Summary
Owner import links let someone — typically an owner whose listings you manage, or an end-user of an API partner integration — connect their OTA accounts and import listings into your Host Tools account, without giving them login access. The link is tied to a specific listing group on your account, and any listings the owner imports automatically join that group.
All listings imported via the link arrive disabled by default. You decide which ones to enable for active management. The owner never sees the rest of your Host Tools account — they only see the listings inside the linked group.
Generating an owner import link
Go to
Settings > Listing Groups.Find the listing group you want to share, or click Add Listing Group to create a new one (e.g. "Owner: John").
Open the group's settings. Scroll to the Owner Import Link field. If you just created the group, the field is visible but disabled — save the group first, then click the refresh button to generate a link.
Click the copy button next to the link to copy it to your clipboard. Send the link to the owner via email, text, or any other channel.
What the owner sees on the first visit
When the owner opens the link for the first time — before any listings exist in the group — they land on a channel picker. They pick a channel (Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo / HomeAway, or Houfy), sign in to that account, and select which listings to import. For Airbnb, signing in redirects the current tab to Airbnb's sign-in page; after granting access, the owner is returned to the import flow to finish choosing listings. The other channels use inline sign-in forms. The page lets them know their listings will arrive disabled and that you'll enable the ones you want to manage.
After importing, the owner lands on the Manage your listings dashboard described below — already populated with the listings they just imported. At the same time, those listings appear in your Host Tools account, attached to the listing group, ready for you to review and enable.
Manage your listings — the dashboard
Once at least one listing exists in the group, every visit — the first import and every return visit afterward — lands the owner on a single Manage your listings page. Each row is one of their listings, showing its photo, name, address, and a strip of chips for the channels currently connected to that listing. From this dashboard, the owner can:
Connect an additional channel to a listing. Each listing row has a dashed + button for as long as at least one of Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo / HomeAway, or Houfy is still unconnected on that row — it disappears once all four are connected. Clicking it opens a channel picker: if the owner already has an account on that channel, it skips straight to picking which external listing to link; otherwise, it walks them through adding the account first.
Disconnect a channel from a listing. Each connected channel chip has an ×. Clicking it brings up a confirmation — "Are you sure you want to remove Airbnb from <listing>? This won't delete your Airbnb account." Confirming removes the channel link from that listing on Host Tools only; the underlying OTA account stays connected, and any other listings linked to that account are unaffected.
Reconnect a disconnected account. If a connected OTA account drops its connection (typically after a password change or 2FA challenge), a yellow banner appears above the listings list — for example "Your Vrbo account is disconnected" — with a Reconnect button. Clicking it walks the owner through the re-verification flow without your involvement.
Import a new listing. The Import New Listing button at the bottom of the page opens the same channel picker the first visit uses. This is how the owner brings entirely new listings into the group — for example a newly-created Airbnb listing, or their first Booking.com property — without re-entering credentials for accounts they've already connected.
All actions stay scoped to the linked group — the owner never sees or affects listings outside it. The dashboard never deletes the underlying OTA account itself; only you, the host, can delete an account from the main Host Tools UI.
Email confirmation
Whenever an owner successfully imports listings via your link, you'll receive an email summarizing how many listings were imported and from which channel. If you ever see one of these emails for an import you weren't expecting, regenerate the link right away to invalidate the old one.
Revoking or rotating the link
To invalidate an existing link, open the listing group's settings and click the refresh button next to Owner Import Link. Host Tools asks you to confirm, then generates a new link and immediately stops the old one from working — anyone who has the old link will see "This link can't be used."
One link per group
Each listing group has its own link. If you manage listings for multiple owners, the simplest pattern is to create one listing group per owner ("Owner: John", "Owner: Sarah") and send each owner the link for their group. Listings imported via each owner's link land in their respective group, so you always know which listings came from which owner.
API partners
If you're an API partner managing Host Tools accounts on behalf of end users, owner import links are available via the Host Tools API. You can list and manage listing groups and generate or rotate owner import links programmatically — so your end users only ever see the import flow you send them, not the Host Tools dashboard. The listingGroups:read and listingGroups:write OAuth scopes cover these endpoints.
See the Host Tools API docs for the full endpoint reference.
Headless auto-connect for Airbnb
API partners can send a property owner straight to Airbnb's OAuth consent screen without ever showing the Host Tools UI. After the owner consents, Host Tools auto-imports every net-new listing on that Airbnb account into your listing group and redirects the owner back to a URL you choose, with success or error query parameters appended.
The URL format:
https://app.hosttools.com/api/owner-import/auto-connect/airbnb?ownerImportToken=<token>&redirect=<your-return-url>&scope=full
Required parameters:
ownerImportToken— the listing-group share token (same token used elsewhere by owner-import).redirect— an absolute HTTPS URL on a domain that has been allowlisted with the Host Tools team. The owner is redirected here after the flow completes. If this parameter is missing or its domain isn't allowlisted, the flow never starts.
Optional parameters:
scope=full(default) orscope=setup— chooses the Airbnb OAuth scope. Setup mode is more restricted; most partners want the default.
On success, the partner's redirect URL receives:
owner-import-status=successimported=<n>— the number of newly-imported listings (zero if every listing on that Airbnb account was already in this Host Tools account).accountID=<id>— the Host Tools account ID for the connected Airbnb account.
On failure, the partner's redirect URL receives:
owner-import-status=errorowner-import-error=<code>— one of:invalid-link,invalid-scope,oauth-denied,oauth-failed,import-failed.
Listings that were already imported on this Host Tools account are skipped — they aren't re-imported or moved between groups. Only truly new listings are added to the group.
Only Airbnb supports headless auto-connect in this release. Vrbo, Booking.com, and Houfy still use the standard owner-import flow.