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I actually sent this over to the engineers to investigate. It looks like VRS has done some work I'm not familiar with.

Hoping to get clarity here. Ken - you say OR receives nothing back from VRScheduler, VR Scheduler sold me in part on the ability to be able to send expenses back to OR - https://help.vrscheduler.com/article/552-pushing-work-orders-into-ownerrez

https://help.vrscheduler.com/article/552-pushing-work-orders-into-ownerrez

What about expenses/invoices? I was hoping that functionality was such that billable items could be sent to the expenses for a property directly from VRScheduler?

OwnerRez does not have a concept of work orders, so there is no need for VRS to send them to us.

Bringing this back up because I believe VRScheduler allows you to send information to OR, but I can't figure where I can see that in OR. Does anyone know if you can actually send a 'task' - aka - a work order, to OR from VRScheduler? If so, where do we see it?

Hi everyone. Does anyone know where I can find just a basic vacation rental manager agreement? Thank you in advance.

No, I think it was just a coincidence that I got two bounces from Airbnb (for two separate guests) in a row. Other emails seem to have been going through and getting opened, so false alarm.

Are you still seeing this? We haven't heard of any widespread issues after the email option is turned on correctly.

I have it turned on but starting yesterday, it seems emails are now failing (I'm getting bounces, and my guests are telling me they haven't received the door code email). I need to do some testing to see the extent of the issue, but for now, it appears broken. :(

Signed up for Resort Cleaning in March and has been working great for cleaning - not so much for maintenance work orders. Now looking into VR scheduling but really need a solution that is a 2 way integration so we can push the owner billable work orders as owner expenses on statements.

Hi Lisa, there was a post about this from OwnerRez support. There's a setting on Airbnb under Account - Professional Hosting Tools that you can turn on. It's called "Allow me to email documents to guests".

I am thinking of switching to OwnerRez from another Channel Manager. Has there been any indication by OwnerRez how this will work next month when Airbnb removes the pass through email address and moves all communications to their app only? To be clear, I do not take people off platform but I do use Gmail to send communications to their platform and use my channel manager to send attachments and to automate communication with guests. That seems like it will be impacted and I don’t want to make a complicated move I will regret.

As it happens, this past week's survey asked about this topic. Some channels on there we're considering (or already working on) adding:

https://www.ownerrez.com/blog/what-channel-api-changes-should-we-make

"Google Hotel Search" and "Google Hotel Ads" are the official names. There's a Hotels API but the specs are built for store-front style hotels that are open to the public and have unit inventory. If you're on B.com, you'll already appear there but then the guest will go through B.com to book which nobody wants. Hopefully, we can pursue it in the near future and get something stood up.

We explored a couple channel managers and even got close to integrating with them a couple times. In the end, this was our view:

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/channel-management-third-party-middle-channel-managers

Yes, I really didn't like providing "Hulu + Live TV" as a replacement, because people associate Hulu with a cheap, possibly failing version of Netflix. Would totally have picked a streaming service that was called "Streaming Cable TV" or something that made it seem like it had all the stuff that cable people like.

Glad it works for you.
I found that even paying HK extra will not solve this - They will still not do it but just tell me that they did. That is why I ended up hiring a guy who is not affiliated with housekeepers who also does small handyman type of jobs for me. He goes either regularly to do bulbs/filters/etc or on request to address minor guest complaints etc. It runs me more than you pay per property per month but he also sprays for bugs monthly.

I feel your pain, believe me. It took a long time and we've fired more than a few. One of the things we do is pay a monthly maintenance retainer to all of our housekeepers with the expectation that they will:

- Come in before the guest arrives and look for stink bugs to vacuum or things to freshen up, the morning of or day before arrival, even though cleaning was finished days earlier

- Stock consumables (paper products, batteries, light bulbs) and go to town when needed even if it has nothing to do with cleaning

- Be willing to do flat-rate service calls on weekends or holidays. They're paid for the service call separately, but they agree to be available and not ignore us when we call.

- Be willing to answer the phone during off hours if we need help or guest needs information (TV wasn't set to the right input, hot tub light won't turn off, whatever) and they can't get our main line. They are basically listed as a back-up contact number to call

They get 150/month per property flat regardless of cleaning for doing the above. The better cleaners value this position. They have 3 or 4 properties on the same street so they can group the above stuff together - easy money. Most of them are married and both husband and wife and maybe a grown child or two helps as part of the "team" so one person isn't doing it all all the time.

It helps to have multiple teams in an area. Tomorrow they could all quit of course. 🤷‍♂️ There is no perfect final solution.

So far so good. I just looked at my calendar, and we are onto our 11th customer since the switch, and I've only had email about it. Hulu got logged out, so I just emailed them the password (hopefully they don't bring it home).

Someone mentioned Sports, and it was in the back of my mind that at least right now, there are no sports. Some of the streaming services do offer NESN, which has our local sports teams.

1 thing I am concerned about is if the Roku starts adding channels on its own, it will confuse people. I really want it to have just the 2 choices. Once you're in Hulu w/ the live TV it really does look just like cable.

I'm probably saving a lot more than you, because I have 4 cottages on the same property, and each has just 1 TV. DirecTV was charging me for a couple different residences, while with the streaming services, I can just pay the same as 1 house.

-JJ

That was my biggest concern! I wish Google had named it something different.

AFAIK, YouTube TV has the best interface. At least back when I was looking into things (year-and-a-half-ish ago), DirecTV Now (now rebranded AT&T TV NOW) had a better channel selection (and slightly better video quality) for a similar price. Although now AT&T TV NOW has increased pricing and reduced channels, so I'm not sure it's still the best choice (mom is grandfathered in).

For a VR, though, given the cost/interface/features, I think YouTube TV would be the best option as a cable replacement. Although you might end up field inquiries from people confused about YouTube vs. YouTube TV. :P

Right, it's your account, not theirs. The point is to set up the TVs that way and then they turn them on and have no need to use their own accounts - it's all set up and paid for. I have signage asking them not to sign out or use their own accounts. I figured a bunch of people would but very few actually have because all the apps work as soon as they turn them on. Between bookings, the housekeepers check the TVs, and apps on each, to make sure they are signed on correctly. It hasn't been a problem for us at all.

If it becomes an issue in the future, it's easily solved with a network controller. For that, I'd recommend the Ubiquiti UDM-Pro or some of their other hardware.

YouTube TV is a totally different product/service than regular YouTube. Take a look here:

https://tv.youtube.com/welcome/

Keyword there is "TV" next to YouTube. There's YouTube and then YouTube TV - two completely different things.

It's a drop-in replacement for regular TV and far better in most respects. You get all your local broadcast channels (local Fox, ABC, etc), all the normal sports channels (ESPN, FoxSports, etc) and dozens of premium cable channels (TNT, AMC, etc). All the cable news channels as well (MSNBC, Fox News, CNN). They have add-ons for HBO and all the rest, though you could just pay for those apps directly.

It also has a cloud-based DVR which means unlimited storage and a lot better controls for what tapes, which devices can play it back (paurse/resume on others). It doesn't actually record off of your internet, so the DVR doesn't use any bandwidth. It basically uses referential markers to what shows you want, where you played last and so on. Then it streams everything on demand.

There are a bunch of others out there like Sling, DirectTV Now, Hulu Live and so on, but I've found YouTube TV to be the best. Whether you do it for a vacation rental or not, I would highly recommend switching to it for your personal use over cable.

Anyway, maybe I am behind times but I cannot see how Netflix replaces normal TV. Also You Tube - all I see is people putting various tutorials or "how do I replace a light switch" or funny videos of cats and dogs or old movies or previously aired TV episodes on you tube. Which is fine and dandy if that is what you want to watch after wading through bunch of menus. But how does that replace normal TV?

Yes, that's true, but these are guests logging into their own Netflix accounts on my Smart TVs (and sometimes leaving them logged in when they leave, which I'm sure the following guests appreciate, LOL...I probably should train my housekeepers how to log out, but no one has complained yet).

Short of replacing all my 4K TVs with 720P ones, or maybe putting Mikrotik routers in all my properties and coding the QOS settings to limit bandwidth to streaming services, it's kinda hard to force the bandwidth to scale down in that case. :)

That said, we haven't yet had any month where we've gone _over_, as not every guest uses Netflix and watches it multiple hours every day. My point is mainly that video uses more data than most people expect, and so replacing traditional cable with streaming live TV services does add a consideration for people on limited bandwidth Internet plans.

Netflix has an account setting where you can force profiles to use less data. Looks like this:

That lowest 0.7 GB/hour setting is awesome and really conserves a ton of bandwidth. It also allows 4 TVs to stream at the same time on a mediocre connection with no buffering.

It can only be changed on the account after logging into Netflix in a browser, not in a Roku or their various apps, so the guest cannot change it.

Now, if you're an videophile, you might dislike the quality of it. It's somewhat noticeable that the black colors aren't as rich on the screen and you get slight pixelation when there's heavy action. But this is for guests, not me, so I'm fine with it.

Disney+ has the same setting to force the stream to much lower bandwidth, however that one can be changed on the app itself so if guests find it, they might jack the quality back up.

I really don't see the value in those channel managers. I briefly looked into them when they had a vendor booth at a past HomeAway Partner Summit, because they talked about being able to list me on Booking.com and other distribution channels, which was attractive to me at the time (side note: why I've soured on Booking.com is a topic for another thread, ha). But then I discovered that listing on Booking.com was perfectly easy and reasonable to do on my own (well, their interface is horrid, but that's also a topic for another thread), so I started to realize that there really isn't any value in paying someone else to do what only really takes a few minutes (or even a few hours on your first go-around) on your own.

And OR, especially with API connections, really makes it easy to do it all on your own. Whenever you load a new property into OR, it just takes a short while to write the content and upload and caption the photos, and then once you know what you're doing, it's literally just a few minutes of clicking around to publish those properties on all your API-linked channels (Airbnb, Vrbo, TripAdvisor, etc.). To me, RedAwning and Rentals United and all the other channel managers only subtract value.

Also, every listing from a channel manager I've seen on Airbnb (at least in my area) is extremely poorly written. The headline is completely generic ("2 Bedroom Condo 2.3 Miles From Silver Dollar City"), the photos are bad (the first 5 are all just generic external shots), and the copy in the description is completely generic and uninspiring. And the listings are always very lowly ranked (they appear near the end of the last page of listings) and the dates are often wide open, which tells me that they're not getting booked (the rates seem kind of out of whack, too). No surprise.

Honestly, if you can't spend the tiny amount of effort to publish your own listings on Airbnb and Vrbo, I would far sooner tell you to use Evolve to manage your listing instead of using something like RedAwning--it's about the same price, anyway, but Evolve at least puts some effort into writing decent copy and pricing the properties reasonably competitively.