In winter, I plot and plan. In spring, I move.
Henry Rollins' quote can best be interpreted as a metaphor for the different phases of life and the natural cycle of growth and progress. While winter can be seen as a time of hibernation and introspection, vacation rental owners wisely use this time to evaluate their business and determine what actions are needed to accomplish their goals, such as opening or optimizing their OwnerRez account to automate and streamline their vacation rental business.
The Spring Equinox marks the beginning of spring, representing a time of renewal and action. Spring is a vital time for vacation rental businesses as it signifies the start of the busy season when we experience a surge in spring and summer bookings.
But Rollins' quote can also be interpreted as a call to action, reminding us that the best time is now to spring into this latest product update detailing our March 22nd release with 15 updates. So let's hop in so you can discover all about OwnerRez's winter plans that have blossomed, including our new OwnerRez Vacation Rental Guides and the OwnerRez Read-Only Environment!
New Features
OwnerRez Vacation Rental Guides
Unleash the full potential of your vacation rental business with our new OwnerRez Guides!
Vacation rental guides are invaluable resources that can assist property managers and owners maximize their rental income and deliver an exceptional experience for their guests. These comprehensive guides provide actionable insights on establishing and managing a successful vacation rental property, including advice on choosing the right location, furnishing your property, pricing strategies, and marketing tactics. Additionally, they can offer guidance on maintaining your property and handling guest communication and inquiries. By leveraging these OwnerRez Guides, property managers and owners can streamline operations and ensure guests enjoy a memorable vacation rental experience. We'll add more in the coming weeks, so keep checking back!
Have suggestions or ideas for how to flesh-out these guides with more information? Want to contribute your own guide or add on to ours? Please let us know. We see Guides as being a living, breathing resource that will change over time. We would love to add some regular contributors to our Guides area, so let us know your thoughts!
OwnerRez Read-Only Environment
OwnerRez is committed to being your elite property management software (PMS) and channel manager, and that comes with certain expectations on your part and responsibilities on our part. That commitment includes transparent communication, numerous redundancies, keeping your data safe, and providing access to that critical data.
Part of that commitment includes implementing and providing a Read-Only Environment - a proactive and effective solution for our users that protects and provides continuous access to all their OwnerRez data.
The new read-only environment allows users to access their accounts without the ability to add, modify, or delete anything. Users are restricted from changing the data because it is essentially a close to real-time copy of the data in the main OwnerRez app. The OwnerRez Read-Only environment is also geographically distributed away from the main OwnerRez app's data centers. In the rare event of an OwnerRez disruption, users can navigate to Read-Only (https://readonly.ownerrez.com/), where the most current data before an interruption will be available.
The OwnerRez Read-Only Environment looks and acts just like OwnerRez, with several key exceptions:
- Users can view data, filter it, run reports, and even export data, but cannot make any changes or import data.
- Two visual indicators
- A large red banner at the top of the OwnerRez window states, "You are currently in the read-only environment and cannot make changes."
- The window is surrounded by candy-cane striping.
Like our OwnerRez Status page, we encourage everyone to bookmark the OwnerRez Read-Only Environment. The URL to get to Read-Only is https://readonly.ownerrez.com/.
Learn more by reading our OwnerRez Read-Only Environment support article.
Enhancements & Tweaks
OwnerRez's Channel Push Listing Services Optimized
OwnerRez's channel management feature allows our users to market and promote their property rentals on many API Connected listing channels, including Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, and many more. Rather than users uploading individual listings to each listing channel separately, the channel management capabilities save our users time and effort by enabling them to push their listings to multiple channels at once, increasing visibility and reach, and allowing vacation rental businesses to target different audiences across the various listing channels.
As each listing channel "push background service" has grown organically over time, it was time again to optimize these channel push listing services to sync more quickly and efficiently. Individualized channel push services for those channels that are push (not pull) benefit our users by optimizing their listings' changes and sync queue times.
Learn more about Channel Management by reading our API Integrations Overview support article.
Trustpilot Added as a Review Source
The reviews are in and OwnerRez is a 5-star winner! But we don't need to tell you, our users, that. We're preaching to the choir!
Trustpilot is a review platform that's open to everyone and reviewers are encouraged to share their experiences to help others make better choices.
When property managers and owners are exploring potential Property Management Software (PMS), OwnerRez rises to the top. Some of these top-notch reviews are displayed at the bottom of the OwnerRez Home Page, along with links to those reviewing sites, and we have now added Trustpilot as a valued review source.
Potential clients can see the Trustpilot icon beside the other review sources on our home page.
And they can also filter reviews by review source on our reviews page.
Have a friend that is searching for Property Management Software (PMS)? Be sure to send them links to our Why OwnerRez? and Reviews pages and your own OwnerRez Affiliate Link!
Have something nice to say about OwnerRez and want to spread the word on Trustpilot? We'd love for you to take a second and tell the world via Trustpilot!
Bug Fixes
Add More Details For "Unsupported Currency" Badge on Property Mapping. When OwnerRez users clicked on any "Unsupported Currency fix it" links, they were taken to the property area, but there were no currency settings there. The link has been fixed to now link to the user culture page instead of the property info page, and a tooltip has been added stating that the <current currency> is not supported, allowing the user to correct that.
Adding a Quote Validation Does Not Take Into Account Property's Timezone. OwnerRez users received the following error, "Arrival date may not be in the past." when creating quotes due to timezone differences. This bug has been corrected to look at the property's timezone, not the account's.
Deleting a Disabled Template Does Not Actually Delete It. We identified a bug where a template was disabled but that template was not able to be deleted. We have added a delete button when editing a disabled template. Trying to delete will make the template disabled if deleting is not possible, and we have added a confirmation notification explaining when deleting a template is not allowed. Additionally, we have changed the label on the batch delete process to clarify why some templates cannot be deleted, and why they will be marked or left disabled instead.
Don't Push Bathroom Count to Airbnb Because They Rely on the Room Data Now. Since OwnerRez pushes Airbnb room data that includes bathroom information now, it is no longer necessary to push the bathroom count to Airbnb.
Fix Owner With Portal Access Grant Link to Team Index Location. This was an edge case where a Property Owner added by an OwnerRez user no longer had the expected OR access. This occurred due to a bug relying on the pre-Teams expectations for a portal user and that owner got converted into a new Teams portal user. This bug has been fixed and the Property Owner access is correctly granted.
Grants Weren't Deleted When User Was Closed. OwnerRez detected an edge case where users that were closed out and deleted of a Team Access account switcher still had access when they should not have had Team Access any longer. This bug has been fixed.
Hosted Site Test Label Shows HTTP Instead of HTTPS. It was pointed out that the hosted site test label displayed HTTP rather than the correct HTTPS. This bug has been fixed to display the correct label of HTTPS.
Return 401 Status Code for No Portal Permission Case. Portal Team Access users received incorrect 200 error status codes when attempting to access a valid URL they did not have permission to access. We have corrected this bug to return a 401 NoPortalPermission unauthorized response status code indicating that the client request has not been completed because it lacks valid authentication credentials for the requested resource.
Show Correct Channel Name for Other Feed Based Channels (vs. only Vrbo) on "don't show secdep" Setting on Channel View Page. Specific channel names (other than Vrbo) were not displayed on the "don't show secdep" setting for API Integrated listing channel settings. This has been fixed and the correct channel name now displays correctly.
Show No Results Message On Grid. When OwnerRez in-app tables (Reviews, Quotes, etc.) had no data, the header alignment display appeared incorrect. This bug has been fixed.
When an Airbnb Property Reconnect Occurs, Correctly Detect Whether the Property Was already Connected. When OwnerRez users reconnect a previously connected and published Airbnb property, the system will now correctly detect the property status as previously connected and published on Airbnb.