Yes, VRBO is going full-Airbnb. There are still some users getting email addresses in their inquiries. Other users can copy/paste the guest's email address out of the VRBO control panel into the OwnerRez inquiry. But in general, it should be assumed that sooner or later, VRBO will be like Airbnb end to end. You will have to respond in their message thread (either by email or in the control panel) and no guest email address will be provided until after the booking is made.
Now, what does that mean for OR...?
We have seen this coming for a long time. There is now more of a need than ever to use a 3rd party independent management system for your bookings because the listing sites will never provide you the tools to properly market and care for your records, especially across multiple listing sites. As the walled gardens go up, and the walls on the existing ones gets higher, it is extremely important to export that data out and make sure you are centralizing your records AWAY from the walled gardens. Expedia, as a corporation, has zero incentive to provide rich management/marketing tools for you (the owner). They have EVERY incentive to NOT build those things and lock you away from your customers as much as possible.
That being said, how are bookings managed if the listing site locks down the up front lead/inquiry? Couple of things...
You should assume that you will need to respond through VRBO message thread (if not now, then soon). We are working on an inquiry/email overhaul that will work WITH this message thread. You'll respond through OR and your messages to the guest will go back through VRBO, using the proxy email they provide, to update the VRBO message thread and get to the user. It will be plain text only (since that's all VRBO and Airbnb support) and links and emails won't work since they would just get stripped out anyway. But you'll be able to capture the message thread in OwnerRez so that your records stay centralized.
If you still have access to the guests' email address when they make an inquiry (even if you have to login to VRBO to copy/paste it out) you should still use that. Talk to guests directly as possible as much as you can. To get around the response rate counter, just send a "Hi, I've sent you an email directly. Please give that a look" which tells VRBO that you responded.
After a booking/payment occurs (on VRBO or Airbnb) that information will get exported back to OwnerRez automatically, via calendar import and through email parsing. We'll capture that VRBO/Airbnb email and "clean up" the booking record with more information as it comes in.
To help with post-booking/payment "clean up", we'll be adding forms that the guest will be directed to get things like:
* Their real/full email address
* All phone numbers
* Their POC name and guest list
* Sign the renter agreement in OR
* Credit card for security hold
* Other rules/things to agree to
This clean up process will be dynamic so that the guest is automatically asked for it after booking (you don't have to send an email) and will be based on the things you want to collect if you want to.
We have been hard at work for awhile on a number of these things, or the things under the covers that are needed to support what is coming.
Also keep building your own personal marketing channels! Your own website, your FB page - it is important to use those tools as much as possible. In the near future, we may have some diabolical tools to liberate guests who are visiting listing sites. ;-) Have a place where they can land! Have a website ready where guests can book when they figure out that they don't have to pay service fees!
