Property managers using short-term rental platforms face a fragmented communication problem. When listings are distributed across multiple booking channels like Airbnb, Booking.com, and others, messages and guest inquiries arrive in separate platform inboxes. That means logging into each platform individually to respond, a time-consuming workflow that becomes increasingly unmanageable as a portfolio grows.

The brief was to design a unified communication center, integrated into DS Destination Solutions' existing property management system, that consolidates all incoming messages into a single interface and makes it faster to respond, assign, and resolve guest inquiries.

The starting point was understanding the actual workflow of a property manager handling guest communication. The core needs were: see all messages in one place, understand the context of each message without switching screens, respond quickly, and hand off to a colleague or support team when necessary.

A three-panel layout emerged as the right structure. The message list on the left provides a scannable overview of all conversations with status labels and timestamps. The center panel shows the full conversation thread with the ability to reply directly. The right panel surfaces the relevant booking details, property information, travel dates, cancellation terms, and payment schedule without requiring the user to leave the conversation.

The sidenav was kept intentionally minimal. The empty space was a deliberate architectural decision, not a lack of ideas. The structure was designed to accommodate future integration with other new or redesigned PMS features without requiring a navigation overhaul.

One tension worth noting: the product manager pushed to include guest ratings inside the inbox. I disagreed with this decision. Ratings belong to a different mental model and a different workflow moment. Mixing them into the communication layer would create cognitive overhead at exactly the point where a property manager needs to focus on responding efficiently. The project was stalled before this was resolved, which I consider an open design debt.

The design covers the full communication workflow across two breakpoints.

On desktop, the three-panel layout gives property managers full context at a glance. Color-coded avatars, status labels (open, in progress, archived), and timestamps allow quick triage without opening each message. The message composer supports text blocks and attachments. Messages can be assigned to colleagues or escalated to DS support directly from the conversation view.

A priority flagging system was designed to surface messages that exceed a reasonable response window. This was specifically motivated by platform ranking algorithms, particularly Airbnb, that penalize hosts for slow response times. Automatic responses can be scheduled by day and time, ensuring guests receive an immediate acknowledgment even outside business hours.

On mobile, the layout collapses to a single-column message list with a hamburger menu, designed for the specific use case of checking and responding to urgent messages outside office hours. The PMS was desktop-only at the time, making mobile coverage a meaningful capability gap that this design addressed.

A production-ready Figma design for a communication tool that consolidates multi-channel guest messaging into a single, context-aware interface. The design handles the full workflow from triage to response to escalation, across desktop and mobile, and was built to integrate cleanly into the existing PMS architecture rather than sit alongside it as a disconnected tool.

Tools Figma

Skills Product Design, UX Design, SaaS, Enterprise Software