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Going to set up a demo. Interested. Any other feedback on it?
We hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!🦃
On Tuesday 12/8, OwnerRez will be hosting a webinar with Touch Stay to discuss guest communication.
Touch Stay offers digital guest welcome books that provide guests everything they need to know about the property and surrounding area. Ken Taylor, Head of Operations at OwnerRez, will discuss with Andy, CEO, and Tyann, Community Ambassador from Touch Stay about the benefits that make guests’ stays more relaxed and more informed.
The session is free to join, all you need to do is sign up using this link: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/webinar-ownerrez-touchstay
You find our previous webinars on this page: https://www.ownerrez.com/webinars
We're happy to announce that we've partnered with YourWelcome. This will enable OwnerRez users to install YourWelcome Tablets into their vacation rentals.
The Tablet enables property managers to offer contact-free check-in, property video guides and a simple way to up-sell services such as late checkout, equipment hire and more.
Once integrated all of your guests will get a personalized welcome on the Tablet when they enter the property. YourWelcome provides the opportunity for property managers to increase the revenue from every booking.
According to YourWelcome, they have their tablets installed in over 18,000 properties and are the leading guest engagement platform. When you sign up you'll receive a free tablet which is offered with every subscription. Check them out here: https://www.yourwelcome.com/
Once you sign up, check out our support doc here: https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/yourwelcome
Happy Friday! We hope all of you have a safe and healthy Thanksgiving next week.🦃
Yesterday, we had our first webinar with our partners over at ASTRHO. Ken gave a live demo and answered some pertinent questions about OwnerRez and the industry. You can watch the entire session here. We plan on doing more webinars in the near future, so be sure to keep up with our blog to stay informed and sign up early for future events.
We’ve heard through the grapevine that Stripe has seen an uptick in refunds and chargebacks. Because of this, some accounts may have negative balances or a large number of disputes. This leads to slow payouts or a portion of your balance set aside as a reserve to process refunds. Our advice is have patience with Stripe, but if you need to switch we recommend looking into Ascent, Bambora or Lynnbrook.
Booking.com has launched a new (and required) Minimum Cleanliness Score Commitment for all listings. In order to remain on the platform, homeowners and rental managers must maintain a minimum cleanliness score of 6 out of 10. Your score is based on an average of all your guest reviews, so hopefully you’ve been keeping your rentals clean! Booking.com says that anyone who does not meet the cleanliness standards will be put on a warning list and notified.
On Tuesday, Henderson, Nevada implemented stricter regulations for vacation rentals. This included a requirement for newly registered rental homes to be located at least 1,000 feet away from other short-term rentals. Also any complaints must be dealt with quickly and guests must use onsite parking before parking on the street.
Palm Desert is expanding its ban on short-term rentals which will affect 69 properties but doesn’t go into effect until the end of next year (December 31, 2021). Many owners urged the council to remove the ban. “People are losing their jobs, unable to put food on their tables, questioning if the roof over their head will be there tomorrow,” said Cody Carlson, short-term rental owner.
This Thursday 11/19, our very own Ken Taylor will be presenting during the Association for Short-Term Rental Homeowners (ASTRHO) partner education session. ASTRHO was created so that short-term and vacation rental homeowners can easily access education, community, experts, perks and benefits; and quickly solve problems and be more profitable.
The webinar will last about an hour and include a live demo of OwnerRez. If you've ever been inetrested in learning more about ASTRHO, now is the time!
The session is free for anyone to join. Sign-up to join the session using this link!
In collaboration with ASTRHO, they are offering a limited-time promotion for OwnerRez clients to receive 3 months free if they sign-up before December 31, 2020.
Is there any roadmap item to actually receive back into OR a status of the unit? IE we would like to be able to see in OR that the Unit is Cleaned. Of course that would probably mean there would need to be a place to put that status - Cleaned/Occupied/Vacated... etc...
Happy.... end of week?! It's not Wednesday, but we're rolling into the weekend with a Product Update post anyway! We had 21 updates with Stripe, blue message editing, expenses, API and quote changes leading the way. Let's get to it. 🚀
In the very-near future, something known as 3D Secure 2 ("3DS2") will become common for our European users. It might take a few years, but we expect that 3DS2 will eventually become standard in America and most other countries. If you're curious, Braintree has a technical summary on what 3DS2 is and how it works. In a nutshell, 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 have made it so that European banks are now required to support it. Again, we believe that America and other regions will require it in the future as well.
To pave the way for 3DS2 compliance, we've been working on setting up 3DS2-compliant payment processing with the processors that support it. The first processor we're working with is Stripe as they started supporting 3DS2 earlier than others and have a decent process in place.
It's more than just the processor though. As you know by now, OwnerRez is the world's best vacation rental channel manager which means we take payments from front-end channels like Vrbo and Booking.com and do the payment processing on their behalf. This makes it even more complicated because it means that the front-end (eg. Vrbo) has to work with the same processor that our merchant (eg. you) does and get authorization "tokens" that are verified by the cardholder and then passed to OwnerRez for processing and storage. The guest's card info alone is no longer sufficient.
Don't worry about 3DS2 though - we know about it and we're on it!
So why am I bringing this up now? Our weekly Product Update blog is not just about what we've done but also what we're working on in the near future and the overall direction of things as they shift. As we work on 3DS2, we want OwnerRez users to know that (a) it's a thing, (b) we're taking care of it and (c) how it related to other work we've released. That's where Stripe Connect comes in! In order to get 3DS2 compliant with Stripe, we needed to support the "connect" side of Stripe so we went ahead did that. When connecting a Stripe account to OwnerRez now, you'll notice that it immediately takes you to Stripe's website instead of asking for the secret key.
After logging into Stripe, they'll show you an OwnerRez logo and ask if you want to authorize OwnerRez to work with your Stripe account. This is the normal type of authorization process that you've probably done with many other online apps.
After authorizing, you'll be taken back to the OwnerRez payment method page where you can continue finishing the process. For full instructions on how this works, read our support article on Connecting Stripe to OwnerRez.
If you have an existing Stripe account, nothing will change at the moment. The coming 3DS2 upgrades and other Stripe changes will be launched in future weeks, so watch for Product Updates on that.
Another new thing this week is editable guest form messages. If you don't know what that is, think of the "blue message at the top of the form that guests use".
Okay, so technically this isn't a new feature because it was there before, but it was never fully supported across all guest forms. It only worked on the quote acceptance forms. We have now built this out across all guest forms and guest pages, even confirmation pages. Go to Settings > Form Messages and create one to get started. At the top, you'll see a long drop-down of options. The names should be self explanatory.
After selecting one, you'll see the Message Content fill in with the system default message that shows if you have nothing. Make your changes and save!
If you don't want the blue message to show at all, just empty out the box and save.
Notice that you can also use field codes here which is a really cool way to personalize the message to the property. For instance, you can add the property name by writing that field code (or inserting it from the fields windows) directly into the message. You can also use custom field codes that were configured on the property.
Then, when the page loads for the guest, they'll see your custom message including any field codes.
If you want the default message to be displayed again, simply delete the form message you created and the page will go back to how it was. Form Messages should now be editable for guest forms, and each of their pages, including:
Our property manager users will be happy to know that we'll be rolling out a lot of PM-area updates over the next couple of weeks and months. The PM area has been collecting feedback for a long time. We've done some recent things like custom statement views and portal updates, but a lot more is needed (and on the way!). This week, we squeezed in a couple small PM updates.
The first PM update is the ability to import Expenses via Excel. This is small but something PMs have asked for for a long time. Check it out by going to Tools > Import/Export and look at the import option under From Excel. Make sure to read the intro and top steps so that you know how to use the Excel template.
The second PM update is the addition of Expenses to our API. If your website or services interact with OwnerRez via API, you can now create expenses programmatically! Check out the API area to get started or go right to the spec and scroll down to the "ExpensesController" section. You can read, add, update or delete OwnerRez expenses all with custom code from third party systems.
The last new PM feature we added was an upgrade for our mapping code and location settings to allow "exact" versus "approximate" locations on properties. Technically this isn't a PM-only thing. Anyone with a Hosted Website will benefit from this as well. I refer to it as a PM thing because it was typically users with many properties (20+) that kept asking us for property-by-property location settings. You might have a map on your website with 35 properties on it. In some cases, you want approximate bubbles and in other cases the exact pin. Now you can! The preference still shows on the website but you can override it with a setting on each property as well. Go to the property, click the Location tab and find it there. While we were in there, we also added a setting to the Airbnb API integration to show exact listing location there as well.
One of the things OwnerRez is known for is our commitment to updating old features with new settings, options and ideas over time. We don't just build new stuff, we watch and maintain the old stuff too. This past week, we added a set of new quote-based field codes to our field codes list which are as follows:
We noticed that these three field codes were missing even though bookings supported them. You can read about all of our field codes by going to the Field Codes support article or by opening the "Insert Field" window when working on a template or renter agreement. Or watch this cool walk-through video on using Field Codes.
Using our APIs to check for availability? If so, you will now notice that the booking "key" comes back in API results. This will allow you to link specifically to forms and booking information from your API searches.
Those of you that use Parakeet know that they were recently purchased by and changed their name to Brivo. So we updated all of our docs, integration options and settings for Parakeet over to Brivo. We like to keep a clean house!
Speaking of which, we're working on cleaning up all the Vrbo and HomeAway naming differences so that it's "Vrbo" everywhere. That's not out yet, but it will be soon! In case you live under a rock, "HomeAway" is no more - websites, logos, documents have all been purged from the earth by the Expedia mothership.
For Airbnb, we now support "keyword fees" that are charged per night (ie. fees like maintenance or resort or linen that we search for by certain names). In the past, we only supported them if they were per stay, but now you can have your per-night fees get synced with Airbnb as well.
Speaking of Airbnb, the House Manual field has had its max size updated to 20,000 characters so that can cram more stuff in there. This should make it a bit easier to add your content given that OwnerRez counts all the rich-formatting as characters too.
We also reworked the listing imports for both Airbnb and Vrbo to be simpler and more reliable. We noticed that users would routinely create duplicate properties by accident because they would use an add option instead of update when importing listings from Airbnb or Vrbo. We eliminate this problem by moving the import options to separate add versus update pages and buttons. It's now no longer possible to add or update by accident.
Ever want to change the stuff "Info" tab on a canceled booking? There are plenty of situations where you might want to, and now you can.
Over in Vrbo land, we've made a couple of tweaks to make your Vrbo life easier. If you're hooking up the Vrbo API, the on-boarding forms are now prefilled with values to make it easier to get started, and we updated the Channel Bridge code for Vrbo to use Vrbo's new GraphQL data. Don't know what GraphQL is? No worries - it just means that Channel Bridge will now find some stuff easier and more consistently!
API 'sinceUtc' parameter. One of our awesome partners pointed out that they couldn't find updated bookings via our API, even when a guest's contact info changed, because the booking's Last Updated flag was not correctly. Found and fixed!
LQA property maximums. Sometimes, Listing Quality Analyzer would show spurious property maximum and excluded fee warnings in complex cases that were actually okay. We found and fixed those spurious warnings.
Airbnb channel bridge advanced link. We fixed a situation where the "show advanced" link on channel bridge was not being shown.
PayPal Pro gets real TLS. Very few OwnerRez users use the PayPal Payments Pro gateway. This isn't the normal vanilla PayPal that zillions of people use. This is the advanced business gateway in the background that very few people even know exists. We found and fixed a security issue where PayPal Pro started rejecting payment requests.
Multi-month Damage Protection billing. Can Damage Protection cover long-term bookings? Yes, it can! However the DP policies are charged at a 30 day rate, so every 30 days the booking continues, the product increases in cost. This was working with RentalGuardian, but we were not billing you for the longer policies. That is now fixed.
TripAdvisor inquiry parsing. TripAdvisor sends OwnerRez inquiry emails, OwnerRez parses them into inquiry records, you deal with the inquiries and send the guest a quote - this has been going on as long as OwnerRez has been a thing. However, sometimes those inquiry emails fail and we have to fix them, and that just happened with TripAdvisor.
This week, make sure to check out our new 10 minute video on how to set up a Book Now website from start to finish. We start with a fresh empty OwnerRez account and go all the way to the point where a guest is using a credit card to pay for their booking. Check it out!
Thank you for the heads-up, and thank you for a wonderful system! I still think it is a bargain at this price! ;-)
I could not believe the $20/mo price when I was first referred to OwnerRez. From where I stand, you don't even need to justify the price increase. It's a bargain at triple the price!
Thank you for making sure we all understand your price increase. I love OR and couldn't run my business without it--and I have only one VR! Keep up the great product and excellent customer service that I have come to rely on.
fred s said:
All of these 3rd party vacation rental conglomerates...VRBO, AirBnb, etc. have nothing but a financial incentive for how they do business. Instead of charging properties / property management companies a fee to list on their sites (their original business model) they went into selling travel charging both properties and end users commission fees. All of their technological advances are designed to force consumers to make payment through them and restrict direct communication between travelers and the vacation options available...a real dis-service.I just wanted to step in and address this. You're not wrong - which is precisely why OwnerRez' services are so valuable. We have a multiplicity of ways for you to obtain direct contact information for your channel guests, which can be used completely independently of those platforms.
And with VRBO specifically, our API partnership with them allows you to directly collect payments from their guests, so you are in full control of the credit card charging, and get your money according to the terms of the credit card payment processor you have chosen, that VRBO has no control over.
Is it perfect? Well, no, nothing in life is. :-) But it's pretty decent, and getting better all the time as we work to meet the obvious needs you've described.
Just my .02 - I have been in the Vacation Rental biz for over 30 years and you guys had the best and most comprehensive booking engine out there. I fully understand your need to update technologies, compete in the ever changing marketplace and offer new options to your clients...just sorry your doing so at the expense of why some of us chose ownerrez in the first place. All of these 3rd party vacation rental conglomerates...VRBO, AirBnb, etc. have nothing but a financial incentive for how they do business. Instead of charging properties / property management companies a fee to list on their sites (their original business model) they went into selling travel charging both properties and end users commission fees. All of their technological advances are designed to force consumers to make payment through them and restrict direct communication between travelers and the vacation options available...a real dis-service. That said you can't fight City Hall. Just wish you could have left your original booking engine as an option - it had the best pricing options one could hope for. The original format took into consideration some of the unique aspects of Vacation Rentals...not just how to grow, grow, grow revenue. Look forward to continued success working with guys either way!
This software is gold and worth the extra fee. Thank you for the thorough explanation.
Paul,
Your customer service is above and beyond. Walking me through the initial start-up I'm sure was painful but it is so nice to have OwnerRez dial us in with our integration with the reservation websites. These sites have some of the worst customer service out there. Love that you guys are staying true and hope that others will take a step back and realize the value they are getting.
Mark
Just chiming in on this as feedback. I absolutely loathe dealing with LOS discounts. We are managing over 70 properties with around 18 “seasons”. LOS discounts are a disaster for us to calculate nightly rates from in order to actually charge the correct amount. Instead of being able to group, for example, all oceanfront studios, and say “these are $850 per month from November to March”, we have to take the nightly rate, multiply by 30, calculate the discount percentage, then set it all up. And then it turns out to be $852.36 or some other crazy number. Then we get a 60 line accounting of our rate and discount from Airbnb, which isn’t pretty. Plus, if we want to discount our nightly rate for a promotion, it stacks the LOS discount, making our monthly rate too cheap.
We have used it for about a year now. Our cleaners were resistant at first, so we hopped on a training call with Jill at VRS and the owner of the cleaning company. When he discovered he could use it to pull reports, allowing him bill us (his largest/primary client) monthly rather than having to do daily accounting to keep track of stuff, he was sold. Their training is fantastic & Jill Mason is hands on, practically 24/7. We ended up sharing it with our cleaners, who created their own “region” to handle their other few vacation rental and commercial accounts. I’m not sure how close you are with your cleaners, but it works well for us here & the pricing is very fair. We love it!
Yes, Me, Yes....PLEASE include us reservations@coastalwavesvacations.com for SMS early group!!!
After a stressful election week, it’s finally Friday! Start your weekend off right by reading some industry news.
Airbnb has been slapped with a class action lawsuit for missing host payments. A lot of hosts were livid when the company gave full refunds back in March, and it looks like that’s finally catching up to them. The lawsuit alleges three violation claims which include breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and violation of California consumer protection laws. This isn’t a good look for a company gearing up for an IPO.😯
Rancho Mirage CA, has moved forward with placing a ban on short-term vacation rentals starting January 1st. Once in effect, this will apply to 121 properties in public neighborhoods. The ban comes as now surprise with City Council member Dana Hobart stating, “We have tried in vain, for roughly a decade, to find a harmonious resolution satisfactory to both sides. Our failure over such a lengthy period to find a mutually acceptable solution abundantly exposes the futility of continuing the effort. It is time to end this dispute.”
If you’ve been thinking about buying vacation rental properties, now is the time! Trusted Business Insights released an updated study on the Vacation Rental Market for 2020-2029. For 2020, the global value of the vacation rental marketplace was valued at $76.08 billion. From 2021 to 2027, there is an expected 2.3% of compound annual growth rate. The study concluded that millennials are responsible for the majority of growth in the industry. According to an Airbnb report, Millennials will account for 75% of all consumers and travelers by 2025. So what are you waiting for? Buy up the vacation rental market and rent them out to yuppies!🤑
On that same note, condo prices drop 9% in San Francisco. There is a historic amount of inventory on the market as 2,532 homes were listed for sale at the end of October. That’s 77% more than the same week a year ago. If you’ve been looking to move to the Bay Area, now is the time!🏠
This week we put out a User Profile where we talked to Jeanne from Groome & Morales and MyPCBCondo.com. From time to time, we showcase OwnerRez users that show exemplary work, so be sure to keep up with our blog for all the weekly updates.😊
Have a great weekend!🌴
Staying independent is a big deal, and I appreciate this effort. When looking to a software provider it was important to me that you would not sell to VRBO, AirBNB, or a larger competitor!
Not a problem for me guys!
You deliver an awesome product, at a great price, backed by wonderful support. Thank you for all you do to help us small businesses succeed.
Makes total sense and worth every penny. Thanks for being such an awesome partner!
I didn't even get the email nor notification of the blog. I found out on FB. As a single property owner, this is very disappointing. The single property owners don't have the deep pockets that multi properties **might have**. I have migrated my entire booking process to direct so I don't use, nor want, API. The API doesn't really even work well for single properties admittedly by your own company. When I did test it, it messed up my entire booking records that took weeks to unsnarl by hand.
Who will support the small biz guys out here since you were the only coverage? I get it and you need to grow but it's just sad that the little guys get fleeced once again (the people who need it the most). Now I have to go back and start researching how to do this on my own since the doubling of cost is not feasible. Your cost is the single highest for my business. It's more than my hosting and website. I wish you nothing but the best of luck but cannot go quietly without letting you know about my personal situation. Does it matter in the big scheme? No, not to your company, but it's a huge deal to my little business.
Absolutely worth every penny!
We aren't going anywhere. From an invite to the VRBO API pilot program to the correct answers and quick answers I get every time in support, there's no way I would go to another platform after trying several before I found Owner Rez. Feeling like you can quickly get a hold of someone who actually knows what they're talking about has massive value. Please stay independent and do not sell out like VRBO did.
I love these guys and this company!
Sure, no one likes paying out more dollars, but the support and product they offer is terrific and they are a fantastic value.
They are always quick to answer any questions I have and are extremely patient which I appreciate so much! Looking forward to working with all of you for many years to come.
Steve Burrows @ Reaches2Beaches
We totally understand and are with you on these changes and updates. Your product has already paid for itself many times over, and we have no intention of going anywhere else. Mahalo for your candor and integrity!
OwnerRez was the best decision we made to manage our properties and integrating API giving us control over billing and collection was awesome could not have done it without you, thanks! We understand occasional price increases especially to stay independent and improving your product. My only frustration is reliance on emails for customer support but you have done a good job with it. If you ever do have phone service support please let me know because some issues are hard to cure by email. Rick
Your company has been incredible and the level of support is unparalleled. I understand the need for an increase and appreciate the communication.
I understand and thank you for the detailed price increase explanation above. Please stay independent and true to all of us who enjoy and depend on your software. Your customer service has been great...I always get a timely response and it is very much appreciated.
