Touch Stay offers digital guest welcome books to help hosts provide guests with information about the property and surrounding area. Welcome books can be completely customized to your brand. Touch Stay integrates with OwnerRez to import your properties and then automate the sending of invitations for confirmed bookings.
- Steps for integration
- What Data is Transmitted
- How to send guidebook links to OwnerRez as field codes
- How to get guidebook shareable links
- Video
Steps for integration:
Before you begin, read the Touch Stay OwnerRez Integration support article.
1. Log in to Touch Stay or if you don’t have a Touch Stay account already, then sign up for one here.
2. From within your Touch Stay Account page, go to the Integrations tab and click “Connect” underneath the OwnerRez logo.
2. Once you click Connect, you will be taken to the OwnerRez authorization screen where you must authorize access to Touch Stay.
3. Once authorized, you can match any existing Touch Stay properties to those in OwnerRez. Use the drop downs to select the correct OwnerRez property for each Touch Stay guide. When complete, click “Match selected”. If you don’t have any to match, then just click “Skip” without choosing any OwnerRez properties. If you don’t see any guides on this step then they are already matched and you can move on.
4. If you have any unmatched properties from OwnerRez then the next screen allows you to import those into Touch Stay. Simply check the ones you want to import and click the “Import rentals from OwnerRez” button. If you don’t want to import any, or don’t have any remaining, then just click “Skip” whilst leaving the selections blank.
Touch Stay will import the following:
- Property Name
- Property Address
- Main photo
5. Matching or importing rentals won’t automatically sync bookings from OwnerRez, so now is the time to check the content of your welcome books and make sure they’re in tip-top shape and ready to share with your guests.
If you’re new to Touch Stay then checkout out the Getting Started page for hints and tips on the quickest way to build out your welcome book content.
6. Once your welcome books are ready and Memo message templates are in place then you can start syncing your reservations with OwnerRez. Go to the Account page, then the Integrations tab and within the Settings menu for OwnerRez and click the “Reservation Sync Settings” option.
Next, set the “Send links to OwnerRez” option to “Yes” and then from the dropdown, choose the Custom Field Definition (see how to do this here). Select which guides are to have the sync active by marking the check boxes, note the “Select All” option at the bottom left. Click Save when ready.
From this point onwards, any confirmed bookings in OwnerRez will generate email invitations based on the reservation details and your Touch Stay scheduling. Note that this only applies to bookings confirmed after you start syncing, Touch Stay won’t automatically send invitations for any existing bookings.
What Data is Transmitted
Touch Stay currently just syncs reservation fields via webhooks for near real-time updates. These are the data fields they import:
- Standard fields:
- Guest name
- Guest email
- Guest phone number
- Reservation check-in date
- Reservation check-out date
- Optional fields:
- Reservation check-in time
- Reservation check-out time
- Reservation ID
- Reservation Form Key (Review ID)
- Reservation Door Lock Code
How to send guidebook links to OwnerRez as field codes:
When your Touch Stay and OwnerRez accounts are connected and you’re ready to start syncing reservations, you can optionally choose to send each invitation link back to OwnerRez for use in the OwnerRez messaging system, as well as using Memo (or instead of). This can be useful if you want to take advantage of the message triggers in OwnerRez and, for example, only send your guidebook link to guests after they have paid their deposit in full or signed your terms and conditions. If this sounds useful to you, then these are the steps to follow.
1. Create the Custom Field Definition that will store the link on the OwnerRez booking. Be sure the Type is set to “Booking,” select Plain Text for the Type, give your field definition a Name and a Merge Code, then click Save.
2. In Touch Stay, go to the Account page, then the Integrations tab, and within the Settings menu for OwnerRez find the “Reservation Sync Settings” option.
3. Next, set the “Send links to OwnerRez” option to “Yes” and then from the dropdown, choose the Custom Field Definition created in Step 1 above. Select which guides are to have the sync active by marking the check boxes, note the “Select All” option at the bottom left. Click Save when ready.
4. Add the Merge Code for your Custom Field Definition to any relevant message templates in OwnerRez. Wherever you place this merge code in an OwnerRez message template it will be replaced by the link to your Touch Stay guide when the message is sent out.
Pro-tip: if you add your merge code to a link in your OwnerRez message template then this will create a clickable link for your Touch Stay guide in your OwnerRez message. To do this you will first need to copy your merge code and then use the link icon on the OwnerRez message template toolbar. Select “Custom Web address” for the link Type and then paste your merge code into the URL box.
A note about OwnerRez message timing:
One “gotcha” to be aware of is that there will be a slight delay between the booking arriving in OwnerRez and the link being sent back from Touch Stay whilst our respective systems process the booking, generate the link and pass it back. This means it is not recommended to add your merge code to OwnerRez messages which are due to be sent out as soon as the booking is received. In this case, there is a risk the message will send out from OwnerRez before the invitation has been processed in Touch Stay and the link sent back to OwnerRez. If that happens, then the merge code will contain a blank field and the link will not be included in the message. Be sure to only use your merge code in OwnerRez messages which are either timed, or based on conditions that are fulfilled after the booking has initially been received.
What happens if I’m already using Memo?
If you’re already using Memo, then when you activate the “Send links to OwnerRez” option (Step 2 above) we’ll send the link for all your future bookings to your chosen OwnerRez Custom Field Definition. Note that we won’t change any of your existing invitations in Touch Stay, so your Memo messages will all continue to send from Touch Stay as scheduled.
If you want to stop using Memo for future bookings then you would need to archive the relevant Memo message templates. This prevents them from being added to any future bookings that come in. See this article for more details about archiving your Memo message templates. Note that archiving message templates won’t affect any existing invitations, if you want to cancel any Memo messages that are already scheduled, then that will need to be done manually by removing each message from the relevant invitation.
If you decide to stop using Memo for some, or all, of your messages, it will likely be easiest to transition away from using Memo and allow existing guest invitations to complete their Memo message journey, rather than deleting scheduled Memo messages and then trying to set up messages in OwnerRez to catch each guest at the correct point in their message journey.
How to get guidebook shareable links:
Note: Each of your guide books has a live website link that you can share with your guests. For a fast and easy way to download all those links simply click the button and choose the download format. If you have a single property and don't want to use the download option, head to the Invite and Share tab of each guide to find the Quick Share link.
Video:
This video will walk you through setting up your Touch Stay account, connecting it to OwnerRez and how digital welcome books work on Touch Stay.