees to both sides. Instead of providing a real email address, they create temporary "proxy" addresses that they filter and control. These look like 883263@guest.booking.com.
As of September 2023, Airbnb is removing the platform (a.k.a. proxy or pass-through) email address function. Users should follow the instructions on the Ask Channel Booking Guest Without Contact Info, to Provide Contact Info and Sign Renter Agreement support article.
While we do have access to proxy email addresses, we do not store or display them in the inbox or bookings associated with the guests. Here's why:
- Proxy email addresses don't actually represent the guest record; they represent a booking. This might seem like a pointless distinction, but it matters because the guest information record might have multiple email addresses and might book several times or several properties. You'll end up with bunches of proxy email addresses, none of which really forward to the guest outside the context of the booking.
- Proxy email addresses don't actually work and are completely useless as an email address after the booking is over. The point of guest contacts is to build, and maintain, a relationship with your customers over time. The proxy email addresses expire and you can't use them to contact the guest after the one booking - again, they follow the booking. So you end up, over time, having a guest contact list filled with thousands of pointless valueless proxy email addresses. It makes building your guest contact information really difficult.
- Proxy email addresses break routinely even when the booking is still active or in the future. We've watched over time as Vrbo and Booking.com have struggled with proxy forwarding. There are many bounces, many bad forwards and occasionally things that are stripped out. We've seen where proxy servers were done for large amounts of the day and users could not email guests last-minute information about their booking. We encourage users to get a real email address to bypass those problems entirely.