Getting your former guests' addresses: what is still possible

It is the most frequent question: "six hundred guests in eight years — how do I get their email addresses?" The honest answer starts with bad news.

Airbnb: the aliases are gone

Airbnb used to provide a relay address per booking, which let a host write to the guest from their own mailbox. It was removed from most hosts in August 2020 and switched off for everyone, professional accounts included, on 30 September 2023. Nothing replaced it: Airbnb's advice is to use its own messaging.

So your Airbnb guests' addresses are not hidden somewhere in your account: they were never there, and no export, tool or trick produces them. Software promising otherwise is either lying to you or about to make you breach the platform's terms.

Booking: an address, but not theirs

Booking.com does pass an email address for each reservation, but it is an anonymised alias routed through their servers. Their partner help page says it plainly: private addresses are not shared.

An alias is for running the stay. It does not outlive it, and using it later to offer a direct return is using Booking's infrastructure to bypass Booking: it shows, and it is penalised.

What you already have, and forget about

Quite a lot, and it is yours:

• guests who wrote to you directly: a question before arrival, a forgotten item, a thank-you. Your mailbox is your first list;
• the rental contracts and invoices you issued, which carry a name and often an address;
• the guest book, if it asks for an address — and if it does not, that is the first thing to change this season;
• past direct bookings, by phone, by e-mail, by word of mouth;
• all your future guests, if you give them somewhere to book without an intermediary.

Less glorious than a six-hundred-line export. Also a list of people who actually know you, which is worth more than a list of people who clicked on a platform.

Asking during the stay, without being heavy

People hand over an address willingly when they are happy: during the stay, not three months later. What works, in order:

1. a line in the guest book: first name, town, e-mail, and a box saying "happy to hear about availability" — ticked by them, never in advance;
2. a card on the table at departure: "next time, book direct", with your website address. The ones who come back keep it;
3. a note after the stay, if you have their address: two sentences, not a newsletter.

What you do not do: offer an Airbnb or Booking guest, during their booking, to book elsewhere. The platforms' terms forbid it, and the risk is out of proportion to the gain.

What the law lets you do with it

In France, writing to a private individual to offer them something requires their prior consent, in principle. There is an exception, and it is made for this case: the CNIL does not require consent to write to your own customers about products or services similar to those already bought. A stay at your place is the purchase; another stay at your place is the similar service.

Two conditions come with it, and they are not decorative:

• the person must have been able to object when you collected the address;
• they must be able to object at any time, and in every message sent.

Outside the exception: a bought list, a scraped list, a colleague's addresses, or a message with nothing to do with staying at your place.

Source: CNIL — commercial prospecting by e-mail: consent, read on 29 September 2026.

And then, once a season

One message a year is enough, and it is the condition for it being read: "the season is starting again, here is what changed, the dates are open". No countdown, no invented promotion, no third reminder. People who loved your house remember you; people who do not will not come back because they were written to three times.

In Mon Gîte Direct that list lives in your own area: guests who booked on your website are already there, you add the ones you already had, and the message goes out in your name with the required unsubscribe link. One send per guest every six months at most — not a technical limit, a sensible one.

Frequently asked questions