Leaving Hostaway because of their booking fee?

Inquiry parsing for emails using custom SMTP headers

Send each inquiry email to the @inquiryspot.com email address that we provide for each OwnerRez user.  The first part of the email address should be the "oruxxxxxx" formatted number that is unique to each OwnerRez user account.  If you are integrated as a first-class channel, this email address is provided as the <inquiryEmail> element in the advertiser index feed.

When creating the email to send, your email code should append custom SMTP headers to the email which our inquiry parsing engine looks for automatically when the email arrives.  This allows us to maintain consistency in parsing the inquiry values even if your message body changes over time.

Testing parsed inquiry emails only work in the OwnerRez PROD environment, so users must have a PROD account to successfully test inquiry emails.

These are the custom SMTP headers our inquiry parsing engine looks for:

NOTE - any data shown here is example data only!  Do not actually use orp5b490bbx, Machelle Patterson, etc. - use the appropriate values for your particular case.

X-Inquiry-Listing: 125821
X-Inquiry-ExternalListingId: orp5b490bbx
X-Inquiry-Name: Machelle Patterson
X-Inquiry-Arrival: 2021-05-13
X-Inquiry-Departure: 2021-05-17
X-Inquiry-Adults: 2
X-Inquiry-Children: 3
X-Inquiry-Pets: 0
X-Inquiry-Comments: Love your place! Can we get a bouncy house?
X-Inquiry-Phone: (123) 456-7890
X-Inquiry-Email: guest@acme.com
X-Inquiry-Id: 029c37c2894646c18ae284ca09e57984
X-Inquiry-MessageId: ac2263d863af40a3ac2ed5141b15db54
X-Inquiry-TravelerSource: ACMEVACATIONS

Further Notes and Tips:

  • Listing is the listing number on the channel. It can be a text string or numeric.  It should be the identifier of the unique property or listing (ie. house) that the inquiry is being sent for.
  • ExternalListingId is the property number or listing identifier from OwnerRez.  This number should be in the "orpxxxxxx" format provided by OwnerRez and is common in our channel feeds.
  • Comments is optional and is the message or question the guest asked when submitting the inquiry.
  • Phone is optional.
  • Email is the guest's real email address where the reply (from the host) should be sent back to. If the guest email address isn't specified here, we'll look for a REPLY-TO header instead.
  • Id is optional. If specified, Id should be a string value unique to the inquiry so we can thread multiple messages to the same initial inquiry conversation.
  • MessageId is optional. If specified, MessageId should be a string value unique to the message so we can de-dupe. If you don't have multiple messages per inquiry, the Id and MessageId might be the same value.
  • TravelerSource is optional.  This is used to specify which sub-channel or sister listing site the channel sent the message from.  For instance, Vrbo might be the channel but the TravelerSource might have been Arbitrel.com or Holiday-Lettings or one of the child listing sites Vrbo owns.  Put a domain name as the value.  For instance, use "vrbo.com" instead of just "Vrbo".

Formatting:

  • Date fields (Arrival and Departure) are YYYY-MM-DD
  • Guest counts (Adults, Children, Pets) should be integers only, no commas or text