Impute surcharges into the nightly rental rate

Is there any way to impute certain surcharges into the nightly rate? Kind of like Airbnb is doing?

Because multiple line items of surcharges is a turn-off for guests and many platforms are trying to reduce the line items for extra fees. Yet we still need to charge for some services to cover some costs without necessarily showing the guests every single fee separately (I.e. accidental damage protection and other miscellaneous items surcharges)….

Surcharges are currently broken out as separate line items… The guests don’t really care if it’s classified as “rent” or “surcharge”. What they care about is the line item…. And I was thinking of having the option of imputing the fee into the “rent” line item without breaking it out into a separate line item….

Hi Maged:

For Airbnb, you should be able to roll surcharges into rent.

For Vrbo , if you mark the surcharge as "categorize as a rent. line item"
You can also go to Pricing Preferences:
https://app.ownerrez.com/settings/pricing
Test those on Vrbo from a guest perspective and for direct bookings, by creating a quote.

Thanks Adria

Hi Maged:

For Airbnb, you should be able to roll surcharges into rent.

For Vrbo , if you mark the surcharge as "categorize as a rent. line item"
You can also go to Pricing Preferences:
https://app.ownerrez.com/settings/pricing
Test those on Vrbo from a guest perspective and for direct bookings, by creating a quote.

Thanks Adria, 

But the problem is that rent is still broken out… The guests don’t really care if it’s classified as “rent” or “surcharge”. What they care about is the line item…. And I was thinking of imputing the fee into the “rent” line item….

Unfortunately I can’t include a screenshot over here but even if it’s classified as a rent item it’s broken out as a seperate “rent line item”.

Can you write in to our Helpdesk and include some specifics as to whether you want this to be direct or which channels & your screenshots?

Hi they’re the ones that directed me here (for new feature requests)….

I think that the issue is mainly with direct bookings because all of the details are broken out in different line items in the charges that go to the client.

The platforms lump everything together so it’s not an issue on the platform side.

I had a look at your OwnerRez Pricing Preferences settings and they're all still configured to show the guest a detailed breakdown which is why the clients are seeing each item.

Update your settings to a) categorize the surcharges as rent and b) collapse the rent lines together via the "combine all rent lines together" option, as shown in @Adria's screenshots, and the clients will then see the rolled up rent total line only rather than individual lines. If you only categorized the surcharges as rent but didn't enable the "combine all rent line items together" option, then that only changes the category displayed for those surcharges to rent but doesn't combine into one item. Those are two separate settings and both need to be updated.

Once that's done, you as the owner will still see the breakdown, but when the guest sees the quotes or emails for direct bookings, they'll only see one "Rent" item with everything rolled together.

Does this work for cleaning fees as a way to embed them in the nightly rate?

Yes . When i mark "classify as rent" it is rolled into rate for display 

I had a look at your OwnerRez Pricing Preferences settings and they're all still configured to show the guest a detailed breakdown which is why the clients are seeing each item.

Update your settings to a) categorize the surcharges as rent and b) collapse the rent lines together via the "combine all rent lines together" option, as shown in @Adria's screenshots, and the clients will then see the rolled up rent total line only rather than individual lines. If you only categorized the surcharges as rent but didn't enable the "combine all rent line items together" option, then that only changes the category displayed for those surcharges to rent but doesn't combine into one item. Those are two separate settings and both need to be updated.

Once that's done, you as the owner will still see the breakdown, but when the guest sees the quotes or emails for direct bookings, they'll only see one "Rent" item with everything rolled together.

 Thanks Chris. I had done that but it had still shown the breakdown so I reverted. I hadn’t realized that we will still see the breakdown but that it will be rolled up into rent for the guests.

I’ll test it out today.

Also should we checkmark this option: “Auto-generate the charge description based on the amount above (recommended)” ?

try and see

Hi Maged,

That setting is neither her nor there, really, when you're rolling those Surcharges into a single line item. You can leave it checked, and it won't impact the end goal here.

What that "auto-generate" selection does is allow for those charges to be described within the line item when a guest is looking at a breakdown. For example, "Pet at $50 per stay" could show up as the description in the line that the charge is displayed on.

Since your direct book guests will no longer be seeing those Surcharges broken out individually, this setting will make no difference.