Feature Requests

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1. can be done pretty easily since OR already provides payment link. Offer "payment plan" i.e ability to split payments for reservation at least x months away into 3 payments or monthly, with a small 'convenience" fee , say $5, for each.

2. Ability to use a field in post departure email that reflects "service fee" guest paid to OTA. There is a field already where owner can record an OTA fee, I suppose could be re purposed, but not available to use in template. i want to be able to send something " Please remember to book direct next time! If you booked direct instead of booking via {VRBO, AIRBNB etc}, you would have saved yourself ${service fee amount}.

Thank you, better. Now if I could only get a real vrbo inquiry!

Thanks Chris. I happened to look at the searches for my listings on HA/VRBO yesterday and found that I had dropped from around top 100 to about 2000 of 2500 listings in Galveston. I called HA and they said it was because my ratio of bookings to inquiries was low. They thought that my content was fine but advised I should look at my competition to see what they are doing or saying in their listings that I'm not. The fact is that I send an OR quote to the prospective guest right after I send an HA quote so I think what's happening is that a lot of guests are seeing that my OR quotes are about $100 lower booking cost than HA (because of their admin fee and insurance) and the guests are gravitating to the lower cost quote from OR. So I'm going to try to just let those book thru HA to see if I can get higher on their search rankings. They are basically catering to the owner that has 1 or 2 properties that let's HA system do everything. I looked and have a lot nicer properties at similar or lower costs than much of the top 100. Guess we have to play the game their way or get struck out.

Great tips and email template!

HomeAway strips out a ton of formatting from the email in their effort to block all contact info. They basically convert everything to plain text, and their conversion algorithm can jumble stuff up.

I had a look at your email template and there was still some hidden formatting in there that might have been confusing the HA system. I stripped every last bit of formatting for you -- AVAILGEN template -- try again and let me know if it looks better this time.

I wonder if we should have a "plain text only" option on templates just for this sort of thing, something that doesn't include formatting at all.

Just created auto responder and tested with VRBO.

Noticed a few issues with how formatting is handled.
1. If you are using bullet points in your template, they do not carry forward and text becomes all merged together without line breaks
2. Changed bullet points to separate lines. better.
3. Some words get stuck together with no spaces even though there are spaces in the template. I think it happens around variable fields or fields with format (bold, highlight etc). Suggest adding extra space before each variable field and remove any formatting as it does not show in VRBO anyway. here is the sample with :


Thank you for considering Blue Mountain Lodge for your vacation stay.

The dates you are inquiring about areavailable. Please see information about renting our cabin: <<< see "are available" merged

~ Blue Mountain Lodge is a private vacation home, rented out by owners (not a management company or an agent).

~ NO smoking ~ NO pets ~ NO house parties

~ Must be at least 25 years of age to rent, and be present during the entire stay; No third party rentals. Minors under 18 can only stay with parent, legal guardian or responsible adult, and must never be left at the property unsupervised.

~ No occupancy above 12 persons (which includes adults and children ages 0 and up) at any time during the stay.

~ Property is not reserved in your name until deposit (or full balance) is paid and booking is accepted. Availability is real time and may change after this email is sent.

~ Rental Agreement signed by primary Guest and copy of valid photo ID are required if you decide to book. If the required is not returned within 72 hours from booking acceptance, we reserve the right to cancel your booking and issue a refund.

~ 60 day cancellation policy (full refund if reservation cancelled by renter 60 or more days before the scheduled check-in).

~ We recommend obtaining Trip Cancellation insurance for your tripif your stay isduring winter months,or if you are concerned about possible Cancellation. <<< see "trip if" and "is during" merged

~ The exact address, driving directions and check in instructions will be provided after balance is paid and few days prior to check in.

~ Check in is3:00 PM ET and check out is 10:00 AM ET unless pre-arranged otherwise with the Owner in advance. Late check outs may be subject to docking of the deposit.

~ WIFI is available via satellite service (connection speed and availabilityis not guaranteed). <<< see "availability is" merged

~ Our cabin has front and back yard with firepit.

~ All roads leading to the cabin are paved.

~ 'Like' Blue Mountain Lodge on Facebook - we post updates, specials, or availability due to last minute cancellations.

Ah, very cool! I don't know why that didn't come up on Google when I was searching to be sure before posting here.

While it would of course be preferable not to have to turn PM tools on and pay more for the feature, eliminating the headache for me is honestly worth it, so I've turned it on and am setting it up now. Thanks!

We released portal access for employees/housekeeping last month: https://www.ownerrez.com/blog/portal-access-for-owners-and-staff-released. That allows you to grant access to see different levels of the calendar, from availability only to full financials, add access to block-off etc.

This is a feature that I would kill for (and, honestly, I just assumed would be included in the product and am disappointed is not included).

I have been fighting for two weeks with finding some way to publish the ICS feed in a manner my housekeepers can easily see and understand. I've tried embedding it as a Google Calendar on a Google Sites page, sharing on Zoho Calendar, using some third-party tool that isn't even actively published anymore (InstantCal), etc. None of them has proven stable and reliable and easy to use (for me or the recipients).

Right now, my housekeeper has my password to my HomeAway account. That's obviously not ideal, but it's the only solution we could come up with (she has other owners who do the same thing) to let her have easy access to my calendar, but it is still a semi-manual process as she needs me to manually provide her the door lock codes (based on the guest's phone number) for Airbnb and Flipkey bookings.

I suppose I can give her my login information to OwnerRez instead of HomeAway, but that seems like this should be something that I really shouldn't have to do...

This has now been released: https://www.ownerrez.com/blog/enhanced-autoresponders. We did one better than just the listing site criteria and added time of day criteria as well ;-)

Yep, this is rising in priority. We'll keep you posted as we get into it, but it should be soon.

I have asked about that also previously...

I would like to respond with different email content based on the listing site. Can you add the listing site as an option on the Auto Responders set up page? Since homeaway won't pass the traveler's email anymore at all, I need a different response from those i send to travelers that request quotes from my own website, and other sources.

Bulk import is not quite the same as WH rates are dynamic - they can be adjusted daily based on local demand, seasonality and other factors such as availability of inventory in the area. So I cannot be reimporting them daily :)
I have it turned on on AirBNB and TA, and while if averaged my rates are not far apart from WH rates, WH is more fine tuned to, for example, price some weekdays lower than I would but weekends higher than I typically would, and maybe even make rates look more appealing to the potential guests. I can live without WH on OR, as I can use TA rate set by WH for TA inquiries, ABB gets its own rates via WH and so on.

Your bulk import is a pretty good fit for me - thank you!

We've been in contact with the Wheelhouse guys, and an integration is possible in theory but we haven't yet completed it. Are you going based on their standard auto price or doing the detailed seasonal adjustments?

We do have a bulk rates/seasons import/export already. If you look under Tools you'll see a Rates/Seasons import (https://app.ownerrez.com/bookings/import/rateexcel) and Rates/Season export (https://app.ownerrez.com/bookings/import/rateexport) that's based on an Excel template.

Wheelhouse is a requirement for us, or a way to upload bulk rates via CSV or similar. We price every night of the year differently via Wheelhouse. At a minimum we would need to price 75 or so rate periods per year per property, which would be super labor intensive in the existing interface. Looking forward to continuing to use your service if we can come up with a rate solution!

Great! To be clear, triggers based on custom fields isn't something we have yet -- you'd have to send the emails using Email this Guest right now.

Or... actually, we have scheduled emails that could work for this. When you enter the commission contact info on the booking, also go over to the Emails tab and schedule the email. You've got to add the scheduled email manually, but that way it will automatically go out based on the date you select.

Thanks guys for your help! Yes, the listing site fees helps for sure. Will take a look at doing the triggers well.

You could track name, address, phone number in custom fields. And then commission in the listing site fee section like BlueMtn suggested. There's no way to do a trigger for that yet so you'd have to do that manually, but you could have a template for that at least. Sounds like it would be useful to have some trigger criteria based on custom fields -- like trigger only when field isn't empty.

I am starting to get more bookings from travel agents. It would be nice to be able to allow the travel agent to identify themselves on an inquiry. And then also keep track of the commissions due to them when the trip is over. A name address and phone number field and then a trigger similar to a security deposit release at the end of the trip to remind me to send the commission would be awesome.

Chris,
You are one fast mamma jamma! Thanks!

Great idea! I got this in to our most recent update, so if you go to Insert Field you'll now see fields for the day of the week as well as the full date.

It would be cool to be able to insert the day of the week into things like the legal contract. That helps people confirm things, like 'Your rental begins on Saturday, July 29, 2017'.

Prediction.... As long as VRBO and Airbnb get paid, and the money flows through them, they won't ever care about locking down the email address/phone number. It's not really possible anyway. They have to give you a phone number for the guest for emergencies and such, and as soon as you have that you can always call the guest and get the email. But I doubt they would want to limit the email address either - that just puts more of a burden on themselves for all the messaging and communication bandwidth. They'd just as a soon have you deal with the guest's messages. But they're going to get paid first - that's what it's all about.

I haven't heard any plans from VRBO to remove the renter email address after booking. We'll see if they stick with that, or if that, too, becomes something that goes by the wayside with them.

Aside from the inability to send a quote, have they locked down the ability to send an email through their 'walled garden'? For example, AirBnB has a walled garden and I never do see the guest's real email. (mind you I do get their phone number that I can text to... which technically does bypass their 'wall'). Regardless, when I get a booking from AirBnB, I am given a special AirBnB email address that I can use. I use OR to manage the reservation and send several emails to the guests automatically regarding access codes, cleaning, etc. I am aware that any site links will be stripped away and do not have them in my email templates to the guests. It works for me.

Is VRBO doing essentially the same thing? If so, then I have no real problem with it. Sadly I have given up quite some time ago on doing quotes and payments out of OZ. The triggered emails are what I now pay for. If VRBO blocks all emails, even from OR, then I too am hooped.

Right now, on VRBO I do not see the renter's email address until he/she books. After that it is revealed to me and I update it in my booking. It is a real email address. I guess they haven't fully built the 'wall' out to my part of the woods yet.... Mind you, I have not moved to the pay per booking model yet.

On a second topic, has anyone moved to the pay per booking model? Is it worth it?

That's wonderful!