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Get started with Monthly Rentals by Owner & American Snowbird by visiting here and checking out the OwnerRez support article for how to integrate OwnerRez with Monthly Rentals by Owner & American Snowbird.
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GuestView Guide was shut down on October 31, 2024.
Join us live on June 20th with the team from GuestView Guide as we share expert insights and tips on identifying, promoting, and nurturing your local relationships. These strategies can help increase your company's bottom line and strengthen your network within the community.
You will learn the importance of building strong relationships with local businesses and how these connections can help you drive new business opportunities, improve your overall profitability, and generate more bookings and revenue for your vacation rental business.
The session is free to join, but you must use the GuestView Guide webinar link to register.
You can find all our upcoming and past webinars on our Webinars page.
Stan Ingram, of Gulf Style Rentals, employs the “Golden Rule” when it comes to providing vacation rental experiences for his clients - give them the experience he would want to receive as a guest. Gulf Style Rental delivers, achieving a 5.0 rating on Airbnb.
My hosting journey began when my wife (at the time girlfriend) was illegally subletting her apartment in New York City. When she was traveling, she hosted people via Airbnb, and she really enjoyed it. Her reviews were incredible because she provided a clean space, and fast, clear, and thorough communication. After purchasing our first rental condo in the Destin, FL area in January 2021, our property manager over promised and under delivered so I decided to take over. I had to cancel my first booking so it was a rough start, but things have improved since then. That condo has 130/130 5-Star reviews on Airbnb. We have also purchased two other rentals, and I manage 25 other properties in the area. My mission is simple - I take pride in delivering the hassle-free, memorable vacation that I would want as a traveler.
My professional background is geology where I worked in oil and gas evaluating prospects for drilling. This is a data-intensive field (the more data, the better the evaluation), and I have carried this use of data into the VR business. OwnerRez has some useful data tools, and I really enjoy using AirDNA and PriceLabs to see how my properties are performing. On the personal side, my family and I did (and still do) a good bit of traveling, and some of my most vivid and happy memories are from traveling.
I love exceeding guest expectations, and I am still thrilled by a positive, detailed guest review. For some of my guests, this might be their only vacation of the year, and vacations should be a time for fun and memory making. For many of my guests, this could be their only vacation of the year so it's important that I deliver. Also, at times it has been painful, but I enjoy building a company, setting up processes, and delivering value for my guests and my property owners.
Tracking little maintenance issues is particularly annoying. Another pet peeve is when a guest does not review the very detailed Welcome/Check-In message that is sent to them.
OwnerRez is my main tool. It has allowed me to grow my business and grow my direct booking percentage. I use it for guest communication, reporting, and much more!
Some of my favorite features include the quote feature, the hosted website, reports, and the integrations with other VR softwares.
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Thanks, Stan. OwnerRez wishes you and Gulf Style Rentals continued success!
I set up the Trigger function to send a Channel message. I noticed that the trigger would not run on existing bookings because there was not a Vrbo message thread already established. I went to Vrbo and just sent a "We are looking forward to your visit. Please reach out if you have any questions." message to these bookings. That seemed to establish the message thread and then the Triggers said it would send the Channel messages. I didn't see this mentioned in any of the instructions.
Yes, Vrbo Messaging history currently works on a go-forward basis starting June 7th, meaning that only bookings made after June 7th will have Vrbo messaging activated automatically. We will look to bring in some history of previous conversations in a future release.
I set up the Trigger function to send a Channel message. I noticed that the trigger would not run on existing bookings because there was not a Vrbo message thread already established. I went to Vrbo and just sent a "We are looking forward to your visit. Please reach out if you have any questions." message to these bookings. That seemed to establish the message thread and then the Triggers said it would send the Channel messages. I didn't see this mentioned in any of the instructions.
Very much appreciated!
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to run a successful vacation rental company, but, apparently, it doesn’t hurt! Bruce Ikelheiner shares his unique journey from rocket scientist to starting Banjoe Vacations, a small, family-owned, Asheville, North Carolina-based vacation rental company.
I am actually a former rocket scientist, with a Masters and Ph.D. in Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering. I have worked on some incredibly high-tech projects and have had a focus on environmental acoustics (yes, that really is a thing). I've done work with DARPA, NASA, the Department of Defense, and the National Park Service over my career. As happens with many folks, I got started in the VR industry because we bought a vacation house on Lake Lure in North Carolina in 2017. To help manage things I started using OwnerRez almost right away and was amazed at how much easier running things with OwnerRez was.
When I worked in environmental acoustics, we worked on projects for things like large airports and airbases. We would use our tools to identify where the noise was going and how loud it was. The bottom line, however, was that we were there to identify winners and losers. The winners weren't getting hammered by excess noise, and the losers were. There was often no engineering way to stop the noise, so all we did was keep score: winners and losers. When I started in the VR business, I realized that, if you run things well, everyone gets to win. The guests come and have a great vacation, and the homeowners make good money. Everyone gets to be a winner!
My least favorite aspect is the 24/7 on-call concierge aspect. One of the things guests expect is that they can call at any time with any problem, either real or imaginary. I feel that, as a professional property manager, being prompt with inquiries, comments, or questions is of the utmost importance. However, that means that you need to be there all of the time.
OR is pretty central to how we run our business. We do 90% of our communication with guests through OR, and we use the automated messaging to keep our cleaning staff up-to-date on bookings, changes, and cancellations. Automation is crucial because, if I need to remember to do something because it isn't automated, I probably will forget, and OR is helpful with that.
The only part of OwnerRez I don't currently use is their website builder, but I do use their WordPress API for my own website. The channel management is an absolute must, as is the automated guest communication (wow, but that saves a ton of time!). However, I really like the way OR generates the owner statements. That makes my life much easier. I live in a trust accounting state (North Carolina), and I use the owner statements, combined with the Quickbooks integration, to rectify my statements every month.
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Thanks for sharing your story with the OwnerRez community, Bruce. Also, we’d like to commend you for donating 10% of Banjoe Vacation’s profits back to the community via Homeward Bound’s mission to create permanent supportive housing for the chronically homeless in Asheville. Well done, sir!
We are pleased to announce our partnership with Clearing to help you close your books faster than ever and take a permanent vacation from managing your property finances.
Clearing’s all-inclusive financial management solution is explicitly crafted for trailblazing property managers and visionary real estate investors in the Short-Term Rental space. Clearing aims to declutter your trust accounting, automate transaction management, facilitate owner and vendor payments, and offer invaluable insights into your cash flow with ease.
Clearing empowers you with an all-in-one financial management solution built to:
Say goodbye to cumbersome spreadsheets, disjointed systems, and tedious reconciliation processes. Clearing’s comprehensive platform infuses automation, efficiency, and invaluable insights into your business, unlocking the full potential of your Short-Term Rental financial operations.
Per unit per month pricing. Please take a look at their pricing page to learn more.
Get started with Clearing by visiting the Clearing website and checking out the OwnerRez support doc for how to integrate OwnerRez with Clearing.
Thank you for all of your hard work getting these bugs fixed.
Loving the inbox integration! Just had my first chance to use it tonight with an existing reservation. I was out to dinner so I had to use my phone, it was so easy and I don't think I'll be needing to keep the VRBO app on my phone now. Thank you for doing this!
Looking forward to my first inquiry to see if the autoresponder works and stops the response time clock.
Vrbo hasn't forgotten about that, they're talking about later this year though.
What an exciting update!
I am looking forward to a fix for Owner-rez left VRBO reviews will sync with the channel and publish, please get this fix out soon! :)
Great job! Thank you for watching out for us. Blessings, Susy Downer
Good words are worth much, and cost little.
Herbert's quote highlights the value of using positive and meaningful language, suggesting that using words effectively can have a significant impact even while requiring minimal effort or expense, serving as a reminder of the potential influence and value that well-chosen words can bring to communication with guests.
So let's not mess around and get to the meat of this product update that outlines our June 7th release with 13 updates, but more importantly, we know that users want to read all about the new (and long-awaited) Vrbo Messaging feature! 📨
The wait is over. Vrbo Messaging has arrived! 🥳🎉
For those accounts connected via API to Vrbo, native in-app Vrbo messaging is now available (on a go-forward basis). Corresponding with Vrbo guests directly in OwnerRez allows users to unify their guest messaging that much more. With OwnerRez's Inbox, conversation view, system alerts, and channel templates/triggers, you can save time and automate more of your messaging to be delivered via the channel (or "on the platform").
If you already use Airbnb messaging in OwnerRez, you'll be quite comfortable with the addition of Vrbo messaging.
OwnerRez has collaborated diligently with Vrbo to ensure the seamless appearance of Vrbo messages within the OwnerRez Inbox. Users can navigate to their Inbox by clicking on the CRM drop-down menu and selecting Inbox.
New Vrbo messages will be listed in the Inbox. Note that the Via column indicates where the messages are from, in this example Vrbo.
Clicking on each individual message opens the message in the Conversation View. When users open the Conversation View, they can see any comments that Vrbo guests have added allowing them to respond directly to the Vrbo guest within OwnerRez.
Please note: Vrbo Messaging history currently works on a go-forward basis starting June 7th (or the date you connect to Vrbo via API). We will look to bring in some history of previous conversations in a future release.
Learn more by reading our Vrbo Messaging support article.
Ever had a guest mark your email as Spam? Or experienced a Hard Bounce even though you know you have entered the correct email address? That's frustrating because the guest will no longer receive any future emails from you, the host, about their upcoming reservation check-in process, property information, and more.
Users will always receive an OwnerRez email alert warning users that the guest has marked an email as spam or an email has bounced but attempting to reactivate the email was not as intuitive as we'd like.
While users could always reactivate any suppressed email addresses by navigating to Settings > Messaging > Suppressed Email Addresses, users can now reactivate suppressed email addresses by clicking the button in the Email History.
Reactivated email addresses are identified by the blue label.
Learn more by reading the Suppressed Email Addresses Overview support article.
Automatically Remove SMS Brands From Users Who Disable SMS or Close Their Account. If users disable their SMS premium feature or close their account, OwnerRez will automatically remove any SMS Brand applications submitted, and assigned SMS phone numbers will be released making the SMS phone numbers available to others.
Expose Property Check-in and Check-out Times on v2 Property API. Property check-in and check-out times have now been added to the OwnerRez v2 API.
Fix Airbnb Payouts if they Include Non-booking-related Funds (e.g., Referral payments). Some users had Airbnb payout transactions with no associated bookings if they included non-booking-related funds, such as referral payments, which was confusing. This bug has been fixed and any non-booking-related payouts will appear as Adjustments in the user's Deposit section.
Fix Airbnb Transaction Sync Issue That Caused Duplicate Payments on Alteration Re-syncs. This edge case occurred when an Airbnb API-connected booking changed and created a duplicate payment transaction. This bug has been fixed and all Airbnb Transaction Syncs will now de-duplicate and match Airbnb payments by amount and date.
Fix Booking Messages From Being Sent to the Wrong Message Thread in Airbnb for Some Guests. Some Airbnb API-connected users were experiencing outbound Airbnb scheduled message failures and were not successfully delivered to the correct Airbnb message thread because it was looking for the most recent communication, using the thread ID rather than the individual booking. This bug has been fixed to now send messages to the specific thread it's using on the booking channel.
Fix Channel Bookings From Showing as "manual" if the API Channel was Subsequently Disabled. When users had an active API-connected channel that received bookings and subsequently disabled the API connection of the listing channel that created the booking, the booking indicated that it was created manually rather than the API-connected listing channel that originally created the booking. It correctly displays even if the API-connected listing channel is disabled.
Fix Hosted Site Blog Posts to Not Show if They Did Not Have a Category Set. When users created Hosted Website Blog Posts but did not set a category for the blog post, the blog post did not display on the blog even though the blog was published. This has been fixed.
Fix Vrbo Channel Bridge Import to Look at "Booking Amount" Too. This was a rare edge case but the Vrbo Channel Bridge (CB) Import was sometimes incorrectly considering the "booking amount" total item as a charge. The CB logic has been corrected to no longer consider the Vrbo "booking amount" total item as a charge and will be skipped.
Fix Vrbo Listing Feed if There are No Amenities Configured for a Property. Properties that had no amenities configured would sometimes produce an error on the Vrbo listing feed. This bug has been fixed and properties that have no amenities configured yet will no longer experience Vrbo listing feed errors.
Improve Hosted Site Blog Post Performance. Some users experienced a blog sort issue due to the blog post content on their Hosted Website causing a lot of simultaneous content sorting. This bug has been fixed and blog post content sorting will occur and display correctly.
Lynnbrook Group Deposit Processing Should Look for Yesterday's Deposits to Avoid Late Day Deposit Misses. Some users noticed that Lynnbrook fees weren't displayed as expected in the Transactions tab of related bookings forcing them to manually add those fees. OwnerRez has adjusted the daily sync to pull in the previous day's settlement instead of today's to catch everything.
We are pleased to announce our partnership with Monthly Rentals by Owner & American Snowbird as a new first-class book-direct channel partner.
Founded in 2003, Monthly Rentals by Owner and American Snowbird specializes in providing vacation rental property managers and homeowners with a quality, cost-effective listing solution, offering a unique platform that focuses on marketing properties available for extended stays of 28 days or more. The company meets the needs of a growing market of vacationers seeking mid-term and longer-term rentals and Snowbird rentals. Our goal is to facilitate unforgettable vacation experiences for renters while providing property managers the tools they need to succeed in the vacation rental market.
$173 per year, per property membership. Pricing details are here.
Get started with Monthly Rentals by Owner & American Snowbird by visiting here and checking out the OwnerRez support article for how to integrate OwnerRez with Monthly Rentals by Owner & American Snowbird.
We are happy to announce our partnership with Webready to allow you to create your own high-quality websites exactly as you want with custom builder tools.
Webready is one of the top website builder tools for vacation rentals. Create a website you are proud of, and customize it exactly the way you want. There are many templates to choose from so you get exactly the style you want. Start receiving online bookings today.
This website is utilizing the OwnerRez integration with Webready:
https://doublediamondrentals.triprentals.net/
30-day Free Trial on Starter Plan. Pricing details can be found on the Webready website here.
You can sign up to Webready from the Register page on the website here by clicking on the Get Started button. To learn how to integrate Webready with OwnerRez, take a look at the integration guide here.
Yes, as I indicated, my website is using the OR plugin and widgets.
The same data and tech that is provided for the hosted websites is supposed to be provided for sites using the plugin and widgets.
I believe what Paul W was referring to only works for specifically OwnerRez Hosted websites, not widgets on third party sites. Do you have an OwnerRez Hosted website? If so I'd recommend emailing in for further discussion so we can take a look at your specific situation.
~Caleb
ok, thank you!
Currently the transaction sync is bringing in the resolution payments to the Bookings>Transactions screen. We are adding an option, in the next release, to allow an automatic charge, or choose to manually create it. Until that release, you'd want to manually create the charge.
Since I've enabled transaction sync, resolution center payments no longer show up in charges. They used to show up after I did a channel bridge sync. How do I get them to come over now?
Jake and Erin, did you run the Channel Bridge process prior to enabling the Transaction Sync as suggested? Please contact our Help Desk with specific details so we can figure out what is happening.
Join us on June 6th with the team at Breezeway to transform your housekeeping and cleaning operations.
With so many tools on the market for cleaning operations, it’s hard to determine what software is best for your STR business. If you’re looking to scale, you probably want to implement processes that can adapt to your changing needs. Koryn Okey, VP of Client Success, joins OwnerRez to discuss the usability, support, and robust features that Breezeway has to offer. We’ll uncover why you need to automate the turnover process, the elements that differentiate Breezeway from other tools, and how to create a trustworthy system in all stages of your business.
The session is free to join, but you must use the Breezeway webinar link to register.
You can find all our upcoming and past webinars on our Webinars page.
Since I've enabled transaction sync, resolution center payments no longer show up in charges. They used to show up after I did a channel bridge sync. How do I get them to come over now?
Hi Bri,
I am referring to this OwnerRez blog post by Paul W. on September 27, 2021:
I have a Reviews page on my website using the OR plugin and widgets, and my ratings are not transferring over to Google.
Hi Yavuz,
Thank you for taking the time to share feedback on your initial experience with the OwnerRez/bnbfinder integration.
Since the original announcement, updates made to the integration have resolved some of the key concerns you mentioned, including ‘date search’ support. The API will now automatically pull your calendar availability, allowing travelers to include dates in their original search.
Additionally, we wanted to mention that static content is synced daily and the API will automatically pull supported data without the need to unpublish/republish your listings. This will ensure that your listing content is kept up to date on bnbfinder.
Static content that is not currently supported can be manually updated through the bnbfinder dashboard and as we add more functionality to the site, we hope to support additional features like rates and other amenities in the near future - all of which would automatically sync.
We know how important it is to have a seamless experience for users on our site and we will continue to drive improvements that provide more functionality to you.
We’re so excited for the opportunity to work with you and if you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at support@bnbfinder.com and we will be more than happy to assist.
Hi Scott,
To the best of our knowledge, Google will only allow for native reviews to be displayed. I found a Google Community thread that touches on this topic, which you can view here.
We send all of our guests a survey via RueBaRue after checkout that has a link to leave a Google review.
That's great, Patricia.
I thought maybe you were getting your website's reviews to get published on Google, as almost two years ago now Paul had said was then finally possible. But I could never figure out how that was supposed to happen and my questions on that were never properly answered.
Short of getting those hundreds of reviews to show on Google, asking guests to also leave their new ones on Google seems to be the only way.
@Scott - I have an email that goes out to guests the day after departure and I ask them for a review. They can leave a review on the platform they booked through and I also provide a link to my business Google profile and say they can write a review there too. I've had several guests leave me reviews on Google already.
On Thursday, 6/1, join us live with the team at bnbfinder to discuss how you can drive more commission-free and direct bookings.
We’ll be focusing on strategies to help increase your direct booking revenue and conversion as well as how you can track the sources of your direct booking revenue. Learn how you can add more revenue to your bottom line by decreasing costs for you and your guests by acquiring more direct bookings. The folks at bnbfinder are offering all OwnerRez users free property listings for the rest of 2023 to help you capture as many direct and commission-free bookings as you can while you try their platform. We hope you’ll join us to learn more!
The session is free to join, but you must use the bnbfinder webinar link to register.
You can find all our upcoming and past webinars on our Webinars page.
We are pleased to announce our partnership with MovingLake to allow your OwnerRez data to flow in real-time to your backend, ERPs, CRMs, as well as to your databases, data lakes, data warehouses, and message queues!
MovingLake is a Data Replicator and Data Centralization service with which you can get all of your business' data in a single location. With MovingLake you can also get Data Consultation Services with which you can create custom dashboards to power your journey to be a data-driven company.
Data Connector Subscription scales logarithmically with usage. Take a look at the pricing details here.
Get started with MovingLake by visiting the MovingLake website and checking out the OwnerRez support doc for how to integrate OwnerRez with MovingLake.