Marketplace

Gracious

The hosting calendar that lets friends and family book rooms in their host’s home as though they were booking a hotel.

Visit gracious.host ↗
Role
  • Design
  • Development
  • Branding
Stack
  • Vercel
  • Supabase
  • Resend
Platform
  • Web

The opportunity

8 million households across the US, Canada, and England own a second home, and most share it with friends and family. Today that means group texts, email threads, and a host fielding every request, turning generosity into a burden. Airbnb solved this, but only for paying guests.

With Gracious, hosts decide who’s invited and when the house is open; guests choose their own dates and request a stay.

AirbnbVrboCraigslist
Marketplace
Group texts
Email threads
Shared calendars
Gracious
No software exists for homeowners who want to manage scheduling and communication with their guests, so they fall back on email tag and a tangle of calendars. Competitive positioning map. Transactional and self serve: Airbnb and Vrbo. Transactional and white glove: Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace. Non-transactional and white glove: group texts, email threads, and shared calendars. Gracious is alone in the corner for non-transactional and self serve.

The product

Gracious puts every room and every guest on a single calendar. Hosts invite guests by link, guests pick their dates against what is actually free, and the calendar fills in. Reminders and arrival details go out on their own.

A visit from both sides: the host’s invitation, the guest’s request, the host’s approval, and the emails Gracious sends from there. Animated demo of a Gracious visit. The host types a guest’s email into an invitation to The Lake House, chooses a date offer over an open invitation or fixed dates, and sends it. The guest sees the house, picks the Garden Room, selects July 12 to 15 from the dates the host offered, and requests the stay. On the host’s calendar of guest rooms the request appears as a pending visit, and the host approves it, turning it confirmed. Then the emails the guest receives go by one after another: a confirmation with an add to calendar button, a reminder a week before, a welcome with the door code and Wi-Fi on the morning of arrival, checkout instructions, and a thank-you the day after.

The system

A visit moves along one track. The host sends an open invitation, a date offer, or fixed dates, or simply books the guest in; the guest picks dates against what’s actually free, and the host approves the request, or lets Gracious approve it automatically.

From there the host is out of the loop. Gracious sends the guest a confirmation with a calendar file, reminders a week and a day ahead, a welcome on arrival, checkout instructions on the way out, and a thank-you the morning after.

GRACIOUS · THE LIFE OF A VISITOne visit, start to finishThe host invites and approves. Everything after that runs itself.BEFORE THE VISITDURINGAFTERHostINVITESEMAILS TO HOSTEMAILS TO GUESTOpen invitationDate offerFixed datesBooked by hostPRE-APPROVEDInvitedStalled inviteInvitationReminders ×3RequestedNew requestRequest receivedHost approves?DeclinedApprovedVisit confirmedConfirmationBefore7-day reminder1-day reminderCheck-inWelcomeCheck-outCheckout infoAfterThank youGUEST PICKS DATESYES, OR AUTONOpeoplekind of invitationstage of the visitemaildecision
Each stage of a visit sends its own emails: the host hears about invitations and requests, and the guest hears about everything else. Diagram of the life of a Gracious visit, drawn as a single line of stages running left to right in time, with the emails each stage sends. The host starts a visit with an open invitation, a date offer, or fixed dates, all of which lead to an invited stage, or books the guest directly, which skips straight to approved. The invited guest receives an invitation and reminders on days one through three; if the invite goes unanswered the host gets a stalled invite notice. The guest picks dates and requests a stay; the host is told of the new request and the guest gets a request received email. A decision asks whether the host approves; if not, the guest is told the request was declined. If yes, or if the visit is approved automatically, the host gets a visit confirmed email and the guest gets a confirmation with a calendar file. Before the visit the guest gets reminders seven days and one day out, then a welcome on check-in day, checkout info on check-out day, and a thank-you after the visit.
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