The Hospitable integration is live in STR Hours starting today. If you use Hospitable to manage your guest messages, your material participation hour log just got a whole lot less painful.
Here's what it does, why it matters for the STR loophole, and how to turn it on.
The Problem It Solves
Guest communication is one of the highest-volume categories of material participation hours, and it's also the hardest to track manually.
You answer an inquiry on the way to dinner. You handle a check-in question at 11pm. You troubleshoot a Wi-Fi issue between meetings. None of those moments feel like "work" you'd think to log, but the IRS counts them.
Treas. Reg. §1.469-5T(f) treats activities customarily done in connection with operating the trade or business as participation, and guest communication is operating activity. The hours add up across a year, and forgetting to log them in real time is the single biggest reason STR owners undercount their participation.
Until now, the only way to capture them was to remember to log every interaction as it happened. That's not realistic when you're running a property and a life at the same time.
What the Sync Pulls In
Once you connect your Hospitable account to STR Hours, the app brings in:
- Every guest message sent and received through Hospitable
- Every inquiry, including ones that didn't book
- The timestamp, property, and guest associated with each interaction
You see all of it inside STR Hours alongside your other logged hours, so you can review and add it to your participation log without having to dig through your inbox or scroll through Hospitable.
The activities link directly to the right property, so if you're tracking the 100-hour test on a property-by-property basis (which you should be), the hours land in the right bucket.
Why This Matters for the 100-Hour and 500-Hour Tests
To qualify for the STR loophole under Treas. Reg. §1.469-1T(e)(3)(ii)(A), two things have to be true:
- Your average guest stay is seven days or less, AND
- You materially participate under one of the seven tests in Treas. Reg. §1.469-5T
Most STR owners use one of two tests:
The 100-hour test (Treas. Reg. §1.469-5T(a)(3)). You spend at least 100 hours on the activity AND no other individual spends more time than you do. The lower threshold makes this the more common path, but it has a catch: if your cleaner logs 80 hours and your handyman logs 30, you have to clear both of those numbers yourself.
The 500-hour test (Treas. Reg. §1.469-5T(a)(1)). You spend at least 500 hours on the activity. There's no "more than anyone else" requirement, which makes this the cleaner path when you have a heavy cleaning operation, a co-host, or a property manager whose hours might exceed yours.
Either way, guest communication is often the swing category. On the 100-hour test, it's frequently what tips you past your cleaner. On the 500-hour test, it's a meaningful chunk of the total when you add it up across a year of inquiries, check-ins, mid-stay questions, and post-stay follow-up.
When that category is tracked from memory or estimated at year-end, it almost always gets undercounted. When it's pulled from your actual messaging platform, you stop guessing.
For a deeper breakdown, see 100 Hours vs 500 Hours: Which STR Loophole Test Should You Use? and What Activities Count Toward STR Material Participation.
How to Connect Your Account
Setup takes a couple of minutes:
- In STR Hours, go to Settings → Integrations → Hospitable
- In your Hospitable dashboard, generate an API key (Hospitable's API access requires a paid plan on their side)
- Paste the key into STR Hours and select which properties to sync
- Done
The sync runs in the background after that. If you have multiple properties on Hospitable, you can choose which ones to connect, which is helpful if some of your portfolio qualifies under the STR loophole and some doesn't.
The integration itself is available to every STR Hours user. There's no upgrade or paywall on our side.
A Note on What Counts
Pulling messages into your hour log is a starting point, not an end point. Two things to keep in mind:
Substantive interactions count. Drafting a message, answering a question, troubleshooting a problem, coordinating an early check-in. These are operating activities under the regs and they belong in your log.
Automated messages aren't your time. If Hospitable sends an automated welcome message on your behalf, the seconds it took the system to fire that message aren't time you spent. Review the synced activity and exclude anything that ran on autopilot.
This distinction matters in audit defense. The Tax Court has consistently rejected logs that pad hours with activity the taxpayer didn't actually perform. For more on what auditors look for, see STR Loophole Documentation: Best Practices for Audit Protection.
What's Coming Next: Average Stay Tracker
The 100-hour test only matters if your property qualifies as an STR in the first place, which means clearing the seven-day average stay test under Treas. Reg. §1.469-1T(e)(3)(ii)(A).
Most STR owners assume they qualify and never check. If you have a couple of long stays mixed into a year of shorter ones, your average can quietly creep above seven days and disqualify the entire property without you realizing it. By the time you're filing in April, it's too late to do anything about it.
Up next in STR Hours: an average stay tracker that calculates this automatically from your reservation data, shows you where you sit today, and warns you if you're trending toward disqualification. Combined with the Hospitable sync, that gives you both gateway tests covered in real time. Average stay (does the property qualify?) and material participation hours (do you qualify?).
Get the Sync Running
If you already have a Hospitable account, open STR Hours and connect it under Integrations. Every guest message you send from now on becomes a logged hour you don't have to remember.
If you're not on Hospitable yet, this integration is a good reason to evaluate them. Their automations are some of the best in the STR space, and now they translate directly into IRS-ready documentation inside STR Hours.
Don't have STR Hours yet? Grab it on iOS or Android, or learn more on the features page.
This post is for informational purposes and does not constitute tax or legal advice. Consult your CPA for guidance on your specific situation.
The Bottom Line: Guest communication is the most under-logged category of material participation hours. The Hospitable sync makes it automatic. Connect your account in Settings → Integrations and stop guessing.
Ready to see if you qualify? Try the free STR loophole calculator →