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Periodically we like to interview one of our exceptional users. Not only does operating a vacation rental business take a lot of time, but also a huge amount of effort. This week we spoke with Mark from Arizona Luxury Rentals. Mark's website and operation can be found at azvacationhomes.com. Below are the questions we asked and his responses.
Mark: I’m a native of the Phoenix area, born and raised on the west side in a small city called El Mirage. I moved to the Tempe area in 1992 to attend Arizona State University, where I received my BA and MBA. I currently have three kids (25, 5, 2), and my hobbies are work and my two young daughters. I wish I had more time for other activities; however, my family takes up all of my time.
Mark: Right now the vacation rental industry is my only career. I have 18 years of industry experience. I purchased my first vacation rental in 2002 while working in management for Verizon Wireless. I quickly added to my real estate portfolio, so I left the corporate environment to mange my real estate full time. Through networking, my business grew to a large property management company. Our inventory grew to 150 homes. In 2016 I decided to focus on family and sold my share of the business. Since 2016, I’ve managed a small operation ranging from 10 - 15 homes.
Mark: What I love the most about the VR business is the flexibility it provides my family and me. I’m able to manage my business from anywhere in the world. I’ve been able to put together a quality local team that manages operations; therefore, I can take care of my responsibilities with a laptop and internet access. Secondly, the rate of return on my real estate investments is excellent. I’m consistently meeting or exceeding a return of 25%. I’m unable to find another investment that will perform this well (even during Covid-19 pandemic).
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Mark: This one is easy. What I dislike the most about this industry is the power that major listing sites are trying to exercise over our real estate. They heavily favor the guests, which makes it difficult for Hosts to hold guests accountable for noise disturbances, neighbor complaints and damages to the property. Listing sites started as marketing tools, and now have become property managers. They micromanage everything.
Mark: OwnerRez is fantastic. My dependency on OwnerRez is growing by the day, which is a good thing. When I think about OwnerRez, what comes to mind is automation. OwnerRez has done a fabulous job of improving communication features. At one point I utilized three different software products to manage communication with guests. Now, I only use OwnerRez.
Mark: There are many. If I had to choose one...I would go with API integrations. The most valuable to me is the integration with VRBO.
>>>>>>
Thanks, Mark!
We wish Arizona Luxury Rentals much success as they continue to manage their business and thrive in the vacation rental industry!
Operating a vacation rental business takes a lot of time and effort. Periodically we like to interview one of our exceptional users. This week we spoke with Randy from Vacation Condos North Myrtle. Randy's website and operation can be found at thevacationcondo.com. Below are the questions we asked and his responses.
Randy: We purchased our first condo in 2013 with plans to spend winter in North Myrtle Beach South Carolina instead of in northwestern Pennsylvania where the winters are terrible with annual snowfalls averaging 101 inches. Within six months of purchase, we decided to rent it in the summer to help pay the expenses associated with ownership of oceanfront property. Some of our condo neighbors, who were dissatisfied with their property management arrangements, asked if we would do theirs. In order to do so, we took the necessary courses and tests to become licensed in the state of South Carolina to manage property. In the past 7 years, we have grown from managing one rental to a current total of 26 rentals. This growth has been 100% word of mouth, as the original goal was to simply rent our own, and for a couple of friends, but word spread.
Property management is my 2nd job as I am still employed full-time by Hewlett Packard as a database engineer. As I get closer and closer to retirement age, the goal will be to grow the rental business as an income supplement for retirement.
Randy: I had worked in the I.T. sector as a consultant for almost 25 years before joining Hewlett Packard in 2005 as a full-time teleworker. Working from home provided great flexibility which allowed us to relocate from PA to SC without the need to change jobs. While I still work full-time from home, the flexibility of my position has made growing the rental business much easier.
Randy: Positive Reviews. We started out just renting our condo and it has grown to 26 clients as a result of word of mouth advertising amongst condo owners. This is a direct result of striving to do the job correctly. The reason we have 700+ positive reviews is primarily due to the service we provide prior to guest arrival. This starts with communication and ends with making sure the rental unit is clean. Guests are provided with detailed instructions to make sure their arrival goes smoothly. The rental units are cleaned and staged so the first impression of their home away from home is a positive one. If you were to read our reviews, you will see multiple mentions about rental cleanliness and ease of communication.
Randy: Government overreach. The greater Myrtle Beach area’s source of revenue is tourism. The local government is continually enacting new regulations and policies that may very well run the small agencies out of business.
Randy: We are listed on multiple websites, Airbnb, Vrbo, as well as our own OwnerRez Hosted Website. OwnerRez makes it all possible. We use OwnerRez for reservation management, guest communications, and reporting.
Having multiple properties with multiple pricing levels, the Rate Editor is a lifesaver. I will admit, I was a little skeptical at first, but it took some getting used to and the batch copy functionality makes it a great tool.
Randy: Owner Statements and tools to help extract data for annual tax reporting.
>>>>>>
Thanks, Randy! Hopefully the local Myrtle government will read this and relax a little! 😀
We wish Vacation Condos North Myrtle much success in the Myrtle Beach area as they continue to manage their business and thrive in the vacation rental industry!
Every now and then, we showcase OwnerRez users that show outstanding work. This week, we spoke with Dave and April Bruder from Moonshine Cabins. Their website and operation can be found at moonshinecabins.com or on their Facebook page. Below are the questions we asked and their responses.
Dave: We were frequent visitors to the Smokies and love all that is has to offer and are always ready to head back whether for hiking, viewing wildlife, taking our kids for walks in nearby creeks, go-carting, or just driving through the beautiful Smoky Mountain National Park to enjoy the scenery. A friend’s grandfather had a simple cabin in the area that we visited as adults and brought our children along. The idea of a cabin in the area was appealing and if it could be rented, even better.
As owners, we have also become involved in the resort and have held board positions in the Home Owner's Association to participate in the standards, upkeep, and forward progress to benefit all guests.
Dave: We are both from the mid-west with humble beginnings and never dreamed we would have a thriving VR business.
Dave: Owning and operating VPs is a nice escape from our day jobs; we both have full-time jobs and hope this will allow us to semi-retire earlier than we had planned.
Dave: I am a client executive in the tech field and April is a teacher.
Dave: We are from South West Ohio about 300 miles from our rental cabins which are in the Smokies in Eastern Tennessee.
Dave: Proximity, weather, and activities all drew us in.
Dave: Challenges, new experiences, new relationships. We have learned more than we ever thought we would about the VR industry.
Dave: The rare disrespectful guests; unplanned/unexpected property issues that disrupt a guest’s stay.
Dave: We initially invested in OwnerRez to power #directbookings and enable rental agreement signatures. Now it manages calendars, reviews, bookings, and helps streamline responses. We are in the midst of API integration – Airbnb is completed, and we are waiting on Vrbo, so in addition to #directbookings, OwnerRez will soon enable us to process Vrbo bookings.
There are several OwnerRez users in the Smoky Mountains and at our request, they created a multi-property calendar widget so we could all cross advertise. We have about 40 owners and around 60 properties included and decided to create a basic website as a landing place to advertise in travel groups and other areas. That can be seen at smokymountaincabinsbyowner.com.
Dave: For us, it is a single pane of glass - one place for inbox/responses, calendars, property descriptions/photos, rates, etc.
>>>>>>
Thanks, Dave and April! We have a lot coming to that single pane of glass, so stay tuned!
We wish Moonshine Cabins much success in the Smokies as they continue to manage their business and excel in the vacation rental industry!
Good news - it’s Friday!
Inauguration week is right around the corner, and Airbnb is taking precautions due to the recent political events in DC. Airbnb has cancelled and blocked all reservations in DC during that week.
If you are one of the homeowners or PMs that this will affect, you lucked out! You will be 100% reimbursed for the money you would have earned. No guest to host and all the money - what a deal!
If you are one of the guests that booked a house in DC for the inauguration, you’ll be refunded by Airbnb, but you better hurry over to Vrbo, TripAdvisor or Booking.com to book another property before time runs out!
It seems some people have found other ways to turn a profit using their vacation rentals instead of housing guests. In Cathedral City, a short-term vacation rental was raided by the Riverside County Cannabis Regulation Task Force. They seized 431 marijuana plants, and found the first floor had been converted into a cannabis cultivation center with a commercial generator set up. Obviously this has ruffled some feather with the neighborhood. The residents are asking support for measure B, which would apply restrictions to short-term rental properties.
In Tallahassee Florida, a new bill proposal would largely give the state control of regulating vacation rentals. This would only allow local governments to regulate these properties the same way as any other properties in the neighborhoods. Vacation rental regulations have been common in Florida, pitting local governments against platforms such as Airbnb. This legislative session will start on March 2nd to discuss the new bill, and we’ll be sure to report any news about this once a decision has been made. Let the short-term rental battle begin...again.
Vrbo has announced that they are completely pulling out of Toronto for good. This is due to the city implementing strict short-term vacation rental regulations, which kicked in on January 1st. This decision makes Airbnb the only licensed platform to operate short-term rentals in Toronto. The new regulations make it so hosts can only rent out their primary residences. Investment properties and ghost hotels are now banned. Anyone who wishes to rent out their primary residence must register with the city. The effect of all this led to condo rentals flooding the market with rent dropping to record lows, most of which stayed on the market for months.
Happy Thursday! If you can believe it, we've got 33 updates to talk about but not a single new feature! Of course, how I define "feature" versus enhancement, change, tweak, update, fix might differ from how others define it, so who knows. 🤔
In no particular order, here we go!
Google Analytics recently overhauled the format for their tracking code. The "UA-xxxx" format is from more than a decade ago, and their new format is "G-xxxxx". We updated our analytics code to accept the new Google Analytics format, detect the new format and render the right tracking code. You can use either the old or new format, and they'll both work.
A couple weeks ago, we released a cool update that shows a preview of new charges when a booking moves or changes. We just tweaked the preview to also show email and payment warnings as well, so you'll see specific information that also needs to be addressed like a security deposit that needs to be reset or trigger emails that need to be resent.
While the currency for your account (or one of your properties) might be something other than USD, our Travel Insurance product is always billed in USD currency. We noticed that guests who were booking non-USD properties were seeing messages about Travel Insurance without knowing that the total was in USD currency. We now stop guests from buying Travel Insurance when booking if the property is not USD and direct the guest to a USD standalone page after they book.
There's a standalone Renter Agreement guest form that you're probably aware of. You might use it when emailing channel bookings about the Renter Agreement they need to sign. The Renter Agreement guest form will let the guest add or update their POC (point of contact) info but only if it's before arrival to keep them from changing historical data on an old link. These checks are good but were a little too strict because same day bookings need signatures too. We updated this logic to be smarter. The Renter Agreement guest form now checks the property time zone, gives one day of grace period after arrival but does not allow signing after departure (in case it's a one night stay).
Speaking of grace periods, we noticed some other areas that could benefit from increased time. Specifically some before-arrival triggers weren't firing for last minute bookings based on the time of day, and some on-booking-created triggers were having the same problem. We added a few hours of grace period to both before-arrival triggers and on-booking-created triggers to continue checking if they were able to be sent (and sending them) before no longer sending.
And speaking of triggers, we fixed another edge case we kept running into... Previously, for Request To Book bookings, or Booking.com/Vrbo bookings that don't have credit cards, we didn't fire on-booking-created triggers at all. That means that if you create a trigger specifically targeting Pending=Yes criteria, wanting to hit that state, then it won't fire. We now do a check for these types of bookings (RTB or Booking.com/Vrbo with no cards) that have on-booking-created triggers with Pending=Yes and attempt to fire those triggers (but not other triggers). This allows you to make sure your channel or RTB bookings are still emailed if you want them to be. Pending is a criteria on all triggers.
This next one isn't something you'll see on the surface, but I'll mention it anyway. We found that there are cases where property addresses are being added to OwnerRez without being geo-coded. Geo-coding is the process where we go out to a location service (like Google Maps) and fetch the lat/long coordinates for an address. You might notice the lat/long fields on the property location tab under the address. We now automatically geo-code all property addresses in OwnerRez automatically with lat/long data when they are entered. This reduces down-stream errors and lets us show more information by default for services like our Hosted Website.
From the beginning of time, a setting called "Professional Hospitality Business", that shows up on our Airbnb settings, has confused OwnerRez users to no end. Aren't I a professional business? Don't I work in hospitality? It's common to think this setting applies even with the warnings we slather around it. What this setting really means is - you're a hotel and you need specific hotel features that change how your properties are billed and displayed on Airbnb. Very few users need this. In recent times, it's gotten more confusing because Airbnb has started touting a host-only fee that is similar to a host-only fee that the Professional Hospitality Business setting creates. To clarify all this, we've removed the 15% host-only fee language on the Professional Hospitality Business setting because Airbnb is now changing fees for both groups regardless of this setting.
We are now including the email address from any credit card payment or refund in the booking or guest's contact info automatically if we notice that it's different. This is something we used to do a long time ago but stopped doing when our guest/contact system was overhauled. We have added it back.
Those of you that use our new SMS Messaging feature know that you can also configure forwarding and voicemail settings - after all, guests might just pick up the phone and call your SMS number directly. If they do, OwnerRez will properly handle that call by either forwarding the call or sending it to voicemail. If the call goes to voicemail or is a "missed call", we send you a system alert by email about the call. We just updated this email alert, for both missed and voicemail calls, to use our new alert format.
Have you ever noticed that some bookings list other guest names in the title, channel information or other parts of the booking? We did too. But how do you find those names? We updated our global search to also store and index those other channel names and titles, so that if you search on those, the bookings will show up in the global search results. If you're looking for an example of this, check out your Booking.com bookings. Some Booking.com bookings show other guest names in the channel information (as part of the overall guest list), and our search will now show those other names.
We recently added direct channel integration with HomeToGo, and this past week we tweaked a few things for the HomeToGo integration. We added special instructions for non-US connections to HomeToGo, so if you're a European customer, you can still sign up and connect to HomeToGo. You'll just need to use a different sign-up form. We also added some new checks in our LQA tool (Listing Quality Analyzer) specifically for HomeToGo which will point out if your properties will create conflicts with HomeToGo. By the way, we have a special webinar coming up with HomeToGo, so make sure to reserve your seat. Never heard of the LQA tool? Step right this way.
Over on the Portal Access dashboard, there's a couple of charts that show revenue and occupancy if you've turned it on for the user to see. Occasionally, we get questions about the comparison data that is shown. To add clarity, we replaced the "compare as of today" with an option for "compare all time" or "compare as of today" on the Portal Access charts and it defaults to all time.
Did you know that OwnerRez provides a global account area where you can upload files of any kind? Yep, go to the account button (top right) and look at the Files option. You can drop any kind of file here and then use it later in emails or other places. We noticed that the Copy link on those uploaded files was a little confusing so we clarified it. The way it was written, it could be confused with the browser right-click option. We changed the menu text to "Copy Public Link", we updated the support article that talks about this area and we noted that you can now simply upload files directly into email templates (without going to the global area first).
Get all the QuickBooks references. Some QuickBooks users have many Product or Service Items, but QuickBooks only returns the first 100 items to us by default. Because of this, everything after the first 100 was getting cut off. This is now fixed so that all references are being returned, and for all reference lists, not just Product or Service Items.
Which booking is locked? When Channel Bridge skips over a booking because it's PM Locked, it wasn't showing the ORB number. We fixed this to show the number so that you can click on it and go right to that booking.
Property URLs and hosted sites. Those of you who use our Hosted Website service might have noticed that your properties have URLs but sometimes... not. When you set up the website, your properties will be mapped to the property page on the website, and that property URL will work for a number of things. But there were things that the automatic URL's were not working for. We found and fixed those area.
Survey...? What survey!? Our standard security deposit release email template has had a blurb at the end of it for a long time to "look for a survey coming!" even though we've never actually sent one. Most users just remove this with an email template, but we figured it was time to remove this line from the default too.
Don't unlock the door yet. Our door code automation is smart and will watch when bookings are created, change dates, move properties, check-in times change or the booking is cancelled. Any time these changes happen, the door codes will change if necessary. However, what happens if the booking is pending? You don't want door codes being set for bookings that may not actually be confirmed. We fixed this so that codes wait to generate until the pending status is removed.
Fast channel sync grid. Do you watch the Sync Actions grid on your channel settings? If you do, you may have noticed that it is slow in returning results, particularly when you filter it for certain properties or errors. We fixed this to speed it up.
All custom fields show regardless of property. You can set property criteria on custom fields, but we were still showing all custom fields on the booking no matter which property that booking was associated with. We corrected this to not show custom fields on bookings that don't apply to that custom field based on the property criteria.
Expenses attachment icon. When the attachment (ie. files) on an expense were removed, the little paperclip icon on the grid was still showing. This is now fixed.
More misspelled CC vendors. Sheesh. We found a couple other CC vendors that weren't spelled correctly (extra spaces) and fixed them.
No WordPress cache to bounce. Maybe you like pressing buttons and hit this one already? The "Bounce Cache" button on WordPress Connections was failing if a WordPress Plugin was setup but not fully activated on both sides (OR and WP both). We fixed this to detect it and do nothing instead of crashing.
Vrbo second payment scheduling. When Vrbo pushes bookings to us, over the API, we follow their instructions when setting the scheduled second payment - and those instructions include a specific date. However, if the booking is changed, that date should be moved. We changed this logic to detect if the specific date is the same as the "[x] days before arrival" rule in OR and, if so, use the relative days instead. That way, the date is right but if the booking moves, the scheduled time will move along with it.
Bedroom pricing upgrade error. If you were one of the 17 people that used bedroom pricing (ok, more like 3) you may have gotten an error when upgrading from Legacy Rates to the new system. That error was fixed.
Show more charge types when editing. When you're manually changing charges, on a quote or booking, the Type drop-down will show all the surcharges and discounts that apply to that quote or booking, and some criteria is used to determine which ones to show. We are now ignoring the listing site and allowing surcharges that are set to specific listings site to show because you there are times where the listing site might be wrong on the quote or booking.
Don't dupe the property code. Did you know you can quickly duplicate properties when you're creating a new property? That's right, go to a similar property, click Duplicate and then use that to start your new property. However, we noticed that we were also duplicating the Property Code field, so we emptied that when the duplicate process runs.
When was that property added? Properties can have their own time zone and when a property was added should be reflected in the correct time zone. It wasn't before, but now it's fixed!
Hey, I already sent that trigger! Have you ever gone to a trigger, on the booking, and used "Send Now" to fire it off early? Or perhaps you sent it because it was showing that it wouldn't be sent based on the criteria. We noticed that when this happened for SMS and Airbnb triggers, the trigger was not marked as sent. Only automatically-sent SMS and Airbnb triggers were marked as sent. To be clear, the trigger message would still go out, but the green "Sent on..." timestamp wouldn't show. We corrected this so that it's now showing for all types of trigger messages.
We also corrected oversized attachment validation on the conversation to show properly.
We just released some new videos about Touch Stay and installing OwnerRez on Android and iOS devices. Check them out!
Excited about these updates and changes!
On the new ability to set discounts to apply only to the rent, do you have plans to make that an option when utilizing a discount code? It currently doesn't appear to be available if that's how the discount is set up.
Happy Friday!
We hope everyone had a great New Year. Now let’s get into the first Industry News for 2021.
Next Tuesday, Jan 12, OwnerRez will be hosting a webinar with Airbnb on listing optimization. The session is free to join, but you need to use the sign-up for OwnerRez/Airbnb webinar link to register. Also, you can find all of our upcoming and past events on our Webinars page.
Some of our users reached out to us at the start of the new year to let us know that Perfect Price has been shut down. After looking into this, we have confirmed this is sadly true. We don't know if there is a transition plan in place for current users, and we are hoping to find out more soon. If you need another dynamic pricing option right now check out PriceLabs or Beyond Pricing.
Starting January 15th, Malibu California will implement a new ordinance governing short-term rentals. Rental property owners are required to pay a $294 application fee annually and submit a permit to the City of Malibu in order to continue renting. Applications can take up to 30 days for the city to review, so get yours in ASAP if you own short-term rentals in Malibu!
The Global Networking Experience (GNEX) has decided to reschedule their 2021 conference to May 17-19th. GNEX is a vacation ownership industry event for senior-level executives heavily focused on networking. The rescheduling is of course due to Covid-19, as they only received around 50% of their expected registrations for a “normal year”. We know most OwnerRez users aren’t rubbing shoulders with hotel financiers but this is an interesting group to watch nonetheless!
On Tuesday 1/26, OwnerRez will be hosting a webinar with HomeToGo.
We'll sit down with Rachel Tabellion, Head of Sales at HomeToGo, and discuss how to capitalize on travel trends in 2021. Ken Taylor, director of operations at OwnerRez, will give a demo of OwnerRez and show what the connection between HomeToGo and OwnerRez looks like.
The session is free to join, but you need to use the sign-up for OwnerRez/HomeToGo webinar link to register.
You can find all of our upcoming and past webinars on our Webinars page.
When the guest is first entering their card, we notify the bank that there will be multiple transactions associated with the card and ask them to verify the card knowing there will be future transactions, but authentication for each payment is ultimately up to the card issuing bank.
If a subsequent automatic transaction fails, the guest will get the payment failed email so they can authorize the additional transactions directly.
Once a guest has authenticated once for a first partial payment would they be required to authenticate again for the scheduled balance and security hold?
Hey look - it's the first Hump Day of 2021! 🐫 Time to talk updates. Our list of updates is small this week but includes a huge Stripe/3DS2 update that was months in the making.
A couple months ago, we mentioned working on a large update for Stripe that would support Strong Customer Authentication and the 3D Secure 2 ("3DS2") standard.
To recap, 3DS2 provides an additional layer of security for online credit card payments by forcing the merchant and cardholder to stop and get an authentication from the cardholder prior to the transaction going through. It's complicated to build and support, but European laws now require European banks to support it effective January 1, 2021 (which was a few days ago). We believe that America and other regions will support it in the future, though it is believed that it will be a few years before American banks will fully require it.
Here's a quick animation of how it works:
Anytime the guest is making a payment - whether accepting a quote, on a channel or making a followup payment - the payment process reaches out to the cardholder's bank for active verification and the payment screens waits for confirmation. The transaction cannot complete until the verification has been returned from your mobile app or however your bank verifies transactions with you. This might be an SMS message that your bank asks you to confirm. This might be a link to click on. Whatever it is, the payment processes waits for this to complete prior to moving forward.
To pave the way for 3DS2 compliance, we've been working on setting up 3DS2-compliant payment processing with the processors that support it. We're happy to announce that we made the December 31 deadline!
Using Stripe, you can now fully handle 3DS2 credit card payments if you are a European merchant.
This also works with channel bookings through Vrbo, though that has to be turned on in your Vrbo account first. Reach out to Vrbo and ask them about it if you're a European merchant and use Vrbo to take bookings. Airbnb bookings don't have this problem because Airbnb does all of their own payment processing, so the bank verification process would happen on the Airbnb side where the guest is paying. Booking.com and TripAdvisor do not yet support 3DS2 for their bookings, but we will add it when they get it working. On our side, everything is ready to go.
So how does OwnerRez look? For the most part, the OwnerRez app, control panel and guest forms all look the same as before. We heavily tested all of our payment interaction points to make sure that the verification process happens correctly but the interface remains the same. If you do happen to be the lucky European merchant that needs this, your guests will see something like this when they're confirming their booking:
For most of you, this new 3DS2 stuff will never be used because you're not a European merchant. However, this work lays the foundation for other security enhancements that might affect you in the future.
We're proud to be one of the only vacation rental software platforms that now supports 3D Secure!
While we were working on the 3DS2 stuff, we made other changes to how payments, security holds and failed credit cards work.
We now store credit cards that failed to work when processing new Vrbo and Booking.com API bookings. This is an important change because it allows you to try the card again if the guest tells you that the the failure was momentary - eg. fraud alert, temporary balance issue, AVS problem, etc. Instead of having to enter the card again, you can simply re-run the same card that was stored from the first attempt.
We also update existing cards to have new information if the guest enters their payment information online and the card is the same. In the past, every time the payment information is entered by a guest, a new card is stored. Most of the time the card is the same and only a minor detail - address change or expiration date - is updated, so we look for an existing card on file to update instead of creating a new one.
If you didn't know, you can also edit cards on file at any time to change things like expiration date or address if you need to. Simply go to any booking, click on the Transactions tab and look at the Stored Cards list. Click on any card and you can edit the details. You can also edit credit cards for security holds as well.
Another great update is the ability to take last minute bookings when a security hold fails. This was a common problem for a long time. As an example, suppose that a guest is booking this upcoming weekend and owes a full payment and a security hold. Because the booking is last minute, the security hold is due immediately. In the past, OwnerRez would automatically attempt to take it all and if any part failed, the entire booking would roll back. The guest's card would be hit for both a large payment and the security hold and, frequently, the security hold would fail after the payment succeeded. This could be because of a security alert by the bank or an over-limit issue, but it would cause everything to roll back and the payment to be voided. In some cases, another payment is not possible because the original charge is still "pending" on the bank account, even though it was marked as voided. We changed our process so that security holds no longer stop last minute bookings from moving forward. Instead, we now follow a similar pattern with channel bookings, and flag the security hold as failed and email the guest (and you the owner/PM) to alert you what happened. This gives the guest time to use a different card and fix the problem.
In certain places throughout the interface, we have links to our support center, and we noticed that some of those support links open in different places - new tabs versus same tabs for instance. We normalized that behavior so that the control panel always stays where you are when you click over into the support center.
Occupancy report last day off by one. A shrewd user noticed that, depending on the month and criteria, the last day of the report was off by one and causing the percentages to go over 100%. This has now been fixed.
"I would like to use the Holiday list feature on a per property basis"
No question. This is needed as well as the ability to have holiday-based season (ie. recurring seasons that change their dates slightly each year but service the same holiday name)
"My manual discounts only have the "Percent of subtotal" option"
Yes, that's correct, and this is not an oversight.
Currently, it is not possible to know, at the point a manual discount is applied, what portion of the rent/stay it applies to if the surcharge is marked as "percent of rent" so that option is not available. Only automatic surcharges/discounts have the "percent of rent" option.
We are working on a rate category feature that will affect many things across the system. When that comes out, later this year, you'll be able to more-greatly categorize what surcharges/discounts are levied against and what every charge line item on the booking is in terms of its category. This "percent of rent" setting is a temporary shim while transitioning to that category system.
The WordPress plugin is for non-OwnerRez websites. You use it for your own WordPress website, not one of ours. The reason Hosted Websites premium feature has to be turned on is because access to the WordPress Plugin is part of that premium feature. In other words, when you turn on the HW premium feature, you can either create a website through OwnerRez or use the WordPress Plugin to power your own WP website.
q-n. Will there be something similar for non WP sites? I just went looking at WP plug in and it says "turn on hosted site". I thought the whole idea of Wp plug in was to be able to use it without a hosted site. Thanks
I agree with comments about the quality of the product and understand the reason for raising fees. To the customers requesting that they be grandfathered into the old features and pricing model, they don’t understand the cost of maintaining two separate code bases and billing systems. Doing so would be counter productive and increase development costs which would also have to be passed on to the customer.
Just for the record - RemoteLock also integrates with Vera (we currently use Vera for 26 Yale Zwave Locks integrated with OR), Schlage Encode and August Locks.
Reading further, thanks also for the "clarified the cancellation wording for those that charge fixed cancellation fees." :-)
Hi Paul, thanks for the updates!
My question is about the "rent only" option on discounts and surcharges" feature...it seems to only be available on surcharges or discounts that are in the "Automatic" category. This option is not available if the surcharge of discount is in the Manual category.
Is that an oversight?
My manual discounts only have the "Percent of subtotal" option.
A good thing about HTG would be IF they duplicate listings on the same channels while direct connection to channels still persists.
Can anyone confirm?
I agree. It would have to be a lot less than 14% for this to be attractive to me. I pay nothing to AirBNB, nothing to TripAdvisor and $500 a year to Vrbo. IMHO HTG can just send people to Vrbo.
Thanks, but I would like to use the Holiday list feature on a per property basis. Using the custom feature I would have to manually add my holiday dates every year. The ability to include the holiday list as part of a custom setup would be useful.
They can if you use "Custom Holidays". The Holiday List feature, where you subscribe to an entire country's list of holidays at once, is account wide. Custom Holidays can be per property.
Hm. Those are some interesting claims, Evelyn.
I don't think it's accurate to claim the vaccine is unproven. The efficacy rate has been shown in widespread clinical trials to be about 95% effective, which is amazing and far higher than experts were initially hoping for. For the Moderna vaccine, whose trial consisted of 30,000 people, 185 people in the placebo cohort were symptomatic versus only 11 people in the vaccine cohort. As well, 30 people in the placebo cohort developed severe symptoms, and there was one death. In the vaccine group, there were zero severe cases and zero deaths. That's one of the clearest datasets showing proven efficacy imaginable. (This amusing webcomic illustrates just how clear the data is: https://xkcd.com/2400/.) Pfizer was similar and had an even larger trial of 42,000 participants.)
Is it accurate to say it's untested? 11 months start to finish sounds fast compared to other vaccines, but the groundwork for this vaccine has been laid for over a decade (see https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-12-07/years-of-research-laid-groundwork-for-speedy-covid-19-shots). In fact, the actual mRNA code for the vaccine was developed within a week or two of the genetic code of the SARS-CoV-2 virus being sequenced back in January, and the rest of the time since then has been spent on testing and trials to ensure the vaccine is safe. In other words, we actually had safe, functional vaccines at the very beginning of the pandemic (before it even really started to spread in the US); the entire reason for the delay was to test and test and test the vaccine to make sure it actually _is_ safe. No corners were cut in that testing; the reason it was shorter than most other trials is because the Trump administration removed some of the red tape and allowed the manufacturers to run trials simultaneously instead of sequentially.
Is it a cocktail of chemicals? Well, everything on this earth is a cocktail of chemicals. A glass of orange juice you squeeze yourself from a fresh orange picked off of a Florida citrus tree is a cocktail of chemicals. Heck, even the purest distilled jug of water is a chemical. But what about the ingredients of these vaccines? "Nothing too surprising there," according to a Tucson hospitalist (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/12/12/pfizer-covid-vaccine-ingredient-list-nothing-too-surprising-there/6520511002/). The ingredients consist of 30 micrograms of mRNA (messenger RNA, a code of proteins that is not living/active itself but stimulates your immune system to recognize the spike protein that makes the SARS-CoV-2 virus so potent so that it can fight it when you're exposed to the real virus), fats to encapsulate and protect the mRNA, salts, and sugar. The whole thing is mixed in a saline solution (just like the saline solution in a hospital IV) for delivery. That's it. Nothing toxic or dangerous or anything. (Check out https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/12/09/1013538/what-are-the-ingredients-of-pfizers-covid-19-vaccine/ for a deeper look at the ingredients.)
Did the government concoct the vaccine? These vaccines were developed by private pharmaceutical companies. Some companies took funding from the US federal government in exchange for the government sharing its expertise and having a say in pricing/availability/distribution, but the government did not dictate the vaccine's contents. If you're worried about government influence, choose the Pfizer vaccine, as they did not take any federal funding and developed the vaccine privately. Or maybe choose the AstraZenica vaccine, which was developed in the UK by a British-Swedish company, which would be pretty immune (no pun intended) from US government conspiracies or whatever. (Also, it seems to me that if a US-developed vaccine were dangerous, a foreign company like AstraZenica would be taking full advantage and advertising that prominently and loudly in order to sell people on its vaccine instead...but I digress.)
Is the government injecting you? So far, every indication is that the vaccine will be offered and administered optionally and privately, just like you go to your local Walmart or doctor's office for your annual flu vaccine.
In any case, I've done tons of research on this and have talked to a number of friends who are physicians, pharmacists, virologists, and other (private, impartial, non-government-employed) experts who are all universally and overwhelmingly in favor of vaccination ASAP (several have already gotten theirs), and since they aren't showing any hestitancy whatsoever, I'll be putting my money where my mouth is and will be first in line to get the vaccine when it's offered to my demographic.
Can the holidays be assigned per property? Where owners have multi-country properties in Europe and the US holidays are very different.
I want a webinar on how to optimize Airbnb so it works -with- OWNERS, not -against- them. Until then, not booking on Airbnb.
Happy Christmas-Week Hump Day! I looked for a camel wearing a Santa hat, but evidently the emoji world is not yet that complete. We skipped last week's update, so we've got a fresh slate of 26 updates to go through. Let's get to it!
For a long time, users have asked us if we could create a plugin for WordPress, so that they could design a custom website while using OwnerRez property data. In other words, when your property content (photos, amenities, descriptions) changes in OwnerRez, the WordPress site changes automatically as well. While we host our own vacation rental website feature, we understand that it's not perfect for everyone. You might need a custom experience or manage hundred of properties and need different page types. We constantly update our hosted website feature, but no matter how much we add to it, there will always be users who want their own custom experience - and we now support that!
At the outset, please understand that our WordPress plugin is in open beta. That means the documentation is lacking (or missing entirely), you'll need to ask us questions about how it works and the settings are in a state of ongoing development. However, we wanted to get it out into the wild and get early feedback, so we created an open beta for it. Open beta means that anyone can use it whereas a private or closed beta means it would be invite-only.
To get started, go to Settings. You'll see a new WordPress Plugin menu in the My Website section.
Drill in and then click the Installation tab. Read the simple instructions that are shown there and follow them carefully. After creating the WordPress connection in OwnerRez and installing the plugin on the WordPress side, you'll want to use "shortcodes" to generate content for your WordPress pages. We have provided a "Generate Shortcodes" tab in OwnerRez that will generate content for you to use after you select a property. The code that is generated is just to give you an idea of how the formatting and structure appears. You can use all of it, part of it or hack it into pieces and use what you want.
Without launching into a full-blown support doc on how all the details work, it's important to note that you (or the web developer working for you) need to be comfortable using HTML. The shortcodes are intermingled with your HTML content to render out pieces of OwnerRez property data (eg. amenities, description fields, etc) where you want them to appear in the page. Here's a quick example:
Right now, there is a 1 hour delay between the time you change property content in OwnerRez and when WordPress updates, so if you change something in OwnerRez and wonder why WordPress didn't immediately update - that's why. If you want it to update immediately, click the "Bounce WordPress Cache" button on the WordPress connection in OwnerRez.
We are working on making OwnerRez notify WordPress immediately when property changes occur, but for the time being there's a 1 hour delay or you have to manually press the button to release the cache.
We have a couple of support articles being worked on, for WordPress Plugin Overview and WordPress Setup & Connecting, so keep your eye on that area for updates coming soon. In the meantime, if you can't figure something out, send a ticket to our help desk, and we'll help you figure it out.
Last note about WordPress - the plugin and connection process is not included in the base OwnerRez service fee. In order to connect to the WordPress Plugin, you will need to have the Hosted Websites premium feature turned on in your account which carries a monthly fee.
Another exciting new feature is that you can now preview new charges when changing a booking before you make the change. There are several places on the booking where the charges are potentially affected:
When any of these things happen, you might want the booking's charge line items to change as well. For instance, you're changing the stay dates to add on 2 more nights - shouldn't the charges increase as well for the additional rent? We used to have a simple option to "change charges too" when doing this, but that created an additional problem of knowing what the new charge would be. After all, you might have had some custom discounts or fees added and not realize it until after the charges are reset. We now show you a preview window of the old and new charges, so that you can decide if you want to continue with the old or new charges before the change occurs.
In the above screenshot, I've changed the booking to remove the pets and children from the party size. When saving, this window instantly shows what the difference is between old and new charges and allows you to select which way you want to go. Notice in the old charges (left side) the surcharge for extra guests and pets has been removed. But also notice that a military discount, added manually, will also be removed. This is because OwnerRez is recalculating the charges and doesn't know about any manual discounts put in place. You can either continue with the new charges and put the military discount back manually after saving, or you can stick with the old charges and manually remove the extra guest/pet fees manually. Either way, now you see exactly what you're going to get prior to moving forward.
Another exciting new feature is our "rent only" option on discounts and surcharges. This is another long-standing issue that has plagued users - the ability to target discounts or surcharges to rent only. The most common example is with LOS (length of stay) discounts. You probably discount your rate for week or month-long stays. But if the discount is in the wrong order on the charges grid, the % of discount might also lower the cleaning fee, extra guest fee, pet fees and so on. You only ever wanted to discount the rent! Now you can do that. Simply open the surcharge or discount and select "percent of rent" when filling out the amount.
If you prefer the previous calculation mode, where the percent calculates on all of the line items above it in the charges grid, you can still do that - select the "percent of subtotal" option.
We also added a booking criteria for "Contains a Holiday" everywhere booking criteria is used. For instance, if you want to create a surcharge to make the booking 20% higher anytime a holiday occurs, you can do that. Use the Booking Criteria on the surcharge to select "Contains a Holiday" and select "yes" as the value. You can do the opposite as well - target bookings that do not contain a holiday. Other features like triggers have the same options. Please note that on surcharges the holiday multiplier, up in the amount area, has been removed. You can now use the booking criteria below to do the same thing, so the amount multiplier is no longer necessary.
Another new feature is the ability to have non-taxed rent on your quotes and bookings. In some regions, rent is not taxed but some surcharges (cleaning, etc) are. This might seem backwards, but it does occur. In our old Legacy Rates model, you could select if rent types were taxed, but when we migrated to the new system, that setting was accidentally dropped. We've now added it back. Go to Settings > Rates > Change Settings and you can select a global option for whether your rent is taxed or not. This will affect all rent across your entire account. To be clear, this does not affect surcharges and discounts which can select whether they are taxable or not individually.
Do you have Igloo door locks? If so, you can now create door codes for those Igloo locks through OwnerRez in our door-lock integration area. This works like all of our other integrations in that door codes are automatically created for each booking as bookings are created, moved or cancelled.
This integration is provided via RemoteLock, so you won't find a logo or connection page for igloohome in our door locks area. You have to connect to your lock via RemoteLock which means you'll need to pay for RemoteLock service. Once you configure your Igloo locks in RemoteLock, you can use the RemoteLock integration in OwnerRez to manage the doors and generate door codes.
A few weeks ago, we updated our Form Messages feature so that you could modify the blue messages on all guest forms, but we missed a few. There were two guest forms - booking legal agreement and booking travel insurance - that didn't show blue messages at all. We have updated our Form Messages to now include the legal agreement and travel insurance guest forms, so that's all of them!
One of the biggest enhancement we made this past week was to surcharge and discounts and how they calculate against seasons. This has been a source of great frustration for users. Excluding or including seasons on discounts/surcharges would calculate against the entire booking no matter which nights of the booking were in which season. We overhauled the surcharge/discount calculations to check each night of the booking against the season they were in. Excluded seasons will now remove part of the surcharge/discount amount for the nights within those seasons.
Are you one of those users that answers inquiries by just sending the quote email? A lot of people do it that way and the number of clicks in the inquiry area was too many. We added a Create And Send button on the inquiry so that you can create the quote and go right to emailing it in one click. The entire inquiry area is going away soon - well, merging into the guest CRM and inbox area - but this should help reduce clicks for you in the meantime. If you don't want to only send the quote, you can still use the previous buttons to answer the inquiry how you normally do.
When running Channel Bridge on Airbnb bookings, we now download and import the cancelled date of the Airbnb cancellation so that you have piece of information on your records. Before the booking would be marked cancelled but not have a date. Now, the date is included as well.
Have you ever noticed that our prefilled system messages often have a dark blue font at the top and when you go to modify it, the blue font remains? Sometimes the font family does too, even when you're trying to change it. We overhauled our system messages bodies to get rid of the old formatting and use modern paragraph styling. This works better with changes that users make, when composing messages in the editor, and presents a better message to the recipient in most email programs (eg. Gmail, Yahoo).
Did you know that Airbnb doesn't allow more than 100 guests as the maximum guest count for a listing? We didn't either. But now that we do, we've updated our Listing Quality Analyzer tool to check for properties that allow more than 100 maximum guests while also listing on Airbnb. I'm guessing this will affect very few users. 😉
Here's another enhancement that may not affect you, but is pretty cool... Our channel management specs now support the ability to do a quote redirect in addition to online bookings. In other words, the first-class channels that integrate with us (like Houfy or HomeToGo) now have the option to redirect to an OwnerRez quote when guests book on their website in addition to pushing online bookings to us directly. This makes it easier for those channels to integrate and ensures that the bookings are still coming through OwnerRez directly, using your rules and payments methods. If this is something you want a channel to do (like Houfy) reach out to them and ask them to support it. To be clear, we've added the ability for quote redirect, but that doesn't mean that the channel supports it yet - you'll have to ask them to put that in place for you.
Lastly, we clarified the cancellation wording for those that charge fixed cancellation fees. Previously, it was confusing if the cancellation policy started with "Fee: 123" and then later "100% refunded". This was ambiguous as to whether there was a 100% refund or not, and there isn't since the fixed fee is always charged. We clarified that to have a suffix of "(less $123.00 cancellation fee)" after explaining the refund portion.
"P si" whaaaa---? The PSiGate payment method was spelled incorrectly in several places, so we fixed it.
Stats on duplicated properties. We noticed a bug where the Duplicate Properties function would not update the stats for occupancy, bedrooms, min/max pricing - basically the stuff you see on the property's General Info tab. The underlying occupancy rules, bedroom information and so on was in there, but the new property didn't show any numbers in those General Info stats. This is now fixed.
Deleted quotes in guest conversations. Just like it sounds. Under the covers, deleted stuff is often not really deleted; it's just hidden. Some of that deleted stuff, like quotes and inquiries, was showing up on guest conversation threads. All fixed!
Cancelled bookings' confirmation emails. Sometimes we get bookings pushed to us, from channel partners or via our own channel bridge logic, where the status is already cancelled. So the booking is new but the booking is cancelled in real life. We found a bug where we were sending out guest confirmation emails for those bookings, but that has been fixed.
Gobbledygook in Airbnb guest names. Depending on the characters used on Airbnb, guest names can sometimes contain characters that get trans-coded incorrectly when they arrive in OwnerRez. Technically speaking, this is a result of HTML-encoding entities as those names are transmitted back and forth. We found and fixed this both on pre-existing Airbnb guest names and for new ones moving forward.
Vrbo bookings that aren't really bookings. Channel Bridge sees all, and sometimes it sees too much. We noticed that it was bringing in bookings - or trying to - that weren't real bookings. They might have been pending or tentative because the guest's card failed. Whatever the reason, we now detect and skip over those types of problematic bookings.
Rate calendar scrolling down. Have you ever noticed that when you open the Rate Calendar (Settings > Rates) the entire page starts in a position that is scrolled down a few inches? Yeah, we did too. Not cool, so we got rid of that.
Unread messages from inactive properties. The CRM menu and Inbox were showing an unread message count that included inactive properties. We changed that so that the unread message count no longer includes inactive properties. Wondering what those unread messages, buried in inactive properties, might say? Go re-activate the property, click back to the Inbox, read the message or mark them as read, then disable the property again.
Calendar export not adding new. There was a bug where calendar exports weren't creating a new calendar export but trying to change an existing calendar export, depending on how you clicked around. All better!
Gobbledygook in Airbnb descriptions. Not really gobbledygook this time, but I wanted to use that word again because it's fun. Airbnb descriptions that had certain special characters were being stripped and changed to plain text where they didn't need to be. We fixed this so that it's still possible to push special characters to Airbnb if the situation allows for it.
Second payment with 100% first payment? When you select "everything due up front" for First Payment rules, the second payment rules are automatically disabled. But what if you're a Sneaky Pete and select "enter percentage" and then enter "100%"?? We now check for this and make sure second payment rules are disabled for that too. Someone's always trying to ski uphill... 😉
Great updates - love these notes, thanks for all the help in 2020. Wild year, good year though.
Evelyn, that is sooooo funny.... :)
You won't catch me letting the government inject me with an unproven, untested cocktail of chemicals they have concocted. I am not critical of anyone who feels otherwise, and I will appreciate it if you will allow me to have my opinion with shaming me.
