General Help and Questions

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Love to join the FB group and answer questions about OwnerRez (and VR marketing in general).

I'm at: https://www.facebook.com/programcsharp

Currently, no, they don't auto sync. You can do another import again using the tool whenever you want -- it'll tell you it can't overwrite existing bookings/blocks, but will add new ones.

Automatic sync for VRBO iCal is high on our todo list right now -- after we get the current set of things we're working on (hosted sites, call center, pm, etc.) out, that'll be top of the list -- probably a month or so.

After the initial import of my bookings from VRBO to OwnerRez, will I need to manually add all subsequent VRBO bookings to my OwnerRez calendar? In other words, am I correct that VRBO bookings don't automatically sync to OwnerRez?

Good news about Yapstone. That will gain you easy VRBO and HA business.
Don't know whether Square does online processing but given the nature of our business, I'd think that they'd have to since most people transact from a distance and property owners wouldn't be swiping a card. I know that quite a few folks are using it who do vacation rentals. Sorry I can't be more helpful on that. I glanced at their website but didn't see anything about it.

Yapstone, yes. In fact, we had a set of meetings with them awhile back and discussed integration. We haven't pushed that through yet, but that's definitely on the roadmap.

Square we haven't looked into. Isn't Square usually "card present" transactions where you swipe card using your smartphone? I don't know if they have online/ecommerce integration, but I'll pass this request along to the dev team.

My friend was wondering if you were considering Square or Yapstone, since they were already pretty heavily represented and used among the group.

Thank you! This is great. I am on a private Facebook group with about 1000 members and just about everyone is looking to create their own websites and integrate booking, reservation management, calendars, etc. I am answering some questions there as I get them about OwnerRez. I spoke with the moderator and she wanted to extend an invitation for someone from OwnerRez to join the forum if they would like to to answer questions that might pop up from prospective customers. This is a very motivated group of folks. Already a half dozen or so of us are using OwnerRez right now, but we're all pretty new at it, and sometimes we have a hard time finding the info on the website (sorry! it can be a little confusing). If you or someone else there would like to join the Facebook group, please let me know and I will provide your FB name to the admin. It would just require a low key presence, not be salesy but be informative.

Hi Nancy,

Thanks for spreading the word and recommending OwnerRez! We really appreciate that!

I just created a payment partners support page here for you:

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/payment-methods

So you could send that to your friend.

Thanks again,

-Michelle

My feeling is that a Facebook, Google or Amazon should jump on this and just create a sophisticated classifieds setup with a simple subscription fee. They could do this in a heartbeat and if they don't get greedy, could immediately gain hundreds of thousands of customers. They'd have the reach and marketing dollars to promote it and have it be successful right from the get-go.

Hi, a friend is interested in signing up for OwnerRez and she wanted to know all the different payment partners you work with. I'm embarrassed to say that I could not find this on the site. I know I've seen it somewhere, could you please let me know where it might be?

Thanks! We've actually had our own website since 2008 (incorporated the booking widget last year), and it does seem to generate some independent inquiries, in addition to a large percentage of repeat customers (one sent me a pic from when he was there as a kid in the 1950s). The HomeAway family seems to be less useful and more annoying every year...

I hate seeing the few gaps in our calendar, but last year I was a little too busy to push a lot of CL ads, and vacationrentals.com discounts, etc and we did end up filling pretty well at full price. The people who book at a steep discount at the last minute rarely become solid repeat customers who book early... Maybe the best move is to do nothing :).

I wrote a blog post on the topic awhile ago with some ideas: https://www.ownerrez.com/blog/7-ways-to-promote-your-vacation-rental -- it's been a few years since then (and I should update it), but most of the ideas still apply there.

@Jacques: Greetings! Congrats on the great rentals and being able to fill so well. You're 100% right about the direction of the industry. HomeAway/Escapia have made a lot of bad decisions (at least for owners, maybe good ones for themselves). Customers are super unhappy.

There are some great looking independent sites that have sprung up (eg. HomeEscape.com) but they don't have a lot of market penetration yet.

I would suggest two things:

* diversify as much as possible by putting listings on HomeEscape and other smaller listing sites (and then direct guests there when you get the chance to build that audience)

* build and run your own small website for your properties

We're coming out with a new Hosted Sites feature that will make that 2nd one easy pretty soon. But you don't even need to go with us. You can set up a pretty cheap Wix or Wordpress website. The key is to start building your own brand. You'll be surprised how many inquiries and bookings you get directly, at your own website, over time. We have widgets you can drop in that make inquiries, calendars and booking really easy. You just need a website to stick them in.

Doing your own website gives you a place to hang your shingle so that you can start directing guests there or sending emails from that domain name. Over time, your guests will come back to you and you'll build your own repeats. When people search for your town name in NH on Google and "beach house" your website will start popping up in search results.

Some of our smaller users who have done their own website now get a TON of inquiry/booking traffic directly to their own website. As much as half or more of their traffic. Link to your website from anywhere you can. Some of the listing sites let you link to your personal website from your listing.

Bottom line: diversify away from VRBO/HA any way you can. If you use them as the only (or primary) channel for everything, you'll sink with them when they make bad decisions.

It is something we've thought about doing for sure because of what the big guys have done in the past few years but it is a very hard market to break into because of the saturation that the big guys have. We could certainly build the listing site, easily enough, but then you have to market and promote it and try to drive it to page 1 on Google for common searches. The big guys have saturated a lot of that space. Also, it then takes away from our focus on the back end management which we do really well and have a lot of passion for. So long story short, we'd like to but it's a big undertaking and not something to do on a whim. ~Sam

Devin and staff, thus would be a great time for you guys to fill in with your version of a listing site for Vacation Rentals. Does this sound like something you can get into??? It is ripe for the picking. Be like what VRBO used to be. Just simply a listing site.

I have 4 rentals that share a beach area on a small lake in NH, USA, ranging from $500-$1700/wk in summer, totaling ~$70,000 in bookings last year. Repeat business is about 50%, maybe more. I had been using vacationrentals.com annual subscription, and occasionally other 10% off the top places, craigslist, and some more localized cheaper spots. I think HA bought VR, and then was bought by Expedia ... And, it keeps getting worse for customers and owners, it seems.

I just got a communication from vacationrentals.com about a change in their policies, which was clear that they are pushing more towards taking 10% of everything, AND selling their undercoating. This, combined with a recent phone conversation with a tenant who bought all their undercoating, really got me ready to move on. I'd happily pay 10% advertising fee for new bookings if I could do the paperwork through ownerrez.

My cabins happen to be 1BR, 2BR, 3BR and 4BR. The 4BR is booked from June 10- Sep 11, without a single day gap. The 1BR has 45 days available in that timespan, but often fills much closer to the travel date (2 people can make decisions more quickly than a family/2families).

Thanks for the reply Michelle,

I'm be looking forward to the widget being available. I imagine with all the owners stepping away from VRBO and HomeAway they will be very keen to be able to bring reviews with them to help them rebuild their business as quickly as possible.

Thanks for all the great work you're doing!

Rebecca

Hi Rebecca,

We do actually have plans for reviews, yes! We've had a couple of small projects on the back burner for that for awhile. The idea is to collect reviews from the listing sites (VRBO, FK, Air) if you have the mapping configured in our system so that we know which property goes to what listing. Then there would be a widget for you to display on your website exactly as you describe.

I don't have a hard ETA on this, but it's something asked for before and something definitely on the roadmap.

-Michelle

Greetings!

So far I love Owner Rez. At the moment I am trying to come up with a way to allow guests to review our property on our website. I realize there are a number of third party widgets available, with the more capable ones coming with a monthly fee. However, it seems that it would make more sense for a review widget to be integrated through Owner Rez. I'm sure I can't be the only one asking this question, are there any plans to introduce reviews?

On another note, I'd love to hear from anybody that has brought VRBO reviews onto their webpage, and how they went about doing it.

Thank you to anyone who replies!
Rebecca

Michelle,

Thanks so much for answering my question. I am familiar with CSS so I will look into that. I am using the Wix website builder and will have to see if the CSS file is a possibility with their templates.

-Janice

Hi Janice,

There isn't a specific setting on the widget that lets you change those colors.

However, there is a CSS Url field you can use to host your own CSS file and override any style/color you want. This is a bit more involved, particularly if you're unfamiliar with CSS. Do you have any experience with the CSS standard?

-Michelle

I see the ribbon and text settings, but somehow I'm missing how to change the calendar frame from the default aqua color.

Hi Michelle, good morning.
Yes, it worked!
Thank you,
Ella

Good morning Ella,

The delete issue should be fixed now. Please try to delete this on your side, and let me know?

Thanks,

-Michelle

Hi Sam, could you please delete it on your end?
Ella

@Ella: We're looking into the delete problem. This should have been fixed long ago, maybe it snuck back in in a later release? ~Sam

Hi again,
I have the same situation. I have a scheduled custom email with a reminder for security deposit payment. However, now that you offer such reminders in your system, it makes no sense for me to send one.
I am unable to delete it and get a "server error" message. Could you please delete it for me? This is for booking ORB430449.
I guess the problem still exists that once custom email is set up it cannot be deleted by us?

Do you use a separate refundable deposit charge on the Charges section?

Earlier, I was talking about the built-in security hold configured here: http://imgur.com/ylSRTzd . Those values are defaulted from the Property rules on quote creation, but can be changed per quote if you so desire.

I will need to look into this further to see what I may have done wrong. I didn't include a SD in the quote to this guest, just rent and tax, so I'm not sure why it was including one when I went to approve the payment. There are some guests I charge SDs to and others (repeat guests) where I waive it.

The security deposit rule is controlled in the quote. Problem here is, once you create a booking off of the quote you can't change the quote values. Pending bookings are a edge case, sort of half quote, half booking. I'll look into adding something that lets you modify some settings if the booking exists but is still pending.

In the meantime, I turned off secdep for that quote in the backend. If you refresh the page, you should have the option to confirm without taking the secdep.