General Help and Questions

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here is update. If you are a VHR owner, your listing has been migrated
To TA/FK interface. everything, to me , looks like FK. Except you do see travelers contact.
You still need to log in and make some updates:
Tax rate; cleaning fee; booking deposit; features etc.
What I did is I set up "other" email address with "inquiryspot" address.
On OR side, you need to set it up as "Flipkey" listing site and make sure you enter FK/TA property number there. It works. moreover, inquires originated on FK version of your listing will come to OR as "flipkey". Inquiries from VHR site will show as "Tripadvisor".

issue with FK/TA side of things 9at least for me) - is that a) they can only allow to define booking deposit as a percentage of total (mine is fixed number $300) and b) they only allow to define "weekend" as Fri Sat or Fri Sat Sun. My weekends are Thu Fri Sat or Thu Fri Sat Sun. So quote displayed on Ta side will NEVER match the OR quote because FK/TA treats Thu as weekday (weekday price). I expect traveler complaints.

If it doesn't parse through correctly (into OR as an inquiry with all the fields filled in) just let us know the inquiry number or URL. You can send that to the ticket system at help@ownerreservations.com. And thanks!

I just sent myself a test inquiry. You can use it for format. Where you want it forwarded?

They've contacted users in the event that they can't figure out which VHR listings match up with TA listings. If you don't have TA listings, they probably just moved your VHR over. No need to refund or call you in that case. My information here is from users and 3rd parties, not TA itself, so it may not be 100% correct. I'm just reporting what we know on this side. If you start getting new inquiry emails with a different format, please forward that to us (or let us know the OR # or URL of the inquiry) so we can get a hotfix going for the parsing.

I am A VHR subscriber, and I have not been contacted to close my listing nor sent a refund. Only thing change is that when I log in to VHR it takes me to TA dashboard. All VHR and TA side reviwws have been combined and now seen on both sides. Thanks

@BlueMtnCabins: TripAdvisor has been steadily closing all the independent VR brands they own (VacationHomeRentals, FlipKey, Niumba, HolidayLettings) and merging them into the TAVR platform so that all brands are fed by TAVR listing data. They have been contacting owners and sending refunds for VHR listings over the past few months. We do not have any updates yet about what the VHR inquiry emails will look like, so we can't update our parsing engine yet. At the moment, the VHR inquiries remain the same. Only the owner dashboard side of VHR has been turned off.

Do we need to change our settings for email parsing etc now to Flipkey?

Thank you. this is not a frequent scenario, but this year it did happen! Thankfully, wile group #1 was going back and forth with me, Group #2 booked Dec 23-28, so not an issue this time:)

Hi BlueMtnCabins,

Very sorry for the long delay in responding on this! Missed it until today. Thanks for the nudge.

There isn't a way, at the moment, to handle to that type of situation. We'd need to add a property rule disallowing check-in on specific dates (or days of the year) or perhaps holidays. That's not something that we currently support.

If the housekeepers were willing to work those days, it might actually be a good thing because then you'd have two groups you could bill for holiday rates! But it's understandable that they won't.

-Michelle

?

Never had this happen before, but got an inquiry from people who want to check in on Dec 25th (Christmas day). We do not allow Christmas Day and Christmas Eve check ins because housekeeper will not work on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. If I allow check in on the 25th, it would mean that prior guests MUST check out on 23rd or place will not be cleaned in time for the 25th check-in. That wastes valuable high-demand high priced days.

Is there any way to set up seasons/rates to allow check in on the 23rd or 26th, but not on the 24th and 25th? While still keeping 5 night min etc? I .e so that they can check in on 21st, 22nd, 23rd and check out on 26th or later?

I have same scenario with Thanksgiving, just until this year never had anyone who wanted to check in on a day of a holiday itself.
TIA

I did have one conversion for a shoulder season rental which was perfect.

It's the pinned post on the page - https://www.facebook.com/jimandkellys/

Any conversions to bookings? Can I share your ad?

I've been dabbling with FB ads for a month or so. Here's my experience:

1 - Mondays produce the most traffic to my website
2 - One should be very specific in their post to generate traffic
3 - I've found that my cost per website click was about .50
4 - Make sure you "target" your audience by selecting interests, age groups and geography.
5 - Create an instagram acct for your page and link the 2 together.

As a side note, 90% of my FB traffic comes from mobile devices. If you want them to visit your site make sure your website is responsive otherwise you are wasting time and money.

Thanks. I'm just beginning the journey. The fundamental metric I want to produce is cost to acquire a customer.

Can U point me to documentation for GA,? I haven't instrumented yet...

Looks like we were showing either season based rates if you have them OR all seasons rates if you didn't have season based rates.

Just pushed up a hotfix to show both at the same time if you have both. Look good on your end?

Interesting coincidence -- I was just looking at the FB pixel tracking stuff the other day. We should be able to implement that similar to how the Google Analytics integration is done -- you put your FB id in user settings, and then we render the code for different events.

GA renders the following right now:
- pageview on widget view, quote accept (checkout) pages, one-off payment pages, hosted website page view
- BookingStarted event on "book now" button click in book now widget
- InquirySent event on "send inquiry" button click in book now widget
- Booked event on booking complete
- Ecommerce transaction on booking complete

Looking at the FB docs (https://www.facebook.com/business/help/952192354843755), we could do this:
- ViewContent on widget view, quote accept (checkout) pages, one-off payment pages, hosted website page view.
- InitiateCheckout event on "book now" button click in book now widget
- AddToCart event on "send inquiry" button click in book now widget
- Purchase event on booking complete

For views related to a property, pass content_ids with the property id and content_type product.

For events related to a checkout, pass content_ids with the property id and content_type product. Also pass value of the booking total and currency.

Does that sound like it'd work? Any other events you'd like to see triggered?

I've seen a lot of interest on doing FB ads, but no real numbers or experiences on whether its cost effective. Would you be interested in doing another guest post on the blog about your experiences? The one you did a couple years ago on analytics and continuous improvement was excellent!

I'm experimenting with FB ads and I'd like to measure the conversion rate for people clicking "Inquire Now" button.

Here's the custom code they say to add to my site (but I'm not a developer)....Do you have any guidance on how to do this?

<!-- The below method uses jQuery, but that is not required -->

<button id="addToCartButton">Add To Cart</button>
<!-- Add event to the button's click handler -->

<script type="text/javascript">
$( '#addToCartButton' ).click(function() {
fbq('track', 'AddToCart', {
content_ids: ['1234'],
content_type: 'product',
value: 2.99,
currency: 'USD'
});
});
</script>

Hello,

I have 3 seasons (peak, fall transition, spring transition) and my standard rate. The rates table shows my 3 seasons rates but not my standard rate. Please advise

I have not seen it again

We weren't able to reproduce the issue from scratch. Have you seen it crop up again?

I'll get another couple pairs of eyes on it and see if we can find anything.

Any news on this?

Hey, just wanted to let you know we just released ecommerce tracking. If you have ecommerce enabled in your Google Analytics account and your GA id set in your OwnerRez account, conversions will start flowing.

This is the ecommerce plugin, not enhanced ecommerce plugin.

Let me know how this works for you!

I just emailed them...stay tuned. This is a killer feature that I want to incorporate

I just looked at my page views comparing AirBnB listings to VRBO listings. February is always one of my biggest months for people viewing for summer bookings. For the first time AirBnB had more page views than VRBO.

Just sayin.....

For what it is worth Airbnb now helps with tax collection.

One of my properties is in Arizona where local regulations require me to collect and remit occupancy tax. True to American government form - taking something simple and making it as complex as possible - there are FOUR separate occupancy taxes to collect and remit. Even trying to follow all the rules I just yet again found out that one of the taxes that I am collecting - privilege tax - (oddly named), has yet another set of slightly different collection rules than the other taxes based on the length of stay of my guests.

VRBO leaves you out in the cold on this... up to you to figure out how to define your taxes and apply the tax rules. And of course they only allow for one blended tax rate, not the 4 different types with different rules. Arg.

AirBnB now automatically calculates the occupancy tax on a booking, adds it to the renter booking charges, and submits it on your behalf. How nice is that!!

Glenn

Hi BlueMtnCabins,

That's a really great question! I believe that all TripAdivsor PM accounts are subscription based but I'm not 100% sure on that. The big thing is getting PM turned on to begin with. They have changed requirements over the years but they tend to only do it if you have 5 properties or more. We are hoping that they open this up to more and more owners, not just the big guys, because it's such a great feature to be able to use.

-Michelle

Hi Jim,

Take a look this support article on the subject:

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/damage-protection-overview

Does that answer all your questions? If not, please ask!

PS. If you notice in that, we do recommend having both damage protection and a security deposit in place. The security deposit is good for making the guest be careful because their money is on the line.

-Michelle

Is it possible to get more info on damage protection? Perhaps details on how claims are paid / processed, documentation required, etc ...

One fear is that without a deposit the guests may not be as careful with our belongings.

Is anyone using it and if so can you share your experience.

Thx,Jim

Is this for Tripadvisor subscription listings or pay per book? Sounds like subscription for PM?