Did you know that today is National Plan for Vacation Day?! Fingers crossed that guests are planning to book your vacation rental today!
Or maybe, you should start planning your vacation today? Either way--while you are waiting for all those new bookings to roll in, take some time to review the January 27th release with 12 updates.
Enhancements & Tweaks
Links to OwnerRez Status Page
We know that users are jazzed about our new OwnerRez Status page, and we are too! So jazzed, we've added links inside the app and on the OwnerRez website, so users can readily access it. Here are the two spots:
Click on the ? drop-down from the top menu anywhere in the OwnerRez app.
Click on the Status link located in the OwnerRez website footer.
In addition, on the splash page that is shown during maintenance, there is a new paragraph that states:
For live status of OwnerRez, visit the OwnerRez Status page which will show known incidents and problems.
Prefer a direct method of getting to the OwnerRez Status page? The URL is status.ownerrez.com - we encourage everyone to bookmark it! I know, I've said it before, but I'll probably repeat it!
Booking/Quote Early Check-in/Late Check-out Time Improvements
Check-in and check-out times can be an intricate dance between the previous guests, incoming guests, cleaners, door locks, maintenance workers, etc., especially when that day includes a turnover. And we all have had those nightmares of guests checking out late, guests checking in early, messed up calendars, sick cleaners--you name it, any of these scenarios can create havoc.
Of course, guests can request early check-in or late check-out times (Airbnb has made that especially easy - some would say, too easy!), and we as users can sometimes accommodate those requests, but sometimes those requests are cutting the times too close for comfort. Airbnb, in particular, only supports whole hours for check-in/check-out times, meaning that it is possible to have a messy scheduling situation.
For example, if your property rules include a check-in time of 3:30 p.m., it is possible that Airbnb, which does not support 30 min incremental times, would move the check-in time ahead 30 mins to a 3:00 p.m. check-in time, rather than later by 30 minutes! This little 30-minute change has the potential to create chaos.
So for Airbnb, we updated check-in/check-out time requests to round pessimistically to the next hour for check-in, and the previous hour for check-out times. For instance, if an Airbnb guest requests a 3:30 p.m. check-in time, OwnerRez will now display that request as 4:00 p.m. Conversely, an 11:30 a.m. check-out request will display that request as 11:00 a.m.
Additionally, we updated how the booking and quote added system alerts, including Third Party Alerts (TPA), display the check-in and check-out times that are outside the property rules to give users (and TPA recipients) a better heads-up so that they can decline requests or prepare accordingly. New alerts will display the standard check-in/check-out times with a strike-through as set in the property rules, and the new check-in/check-out times as shown below. This now matches the formatting of the booking changed system alerts.
Sticky Save & Cancel Buttons on Form Footers
Have you ever made a bunch of changes in your OwnerRez account and forgotten to hit save? Oof--how frustrating! Especially if the form or section to complete is lengthy. We recognized that some pages (Properties' Rules and Amenities) are remarkably long and detailed. To benefit our users, we have applied sticky bottom/footer functionality to in-app forms where the Save/Cancel buttons "stick" to the bottom of the screen, as shown below. You may have noticed that it has been this way in the Properties' Photos edit/change area for a while, but it was time to add the behavior throughout!
Bug Fixes
Cancellation Fee Creation Bug Fixed. Several users noticed this bug when creating a Cancellation Fee, whether while writing a Cancellation Policy or creating one from the booking cancellation screen. Upon saving, it would display raw code (that you should never see!) The fee was saved in the background, but users wouldn't necessarily realize it, so they might create multiple cancellation fees under Surcharges. This is now fixed.
Cap Property Maximum Nights Rule to 1100. Following Airbnb's lead of capping property maximum nights to 1142 consecutive nights, we capped the property maximum nights rule at 1100 nights (i.e., just over three years) and added the appropriately displayed tooltip to inform users. Any user that had their property maximum nights set greater than 1100 now has their property maximum nights set to 1100 and was also notified directly by us.
Timezone Addition to Dates in iCal to Fix Outlook Import Failure. We released this bug fix that explicitly includes the booking/blocked-off start and end times relative to the property's timezone with the dates for every event in the iCal, instead of including the timezone once for the initial event creation, which sometimes resulted in events being changed into All-Day events (and losing the start and end times) after that initial sync. That's what Outlook was looking for, and it solves the date layout issues for those using Outlook for viewing iCal feeds from OwnerRez.
Fixed Issue With Brivo and PointCentral Lock Integrations. When OwnerRez users using either Brivo or PointCentral lock integrations had set the departure grace period setting to "Code works all day," the locks could be deactivated at 12 a.m. (midnight) on the day of check-out causing guests to get locked out of their vacation rental on the morning of check-out. We corrected this to ensure that check-in/check-out times are defined even if the booking and property have no times specified (i.e., the "Standard" times).
Correct Issue Where v2/owners API Could Return an Error Converting an Owner Phone. We realized that sometimes the v2/owners API would produce an owner phone error despite the owner's phone number being correct. We have fixed this problem.
Include API Query Parameter Descriptions That Were Missing From API Support Documents. We have included formerly missing API Query Parameter Descriptions on the OwnerRez API v2.0 documentation.
Include From/To Guests API Query Options. We have improved queries to begin the index with the user ID and then the date. This allows the query to start from the booking side, find the matching dates quickly and filter that down to matching guests.
New Backdated Product Updates available since last time:
- ECBYO & Florida Rentals API Integrations & more as we close out 2022!