Feature Requests

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Not sure if I'm missing something, but I'm not sure if you followed exactly what Chris said about.

I know I'm replying to an old post, but I've been trying to set up a custom listing site (my OR hosted website) and cannot figure out how to do it. I've looked under settings for "Listing Sites" but don't see it. I'm trying to do this so that when I send trigger emails they only go to folks who've inquired thru my web site. Thank you!

Yep, we're working on an overhaul of that section as we speak!

It would be nice to see linkage between triggers and templates directly in the template.

Spoke with Jim last night. Excellent conversation, working on that integration now.

You can communicate several ways:

1) Set up third party alerts or custom triggered emails to the cleaners letting them know when a booking is created or changed dates etc.
2) Set up a custom iCal feed and have them add it to their phone or google calendar
3) Use portal access to give them an account where they can log in and view the calendar: https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/portal-access

For more detailed cleaning management with assignment and acceptance etc. we are also integrated with ResortCleaning.

Is there any housekeeper functionality currently that would allow communication between myself and housekeepers? If there is, is there an article that would explain that best?

@Scott, we've considered channel bridge in Firefox and done some investigation on the workability of support. It is possible, as they have a similar extension structure, but we'd have to rewrite a good portion of the underlying code because it's not an exact drop-in. I use Firefox regularly as well and would like to support it, but it's a dev time and support trade-off between marketshare and extra time investment. If they do add the missing support for the extension features we need, so we don't have to rewrite things a different way, we'll probably do it at that point.

If you want to use Matomo, you would put their javascript tracking snippet in the Head HTML box on the site and it'll start tracking.

@JTVRs, ideally channel bridge won't be necessary after we have API integration with Airbnb, but there are still cases you want it to get certain data or in the case of HomeAway if they have a 5 property minimum for integration. Airbnb and booking.com have no minimum, but until HA and TA go to no minimum there'll still be a need for channel bridge for the smaller folks that don't have 5 properties.

Will a channel Bridge even be necessary once you finalized integration with the other major listing site in Airbnb?

Would you guys consider making a Channel Bridge Add-on for Firefox? The only reason I use Chrome these days is to use the Channel Bridge. If you haven’t used FF lately, it’s made massive improvements and is now sleeker and faster than Chrome, and has a lot of privacy protection components built in, unlike Chrome, which is basically a surveillance arm of Google.

Speaking of Google, instead of Google Analytics, which gives your website's data for free to Google, I would prefer to use Matomo, which is open source and far more advanced than GA and follows the strictest privacy guidelines. Would you also consider giving us the option of using Matomo, which is free when used on one's own website server rather than theirs?

Currently we don't have the option to tag a guest with a language, or vary up email templates based on guest language.

We do have several multilingual accounts and what they do is to include both English and the other language in their templates.

Am I just blind or is this not implemented (yet)?
I have my website localized in English and German, also the inquiry form works in both languages, but I am quite sure that German guests will except email conversation in German, especially when the send their inquiry using a German form.
So how can I make a set of German templates?

Yep, a guest app is a good idea for sure. We do have plans for that, but they're fairly far out based on some other priorities like channel integration that we're working on right now.

There are third party guest apps like https://touchstay.com/ that have some of those features.

I wonder if there is an app for OwnerRez for hosts and for guests.

I have ownerrez at my phone but an app for owners could be more user friendly.

Also have you thought of a guest app. Where they can send messages directly to the hosts from the app. They can see the address, wifi info, their door code, garage code, checkout instructions, check-in instructions, Area recommendations etc. Such an app would have made it great experience with the guests.

The plans I've seen aren't *that* much more expensive than normal TI. Normals is usually 8 or 9% and CFAR might be a percent or two more.

I suppose, but cfar is pricey...

It's not about legal fault. It's more about thinking ahead about human nature and providing a gentle landing for the guest before they run into this, get mad and start yelling and screaming. Guests have a lot of power via the credit card system these days. They can file chargebacks and disputes and tend to have a high success rate. We've heard of guests not showing up and calling their credit card and saying "product not delivered" because they never actually showed up and the bank gave them all their money back. The fact that there was a 10 page renter agreement, signed by them, doesn't always work. If you present the guest with a lot of chances to buy Travel Insurance and make it clear that things aren't covered and TI gives them a way out, you tend to get better results down stream. Even if they didn't buy it, it's in their psyche that it's their fault and the entire cost is on them because they chose not to buy TI.

That might be true, a lot of guests will not use trip insurance. I'm not sure why you feel is your responsibility for something like this. As long as your legal agreement is Ironclad. Everyone in that area will have red tide, it is not your fault or responsibility when something happens.

No updates or ETAs yet but thanks for the nudge. We have a clear path forward to offering CFAR (which means "cancel for any reason", for those that don't know). We just haven't gotten there yet.

Hi Chris -
Any updates on the CFAR Policy implementation? Right now, Red Tide is not considered an acceptable reason to cancel a trip to our beach place in Florida and receive reimbursement under a standard trip insurance policy. CFAR is the only one that will cover it. Last year, we were left in a bit of a pickle-- refund guests' money (ouch!) or keep their money and lose them as future guests. Moving the reservation just kicks the can down the road. Thanks as always for your help.

Yep, we have assignment and acceptance for housekeepers on the todo list. It's been demoted a couple times for channel integrations, most recently Airbnb, but once that's done a housekeeping module will be at the top of the priority list.

Yep, we have plans for both categorization of expenses and surcharges as well as tracking maintenance.

We're currently working through channel integrations, most recently Airbnb, but once that's done those other tracking things will be high on the priority list.

This is an excellent idea that I could use as well.

It would be helpful to have a report that displays what properties are check in /out by housekeeper.
I have 4 different housekeeping companies and it's time consuming to export and then have to sort the reports by properties that each company cleans. It would be awesome to assign a housekeeper to a property and be able to run a report by housekeeper. And/OR have the portal access have a field that assigns the access to an owner vs a housekeeper and let the housekeeper be able to run the Daily Checklist report to see who is checking in/ out and staying. Easy view to read for everyone.

Add a new report to track maintenance issues or use the Expense area and add a catergory (picklist)
Expense: Maintenance, Housekeeping, General, Admin ,etc.
This way you can run reports on expenses by category by property.

It would be nice to record all the times a PM has to go to a property and record the reasons why. You can currently use expenses but it would be great it it could be separated out on the PM statement.

A lot of the stuff is out there - articles, forum threads, etc.

I am a writer by trade. There is two parts to documentation 1) content and 2) getting people to that content.

The main problem I am finding in setting up, is it is a fishing expedition to find applicable explanations and grasp stuff to apply it. You would spend less time explaining some stuff to forum questioners, if you organized 80% of the stuff most people need to get set up. The search box for support is a messy way to figure out how to do things.

The forum model is weak, as once something is a few weeks old, it rolls off from view. You should manage Forum threads with people looking back, in mind.
-- Add a NEW forum category on top "Helpful Articles about OwnerRez", where you can put threads to past articles and past forum really useful posts that might help people. Make it Read Only. People know how to find the forum.
-- Add a NEW forum category called "Setting Up Your NEW OwnerRez Account". Put it second. If things get in it that don't apply, move them to the proper forum category.
-- Forum category "General Help and Questions" is the most popular, so maybe rename it to "Help With Your EXISTING OwnerRez Account." Make it the third forum category. Again, If things get in it that don't apply, move them to the proper forum category.

But I do not think this is just an OwnerRez problem. Any sophisticated, complex product will take a lot of thought. That is why some spend hundreds in a one-time setup cost. It has some merit, offering it as an option.

I would focus on tutorials and videos before articles.

Proper support - articles, tutorials, videos - is our number one problem by significant margin. We have some major updates coming on that but tend to be slow on actually delivering on that side. Our main www site is years behind. The Features/Tour area is laughably out of date. 😥 Frustrating but fixable!

I am in many groups and my observation is that many people are somewhat intimidated by the set up process and do not use OR to even half of its capability. Are there any videos or slide shows stepping people through basic set up, defining property and amenities, hooking into major OTAs( and I don't even mean channel integration - just icals), setting up auto responders with templates, rental agreements etc.

Even in Smoky Mountains Owners group where many use OR I still notice that many basic features seem to be not understood or under utilized.

Am I that one user that every IT implementation has who knows just enough to be dangerous? :-) LOL

Indeed. At least if you're the size of Airbnb or HA. Agoda and some others have signed with us but they're too small, buggy to be worth the while yet.