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I wanted to let you know that I just emailed HomeAway, hopefully all here will do the same and hopefully they will "hear" us...
Wendy
Hi Randy,
The larger properties owners will be spared some of the hassle because HA/VRBO tends to you view you as a property manager, and they are much more hands-off with the property manager. Generally speaking, anyone with 5 or more properties on HA/VRBO has all their inquiry emails left alone which means you can continue seeing/responding to guests directly. You will probably not notice much, if any, difference.
-Michelle
Hi Jacques,
Thanks for your words of support. Many listing sites do offer a commission structure but that locks you into dealing 100% with their web software. So answering the guest and getting payment must be done entirely on their website. In the case of Air, they no longer show you the guest email EVEN AFTER the guest has paid you. You have to use a proxy email address. We are working on a way to integrate some of this so that you can click links to answer on the third party website while returning booking data back to OwnerRez.
-Michelle
I'm not sure what I'm getting right now that will be removed. I have 8 properties on homeaway/vrbo and all are on OR. I use iCal for the calendar updates. The change that I have made recently in my inquiry response process is that I use the homeaway system to quote and the OR system so my potential guests are getting 2 quotes from me. The OR system is a lot more friendly for guests since it automatically charges the 2nd payment and automatically reserves the security deposit. Homeaway handles those tasks differently and is not as friendly as the OR system.
Thanks for keeping us in the loop. Sorry for the problems with the processor and homeaway, but I'm not surprised. That seems to be how business runs - stiff everyone as you go bankrupt, but keeping giving bonuses to your CEO, or the flipside of squeezing every last dollar out of an industry by forcing your way into a semi-monopoly through acquisitions, intentional failure to interoperate, etc.
Any suggestions for a best bundle of advertising sites to use instead of homeaway and the other sites they own/run? Looks like a couple of them offer 3% commission instead of upfront charge (flipkey, airbnb), which for my rentals would be a fair tradeoff, as they generate moderate amounts each and have a high percentage of repeat renters.
That sounds fantastic, thank you.
Wendy
Yes absolutely. That's the next step here. We're looking at a number of merch providers who are cheaper than the 2.95%. We'll help you move away from the Cornerstone account you have now, but only if you want. I believe you will want to. There are a number of cheaper vendors out there.
Got it, will you be looking for another merchant account provider that may offer better rates? less than the 2.9%.
Glad to know I don't have to switch, but don't want them adding their fees either since my contract says $0 in fees, so will wait and see how they do.
Wendy
Hi Wendy!
Paul, Sam and Chris are responding to requests about this - we should have been a bit clearer in the blog post and email.
We will STILL CONTINUE TO SUPPORT THE SAME MERCHANT ACCOUNTS as always. In other words, the same Cornerstone/Sage/SecureNet account that you have now will CONTINUE TO WORK FINE in the future.
Your second payment and security deposits and everything will remain as they are now. Nothing technically will change. You do not have to switch merchant accounts.
The issue here is about how you are billed by OwnerRez. In the past, we did not charge our normal software fees to users that had the OwnerRez/Cornerstone-created merchant account. We recouped fees through the merchant account so the monthly software fees for those users were $0. If you go to Account > Billing in OwnerRez and look at your monthly invoices, you'll see what I mean. That is what will be changing. In Feb, all users will be billed the same for using OwnerRez no matter what merchant account you use. You can continue using the same OwnerRez/Cornerstone-created merchant account you use now, but your OwnerRez invoices will no longer be free.
Hope this helps,
-Michelle
So are we supposed to look for an outside merchant account to add to OwnerRez or are you going to be offering another merchant account option?
Wendy
Thanks for the updates on what is going on over at OwnerRez. I'm disappointed you've had to make these changes and a little confused about the credit card situation so will have to get into that separately. Will be emailing HomeAway also...
Thank you for your site and look forward to other improvements. I hope your business doesn't suffer because of these changes.
Wendy
Recently, we've been forced to make a corporate decision as it relates to pricing.
Users will no longer have free service in exchange for an OwnerRez-created merchant account.
We will be contacting each OwnerRez merchant customer directly about this news with more details on why we are making this change and the history behind it. The details are not something we want to share on our public website as it involves some bad acting on the part of our merchant account partner.
This was a very hard decision to make and something that we debated for more than six months. In the end, we were forced into making this change because of our merchant account partner's actions.
If you are not an OwnerRez merchant customer but would like to know the details, please contact us directly and we'll let you know.
What Will I Be Charged?
All customers, whether you use an OwnerRez-created merchant account or not, will begin paying the usage-based pricing that is listed on our website for all invoices created after February 1, 2015.
For instance, if your invoice day is in the first week of February, that invoice will show usage-based pricing for all bookings that were created during the month of January.
We know some customers will be frustrated with this change. More than half of you have been merchant customers and have never paid monthly fees. Please give us time to explain the details to you, by email, and we hope that you'll understand why this change is necessary. We are working on developing monthly fees that are not usage based for those customers that prefer that type. In the meantime, thank you for using OwnerRez and we look forward to a great new year of features in 2015.
One of the first goals we had, from the very beginning, was creating a simple way vacation rental owners could keep their HomeAway/VRBO calendars up to date and collect inquiry data across multiple listing sites in one central place.
This is part of our fundamental goal to be the best neutral vacation rental software on the market. We want to work with all listing sites, but we don't want to be part of - or influenced by - any one of them in particular. And we want you to be able to manage your guest data in a neutral central way.
Over the past several years, integration with HomeAway has gotten increasingly difficult to maintain as HomeAway continues to increase the security of their websites and hide the guest information you pay to see.
We have maintained an open dialogue with the HomeAway development team and continued to ask for APIs and other industry-standard ways of sharing guest data - again, data you pay for - but those needs have not been met.
The latest increase in HomeAway security is a 2-step authentication requirement which requires the user to get a phone or text message before logging into the HomeAway website. While we have developed programmable ways of integrating with this, it is fraught with uncertainty and our testing has shown less than desirable results.
Even more heinous, the HomeAway login screen is now using a fingerprinting technique to 'remember' the user's computer, but the technique is extremely buggy. During our integration testing, we found that we could access multiple user accounts even after restarting the browser and clearing login data!
This testing has shown us that their latest round of security updates is not well developed and is prone to errors and attacks.
Given this current state, and the belief that HomeAway will continue to hide guest data and make access difficult, we have made the official corporate decision that we will no longer integrate with the HomeAway/VRBO family of websites with respect to using the user's credentials to update their account.
In other words, we will no longer "crawl" your HomeAway listing to do updates. This applies to calendar, inquiry data and any other data associated with HomeAway listings. If it requires our system to use your HomeAway login, we don't do it.
We will, however, continue to integrate with HomeAway in public ways that do not require your login. For instance:
There will be a lot of disappointment over this, I'm sure, but we sincerely feel that there is little choice here for us to make.
I'd like to note that virtually every other vacation rental software provider - all of our competitors - have had to do the same thing. Over the past few weeks or months, they've been slowly turning off HomeAway integration except for the larger accounts that have at least 5 listings and support the PM API.
This decision to turn off HomeAway integration is not the fault (or desire) of neutral software providers like OwnerRez. It is the fault of HomeAway for making purposeful decisions to block you from your customer data and force you to use their reservation tools.
And would you do us a favor? Tell HomeAway how you feel about this. Contact them directly and explain that, as a customer of HomeAway, you'd like them to provide direct integration with software providers like OwnerRez so that you can manage your bookings more quickly and efficiently. If they mention using their own reservation software, remind them that you have listings on FlipKey, Airbnb, your own website and elsewhere, so you'd prefer that they integrate with neutral software providers like OwnerRez.
The good news is that we will have vastly more time to spend on features that you've been asking for.
One of the big drawbacks to supporting listing site integration, where it required crawling, is that is sucked a lot of energy from our development efforts. Every time HomeAway made a slight change, our crawlers had to be adjusted, tested and re-released. We have had to delay numerous new features - auto responders, rules, booking widgets, better notes, etc. - over the past two years because of setbacks with crawling. No more! We look forward to putting these efforts back on the front burner and getting them out there!
Hi Claudia,
There are three separate things here.
The notes can be found on the booking. Open any booking and look for the Notes tab. Any notes entered will also display on the booking overview page.
The early/late indicators can also be set on the booking. Open any booking and look for the Dates tab.
The Double Blind settings can be found in your linked accounts. Go to Settings > Linked Accounts and click to edit the settings for VRBO, HomeAway or FlipKey. You'll see the new settings at the bottom under the property match-up area.
Where do I get this screen?
Claudia
Notes
Need to jot down a reminder about the guest or booking? Want to flag the booking as having a problem? You can now do that directly on the booking. And anything you write down in the booking notes can be found in search.
Early check-in and late check-out
You can now set a specific check-in and check-out time on the booking, alerting your staff when a guest is arriving early or leaving late. The booking ribbon and calendar views also show indicators so that you're reminded in the future. You can also create email templates for the early/late check-in/out time so that your guest gets a confirmation of the change. Your third party people (staff, housekeepers) will also receive a notification just as they do when the dates change.
The "Double Blind" Email Problem
The major listing sites (FlipKey, VRBO) have been making it more and more difficult for you to see your guest's contact info when they send inquiries. We've tried addressing this by incrementally updating our inquiry parsing engine, but it's come time to think outside the box.
In the "Sync Settings" for a linked account, you'll now notice some double blind email settings at the bottom. This will allow you to direct your inquiry responses (the emails that say "yes, we're available") back to the guest through the listing site's internal messaging system instead of to the guest's real email address. This may be necessary for several reasons:
We'll be making lots of changes to our inquiry response process over the next few months as we work to close the gap between the listing sites' policies and your need for central management.
Michelle - Thanks for the quick response!
Yes we would specifically like to include the "notes" field from the booking section in an iCal feed. We would use this to communicate with our staff regarding guest specific items such as extra bed setup etc.
It would be really cool if we could eventually pick the items (fields) to include in the iCal feed just like we can in the email template section. Meaning pick and choose from {Guest Name} - {guest Phone} - {Guest Email} etc. etc. etc.
Hi Chip, we don't have custom field support inside of the iCal description but that's a great idea actually. You're looking to have a way to use custom fields to customize what your employees see in the description field only? Or elsewhere too?
We would like use the iCal feed for our cleaning - maintenance crews but can't figure out how to include the notes field from booking or any other custom field. We need to notify crews of extra bed setups - repeat customer that requests certain amenities etc. etc. Help?
No, this is currently only for the scheduled emails. We're working on a bigger email overhaul that will add a bunch of other things and make the property selection apply to all template types, but that's a bit further out.
I see this for scheduled templates. Do you have it for quotes?
Thanks, Claudia
I think an overall repeat % like you mention above. By pure repeat I'm computing not based on single stay multiple units booked but rather multiple stays.
I have another idea if interested email me directly damon@marinasedge.com
Damon
Those are some great ideas! I'll look into adding them in our next release.
One question: what exactly do you mean by "pure repeat booking rate"? Is that something you would see next to each guest in the repeat booking report? Or are you looking for a percentage that is total number of repeat bookings vs. total number of bookings overall? Like, "out of your 5324 bookings, 759 were repeat bookings, giving a 14% repeat booking rate"?
Chris,
This is outstanding! I just looked at the repeat guest report and have a couple of potential improvements.
--Would it be possible to separate the repeat guests from the guests that do multiple bookings by evaluating if they had stays in different time frames?
--If the total $$value of these customers was displayed it would allow us to offer them perks, etc.
--Finally, having a pure repeat booking rate is really the single best indicator of the overall experience of our guests. If you could display this... Awesome.
Thanks again, this is great!
We just released a new version that adds better tracking for what listing sites have sent you inquiries and bookings, as well as the ability to easily see when you're dealing with a repeat guest.
Listing site conversion tracking and report
An important component of effectively managing your advertising is being able to see which sources drive the most inquiries, and from those inquiries which convert most into bookings.
We've added a new Listing Site Conversion report which you can see under the Reports section. This allows you to analyze the data in your OwnerRez account and easily see where your inquiries and bookings come from.
Repeat guest tracking and report
Its good be able to know if your guests have stayed with you multiple times, so you can give them extra care or target them specifically in a remarketing effort. We now detect repeat guests by email address in inquiry, quote, and booking overview pages and display a badge that allows you to click and see their previous bookings. You can also go to the Repeat Guest report in the Reports section to get a list of all repeat guests in your OwnerRez account with their stay dates and number of times they have stayed.
We've been hard at work for a long time on several large updates. It's taken a lot longer than we thought, so we've started to break out smaller updates that we can release independently.
Over the past couple of months, we've released the following updates:
Yeah, mine is new. Thanks for all your help!
Looks like they grandfathered in old plans: http://help.flipkey.com/hc/en-us/articles/200903347-Subscription-Pricing, but it sounds like yours is new?
Looks like FlipKey has disabled the ability to bypass their booking system.
http://help.flipkey.com/hc/en-us/articles/200903127-Pay-Per-Booking-Plan-#id.fjj8u2l0v5a
Damon
That makes a lot of sense. I actually set up my account and they defaulted to allowing FlipKey payments, and I can't figure out how to turn it off.
I'll contact them!
Thanks
