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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.
Happy Friday! 😃This will be our final industry news for 2020, since the holidays are next week!🎄We hope everyone can spend some safe, quality time with their families. We will be winding things down until after the new year, but don’t worry! We’ll still be around if something catastrophic happens.
We would like to thank everyone for a fantastic year, despite all of the craziness that has been going on. We have a lot of exciting things planned for 2021, and look forward to seeing what the future holds. One thing you can sign up for now is our upcoming webinar with Airbnb on January 12th. We’ll discuss how to optimize your properties for listing on Airbnb. The session is free to join, but you need to use the sign-up for OwnerRez/Airbnb webinar link to register. Now, let's get into this week's industry news!
California has made vacation rentals illegal. The new travel restriction put in place makes it illegal for owners to take reservations from people traveling from another state. The exceptions to this rule are that guests may stay if they quarantine for 14 days prior to arrival, or if they are traveling for essential purposes. However, most of the state has even tighter restrictions, only allowing guests to stay for essential travel. To make matters worse, guests who book through vacation rental sites are being told there is no guarantee for refunds.
Airbnb has placed a ban on one-night stays for this upcoming New Year’s Eve. This comes as no surprise, as Airbnb has done this before with other holidays to prevent large one-night parties. We’ve mentioned this in the past here, here, here, here...I think you get the point. Some people may be angry over this, but it’s either this or your place gets trashed and your neighbors are pissed.🤷♂️
The new travel trend, Remote “Workcations”, has come about because of Covid. Some cities, such as Miami Beach, Florida have begun to invite visitors for longer periods of stay in 2021. Future "workcationers" will be able to take advantage of special incentives and unique experiences with extended stay packages. If you can work remotely, why not work somewhere with perks you can enjoy in your off-time?🌴
Now to wrap things up with hope for the future, there’s a Covid-19 vaccine! The first trucks with the vaccine left the Pfizer plant in Michigan on December 13th. They are expected to deliver 2.9 million doses this week! This will dramatically impact the vacation rental industry and the entire economy for that matter. We hope everyone who wants to can get vaccinated ASAP and things can get back to normal. Thank you to everyone who makes OwnerRez the best vacation rental software out there!
Happy Holidays!🎄
Agree HTG have to offer OR clients a better rate. Airbnb are 14% and I don't have to pay any payment fees. So airbnb will always be cheaper than a HTG client. Its a similar scenario for other OTAs. If HTG are serious about getting clients to book direct then I would like to see a rate of around 10% or less.
Could you please tell the time zone?
On Tuesday 1/12, OwnerRez will be hosting a webinar with Airbnb to discuss listing optimization.
We'll sit down with Caroline Robbins, Connectivity Partnerships Manager at Airbnb, to talk about how to optimize your properties in OwnerRez for listing on Airbnb. We have so much information on this topic that we decided to break the webinar up into two parts. This will provide enough time to thoroughly answer any and all questions live during the webinar.
The session is free to join, but you need to use the sign-up for OwnerRez/Airbnb webinar link to register.
You can find all of our past and future webinars on our Webinars page.
Fees at 14% after the free period is not a viable option for those of us looking for ways to book with little or no fees. Vrbo has continued pushing higher fees, thus the need for direct options for customers with little or no fees. We need to continue to push direct partners that are more reasonable in pricing.
Last night's Google outage is still causing shockwaves through some of their services. Gmail is sending back wrong bounce messages that say stuff like "email address doesn't exist" when in fact they do!
If you're getting a lot of bounce messages from OwnerRez today, please note that we are watching this and reactivating these email addresses for you.
When the smoke clears, please look at your Communication History > Email tab for emails that bounced and need to be re-sent. We do not have a mechanism for re-sending failed messages in bulk, so unfortunately you'll have to look at them and the ones that need to be resent one by one.
This was their response.
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The professional offer is at this stage offered only for integrated partners selected by the account managers. Instead of 5% commission, the partner will pay 15%.
Marketing emails are sent to account emails when new features are introduced. Account managers are always informed about new features and can always be approached. Otherwise visit also check https://www.vrbo.com/discoveryhub for updates for more information.
My suggestion is to ask if the accounts you manage are eligible for the professional offer as account manager are trained to ask questions regarding strategies, new updates, and future planning. They can also tell you more about the pay out details and financial advantages.
There are no advantages over ranking on the website this still only depends on the quality metrics like:
-Reviews
-instant booking activation
-flexibility cancelation policy
-acceptance rate
-the amount of bookings
-response rate
A lot of IPM's prefer the performance offer to be able to globally control prices over different platforms.
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Interesting - seems like both AirBNB and VRBO will be looking passing different expense to owners.
Just to run the numbers on the $500.... if you rent more than $3300 on VRBO... the $500 is a deal. Currently paying much lower than 15% on even the smallest of properties.
We've talked with VRBO and quite soon they're going to introduce 15% Host only fee. Awaiting an update since only VRBO Account Managers got that article regarding parameters and benefits.
What do you do with overlapping rates where you would use the rate priority? Do you now have to adjust your date ranges to not overlap?
