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Wednesday update time! After a small week last time, we came roaring back with 26 shiny new ones for you, led by a redesigned blog and short links for guests.
Hey - if you're reading this from the blog, look around! Notice anything new?
We finally brought our blog into the 21st century with a new layout and design. You can now read blog posts comfortably from your smartphone, search for articles or follow along by category. Some new imagery, intros and other things were added as well.
If you used to follow blog comments by RSS, sorry - we removed that. We also changed the main RSS feed to only include an intro body and removed social media links that we don't use anymore. Is Google+ even a real thing anymore?
We've wanted to overhaul our "www side" for awhile, but we've been too busy with other things (you know... channels, messaging, hosted, SMS) to get to it. Over the next year, we'll be allocating extra development time to making this a reality piece by piece. The blog was the first to go!
If you're frustrated with Booking.com breaking your guest links, get in line! We all are. This past week we released a new link-shortening feature where guest links are automatically shortened by default. The longer original links will still continue to work but, by default, they will now appear shorter. This took some clever work, and you may not have even noticed it, so take a second to go see what I mean....
Open any booking > Transactions tab > Request button > Request Payment. When the window opens, take a look at the URL. It used to look like this:
https://app.ownerrez.com/forms/bookings/12345678987654321/payments/add
But it now looks like this:
https://orez.io/v1/l/12345678987654321
There's nothing you need to do to use this new shorter URL format - it will be used automatically. If you had field codes in email templates that render links, the short URLs will now be used by default.
This should stop Booking.com's message thread from breaking all the links you send with email. It will also help in Airbnb and SMS conversations where messages are sent in short plain text. Cleanliness is next to godliness.
While we were here, we went ahead and re-enabled the "failed payment " message that used to be sent to Booking.com guests when a payment failed. Awhile back, we stopped sending the message because the links were being mangled by Booking.com. Now that the links are short, they won't be mangled, so the message is back! To be clear, Booking.com is always alerted, automatically under the covers, when a payment fails, but the extra message helps remind the guest because it goes into the booking message thread on Booking.com.
Lots of tweaks and enhancements this week!
We upgraded our "www side" to use FontAwesome 5 similar to the recent update that hosted websites got. It looked so nice on hosted websites, we wanted to get in on the action!
Depending on how you block-off time, the system used to associate an owner with the blocked-off time for those clients that have PM (property management) turned on. We turned that off. Blocked-off time no longer have owners.
We noticed a high number of clients had broken email templates because of how link-based field codes were used - ie. field codes that render links for the guest to click on. If the field code was placed in the wrong spot, or included a certain type of formatting, the link would break because of the email formatting around it. We completely overhauled the link editor on email templates (and renter agreements) to insert specific field code links from a drop-down list.
This also means you don't need to copy/paste field codes back and forth from somewhere else. Just highlight the text you want to link, click the link button and you'll see everything right there in front of you.
If you want to insert your own custom URL, you can do that too by selecting the top "Custom Web Address" option.
There's another great little easter egg in there... If you happen to select the renter agreement link (BULEASE) the window will show you an extra drop-down list of all your renter agreements and let you select which of your renter agreements to link to as an extra parameter:
Have you ever wanted to search your bookings based on an old booking number from a different system? You might have recently joined OwnerRez and had a different numbering system in the past. You can now search for bookings based on a legacy booking number from the top omni-search bar. If you're not sure how to set (ie. add or remove) a legacy booking number, check out the Info tab on any booking.
Awhile back, we added a yes/no option for Travel Insurance during quote acceptance where guests could see Travel Insurance options, what each option costs and choose to include or decline coverage inline. On the decline option, we tell the guest that they may not receive a refund. But what if they can receive a refund? Now that our custom Cancellation Policy feature is out, it's easy for the system to know if the guest will get a refund and under what conditions, so we added a "View refund policy" link that can be clicked to view what the actual policy is right then and there.
We converted several more system alerts to the new format including new-inquiry notifications and calendar sync notifications. About that - sorry for the bad Reply-To header! After we released the new format, a bunch of emails starting flooding in from clients responding to inquiries because the Reply-To header was coming to OwnerRez. We fixed that. Replies to inquiries notifications should now be correctly going to the guest.
The default renter agreement had some old CSS (ie. styling and formatting) that made tables look silly, particularly borders and margins. We removed that formatting on tables in the default renter agreement.
Ever send an email to a guest and you get back a bounce message, but it's not really a bounce. It's more of an "out of office" notification? These are known as auto-responders, and they're annoying because you keep getting them every time you send an email to the same recipient. In some cases, the recipient may have a setting turned on in their email program to say some completely-unnecessary thing like "Thanks for your email - I'll respond shortly! Please consider the environment before printing! Have a blessed day!". Over and over and over.... We noticed that this happens a fair amount of the time and, given the huge amount of email that OwnerRez sends, it adds up. So we updated our bounce detection code to check for these type of soft bounces and, if found, not bother you about them with an extra email. You can still see if there was an auto-responder, or some other type of soft bounce, by looking at the master Communication History area in the app.
Blog post order in forum discussions. You may have noticed in the past that new blog posts, curiously, showed up lower down in the Latest Discussions list in the forums area. This has now been fixed.
Expired security holds. Just because a security hold is successfully held, originally, does not mean it's still good later on. Unfortunately, holds can expire and our re-authorization process may not fully work in certain situations. We added some display logic to the Transactions tab on the booking to show if the security hold expired or can't be collected against.
Center menus with lots of links on hosted websites. Our new header customization for hosted websites is pretty cool, but it allows you to make some pretty wild menu layouts. Some clients had centered menus with many links, and it caused the menu to push left or right and use the header space in non-optimal ways. We fixed this so that centered menus look better.
Property info page showing wrong currency. Did you know properties can have a different currency than the account at large? Yep. But the property info page was showing the global account currency instead of the property-specific one. That is now fixed!
Travel Insurance "final payment" text. As of now, our current insurance partner has dictated that Travel Insurance must be purchased by the initial booking date or within 30 days of arrival. That's standard Travel Insurance of course - CFAR has different rules. We removed some text that said that Travel Insurance could be purchased by the final payment date because that is incorrect.
Clarified second payment days in default renter agreement. This only applies to the default renter agreement, if you happen to use that. The language was unclear about the second payment days relative to the booking date and arrival date, so we clarified it. If you use the default agreement, take a look at that and see if you like it! You can always make a copy and modify it to say anything you want.
New Airbnb changes. Sigh. Airbnb sometimes changes their API specs without providing notice to partners. We updated some API logic for Airbnb that broke because of this.
Don't import invalid Airbnb property types. Airbnb's property types (eg. villa, guest house, cabin) include some old types that aren't valid anymore, by which I mean they don't allow you to select them now but you could have selected them before. In our Listing Import for Airbnb, we are now detecting the old ones and skipping past them.
Remove Villa/Loft from duplicate property group categories. Just what it sounds like - we had some duplicate property types that were removed.
Disabled channel mappings button when channel is de-authorized. If a channel is de-authorized, for whatever reason, we are now detecting that and now allowing you to change property mappings. Doing that before would create a crash message, so we disabled the button to stop the crash messages.
Season name on minimum night validation. This one has been around for awhile. When you get a minimum night validation message (eg. "This property requires 4 nights") the system would sometimes insert a season name even though the rate wasn't from that season. This was confusing for guests and we fixed it.
Custom sources white-space. To help fix some common error patterns, we are now trimming off white-space on the front and end of the domain field on custom sources.
Overused "Using System Alert" field on emails. On communication history, the email view was showing a "Using System Alert" field on many alerts even if there was no alert type showing on the email. Or in other case,s the wrong alert type was showing. This is now fixed.
Quote status. We fixed an issue where quotes were not correctly switching to 'preempted' or 'expired' status, when bookings updated, unless they had custom cancellation policies.
Good news - it’s Friday!
Hope is on the horizon! A nationwide Vrbo survey of families shows change in travel habits due to COVID-19. Vacation rentals ranked number one among the types of vacations respondents say they want to take now through December. Travel data from Vrbo indicates families want to take longer vacations. Interest in one, three or four-week stays have grown relative to the total number of searches. Compared to this same time last year, searches for longer stays are up 25%. The ability to work from anywhere has brought a big opportunity for more travel during the second half of 2020.
Laguna Beach CA, asks Coastal Commission support for clamping down on short-term rentals in residential areas. As people flock to the coast for vacation, the dilemma of limiting vacation rentals has been brought to the table. Some of the problems with having short-term rentals mixed in residential areas can be in the form of, noise complaints or parties disturbing quiet areas, traffic congestion or parking issues and trash left behind. But the positive side says they also are a way of providing a lower-cost option to beach resorts, allowing public access to the coast. What do you think?
Hawaii Tourism Authority (HTA) released their June vacation rentals report on Tuesday. Statewide, slightly under 14% of vacation rentals were occupied in June. In comparison, hotel rooms saw just under 16% occupancy in June. On Hawai'i Island, Kaua'i and Maui County, legal short-term rentals were allowed to operate, but only as long as they were not being used as a quarantine location. On O'ahu, short term rentals were flat out not allowed to operate. Anyone going to Hawaii this fall?
Just a couple updates to talk about this week and all bug fixes:
Widgets and IE 11. We dropped support for Internet Explorer 11 a few weeks back, but only for the internal app that owner and PMs see. Public websites and widgets were still supposed to support IE 11, but widgets didn't. We fixed that so widgets now work in IE 11.
Airbnb listing import. Airbnb recently changed some things about their listing format that broke our importer. We have now fixed this so that you can once again import listing data for your properties.
Tag filtering and deleting. Our new Tag feature is exciting, but we had a couple bugs sneak out in the release - specifically when filtering and deleting tags. Those have now been fixed.
Guests *can* write reviews on OwnerRez. Go to their Booking and look for the Reviews tab - there's a button to send them a request to fill out a review. Those will be stored in the OwnerRez database, and displayed on your website.
Sad that guest cannot leave reviews on Ownerrez.
I hope this is soon corrected as I don't want to send guest somewhere else to write a review or submit it to me so I can submit it as that seem to be from neanderthal times
i tried the use of tags. However, it doesn't show up on reflect when i am looking at the list of inquiries ...under the column Tags, it still shows "none"
Here at OwnerRez, we understand how much time and effort goes into running a vacation rental business. From time to time, we like to interview a standout user that has been with us for awhile and get a sense of their background and operation. Admittedly, it's been awhile since the last one, but we're back in the interview chair and excited to restart this series!
Recently, we reached out to Mitch and Cathy at Warren Beach Rentals. Their website and operation can be found at WarrenBeachRentals.com or on their Facebook page. Below are the questions we asked Mitch and Cathy and the interesting responses they gave.
Mitch Warren: We bought our first condo 25 years ago on June 4. I was expecting a nice check at the end of the first month, and instead, the management company sent me a bill that included three new vacuum cleaners, replacement of “worn” salad tongs, advertising fee of $1000, along with various and other sundry charges.. when I got my statement I actually OWED them money. I thought, these guys are crooks, there has got to be a better way. We found a start up company called VRBO and was their first client in northwest Florida with a VRBO # of 475 that is still in existence today. [Editor note: Yep, still there!]
We built up a nice rental book on that condo, and sold it to buy 2 more. The person that bought the condo asked us “since you have it booked already, would you do this for me..?" and like that, Warren Beach Rentals was born. Over the next 25 years we bought and sold about 40 properties and beginning in 2017 we had 12 that we managed. My oldest son graduated college and moved to Destin and wanted to grow the business, my second oldest has since joined him. In 2018 we found OwnerRez that allowed us to effectively scale our business and today Warren Beach Rentals now has an office, full time staff, and we run right at 100 rental properties from Destin, to 30A, to Panama City Beach.
Mitch: I was and still am a State Farm Agent, with my office in Hendersonville, Tennessee.
Mitch: The vacation rental business was always a side job for me and my wife, it allowed us to control our own beach rentals along with some folks that had asked us to help them out.
Mitch: I am in Tennessee, but it is a 45 minute direct flight to Panama City Beach, we travel back and forth at least 15-20 times per year. We still have kids in high school, so Tennessee is still home for us now.
Mitch: We love the Florida panhandle, the weather, the people, the sand and water. It's Just simply better than anywhere else we have found.
Mitch: Being able to have ownership of my business and control over how it is run. Vacation rental business is not commoditized like so many other businesses. When we pour our hearts into the business, and guests have a wonderful time, its just so rewarding to be part of their families beach memories that they are creating. We love the beach, that shows in everything we do. We are truly excited for each guest every time they arrive and smell that salt air and see that blue water.. it never gets old being part of that experience.
Mitch: It never stops. This is not a business for the faint of heart. Guests' needs come before your own. You had better have a true passion for serving others in a compassionate and kind manner. It definitely gets in the way of "free time". You have to have a family that understands that and is supportive.
Mitch: Scaling and automation. Being able to create a booking across multiple platforms, bill, communicate, and get all of necessary documentation through automation is essential. We are able to touch our clients at the time of booking, just before their stay, 24 hours after arrival, the day before departure, then 2 times after their stay at the time of booking all in our templates and triggers.
Mitch: The calendar display is fantastic and the web page they helped prepare is useful and intuitive. We have found OwnerRez a fantastic partner in growing our business and have truly enjoyed our partnership.
>>>>>>
Thanks, Mitch and Cathy! We have enjoyed the partnership too. And that's really what it is for us - a partnership between good people who care about what they do. We wish Warren Beach Rentals well as they continue growing and building their stellar reputation!
From time to time, we showcase OwnerRez users that show exemplary work. This week, we talked to Jeanne from Groome & Morales and MyPCBCondo.com. Their website and operation can be found at MyPcbCondo.com or on their Facebook page for property Retro Ranch. Below are the questions we asked and her responses.
Jeanna: I am a realtor in Memphis. My husband Billy and I own our own brokerage here - Groome & Co Realtors which can be found at groomeco.com - so vacation rentals seemed a natural side business. To build retirement income and an investment portfolio, we chose short term vacation rentals instead of doing long term rental homes in my local market for diversity and a little fun for when we stay. I bought my first VR in Destin with my husband in 2000 when my oldest child was a pre-schooler and have owned one ever since.
We sold in 2005 and selected Panama City Beach as an area of revitalization and growth as Destin was saturated and the traffic had become so awful. We have seen vast economic changes in the market (due to the mortgage crisis of late 2000’s) but we held on and “rode the wave” and are so glad we did. We also have a lake house in hot springs Arkansas that we started.
My sister Jolynna Morales is also a realtor and partners with me on our 3 bedroom Regency Towers condo in PCB. Her husband is a talented contractor so that comes in handy for renovations! My family has spent many happy times and made great memories in our rentals.
Jeanna: I've been a broker for 27 years.
Jeanna: I'm from Memphis and manage the Florida properties remotely.
Jeanna: To travel and participate in different real estate markets while building equity and long term investment value.
Jeanna: Headaches and repairs. (laughing)
Jeanna: I love love love OwnerRez. It saves me from doing repetitive tasks and from forgetting to send an alert to cleaning staff or instructions to guests. The hosted website is a wonderful integration for a one stop shop for all my VR needs.
Jeanna: So many things, but I believe the integrated hosted website is extremely valuable - I spent days creating my own stand alone site before OwnerRez offered this. I would like to see additional enhancements to the hosted options, but its functional and simple. We are now booking the MAJORITY on our own; we're not longer hostage to Vrbo. (laughing)
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Thanks, Jeanna and Jolynna! We love you too! ❤️️ Our hosted website feature is an ongoing project with many coming enhancements that we look forward to adding, so keep watching on that.
We wish Groome and Morales much success in the Panama City Beach area as they continue to manage their business and thrive in the vacation rental industry!
Every now and then we like to shine light on one of our outstanding users. We know how much time and effort go into operating a vacation rental business. When we see someone excelling at this, we like to share how they do what they do best. This week we’re back in the interview chair with Ocean Property Corp & Design.
Kristin Martin, Faith Marasco and Mary Salazar are the masterminds behind Ocean Property Corp & Design. Their website and operation can be found at OceanPropertyCD.com or on their Facebook page. Below are the questions we asked them and the insightful responses they gave back.
Kristin: Ocean Property Corporation and Design represents a prestigious collection of luxury vacations homes on the Texas Gulf Coast since 2014. We are fun and energetic team who have a passion for sharing the local lifestyle and making a vacation getaway memorable. Each one of us, ladies, comes from diverse backgrounds. Thus, bridging our talents to give our guests the best overall experience in Southern Hospitality.
Kristin: I have been in hospitality in some way shape or form my entire career. I have lived all over the USA and traveled the globe due to my hotel/restaurant background. My studies included culinary arts/hospitality and wine. I started my career in the “back of the house” and made my way to the “front of the house”, terms used when working in the industry. To help those understand what these terms mean is when someone works back stage to the front of stage; ie; kitchen to the main dining floor. Having worked in every facet has provided me with the tools to truly understand how each department must work together in order to make the vision work.
Kristin: Does an 11th career apply? 😊
Kristin: It’s an eyeful even if I take out some of my passion side hustles. Line Cook, Sous Chef, Maitre’d, Lead Server, Bartender, Bar and Wine Marketing Manager, Outside Sales-Wine and Spirits Sales Representative, Outside Sales- Wine and Spirits Specialist, Outside Sales- Director of Chain Accounts, Outside Sales -Director of National Accounts State of Texas and Louisiana.
Kristin: I have been living in Texas for over 12 years, but I'm not from the area.
Kristin: Everything is bigger in Texas! I moved here from Las Vegas. I have a friend, who happens to be a talent hunter and well known culinary leading lady in Vegas who wanted me to open up a new hotel here in Downtown Houston.
Kristin: It is fluid, never dull and keeps me on my toes. Oh and I can work from anywhere I want in the world.
Kristin: I think this is a two part answer. From a work-life balance approach and from an actual constant trend that I find challenging, I have to remind myself turn it off. Since our booking calendar never shuts off it’s important to make sure I take time for myself. It is easy to get sucked into the email abyss and find yourself 12 hours later, cross-eyed.
We are a small family business, finding time to take a vacation ourselves can be somewhat difficult and I must have Wifi/technology at all times.
Coming from a corporate world in restaurant/hotel business, I have to remind myself as well as our guests we are not a hotel accommodation. We do not have the staff that would typically come with a hotel accommodation. Some of our talented staff must commute (long hours) to the area. We are in a remote coastal location that is heavily influenced by the climate, small businesses, tourists and our year round locals. VR’s are more autonomous as it allows travelers to take the wheel and drive, per se. They have the ability to experience the luxuries of both; a destination and a private residential home without being at their actual home.
Lastly, a constant trend I find is getting travelers and guests to read (this really takes the top of the dislike cake). I spend hours and hours reading through all of our 24 (soon 25) listings, troubleshooting tips and household procedures (manuals) to make sure the information is as accurate as possible. A lot of the questions that get asked over and over are in the listing, booking process and or rental agreement. Changes can occur in amenities such as: an owner makes a change and we were not informed in time to update the listing, or the salt air elements corrode a grill and we have to substitute…There is always something, but, that is what makes it always interesting.
Kristin: Oh my, we use it all. I do not even know where to begin.
We started out with OwnerRez Q4, 2019, when we were having a such terrible experience with another software and needed to make the change quickly. We solely depended on Airbnb and The Expedia Group for all of our business. Now, we can proudly say that since going live with our API integration as OwnerRez being our master hub it has helped us with our own direct hosted website, it pushes listing details, channel rules and rates to our marketing channel partners.
We have done a lot to increase our direct foot traffic, from Facebook Ads, direct social media marketing, Google Ads, SEO, direct email marketing campaigns. Our direct bookings from our direct hosted website (hosted by OwnerRez) has drastically increased. This time last year we did 8% in direct bookings, this year we are at 21% in direct bookings and more coming in! That is AMAZING!
Lastly, but definitely not least; Q1 of 2020, we signed up with Resort Cleaning to help us manage our housekeeping and maintenance; API works great here too. This helps our contractors check in and checkout, let us know when a home is turned and report damages. We are still working on this as it is rather new.
Kristin: How can you just have one? Y’all have way too many amazing features. Channel management and API with our direct marketing software partners is HUGE. Helping us manage our homes calendars, rates and descriptions is by far the best. I used to have to do this individually with multiple screens open and hours of patience. Now, I can just make a change in OwnerRez and BAM its pushed to the respective channels. When it comes time to doing invoicing for the month, OwnerRez has made a world of difference when it comes to our reporting, capturing expenses and helping us break down the reports that made zero sense to understand from the other channels (Airbnb). Can you feel the huge grateful smile through this message? Bravo Guys! Thank you for doing what you do and continue to do in VR software.
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Thanks Kristin, Faith and Mary! We love hearing how our software makes your lives easier, and we also love hearing about the path that led you to this point! We strive for excellence in everything we do, and it's clear that goes the same for Ocean Property Corp & Design. We look forward to seeing more of all the great things you will do!
Please add me to the SMS
It’s finally Friday!
Some of you may have heard about Gmail launching a BIMI pilot this week - it was picked up by a lot of online tech news websites. BIMI might sound really nerdy, but basically it’s a way for your brand (ie. your logo) to show if you’re using an authenticated domain name to send email to your customers.
In this picture, your logo would show where the CNN one is now:
This is cool for you (as vacation rental owners and PMs) because it means that your logo can be shown prominently as the avatar next to your email messages in Gmail. And because OwnerRez already supports (and requires) the DMARC standard, if you’re sending from your own domain name, you’ll be ahead of the curve in setting this up.. If you don’t know what it means to send from your own domain name, look at our Verified Sender program which is completely free and available to all OwnerRez clients.
In Hawaii, the state Land Use Commission has a big decision to make. The question of whether Hawaii County can prohibit short-term vacation rentals on land classified as agriculture will be decided August 12th. A group of 20 Kailua-Kona, Waimea and Captain Cook landowners, along with the County, have asked the LUC for a declaratory ruling. Half of Hawaii land mass is classified as agriculture, close to 1.2 million acres. That being said the decision will have far reaching effects for the vacation rental industry on the island.
In more island news, Maui, Kauai and the Big Island consider ‘resort bubbles’ for visitor quarantines. The idea would be to geo-fence guests to the confines of the resort they stay at. The state currently has a 14 day quarantine for those who travel to the island until September. Hawaii also plans to implement COVID-19 testing within 72 hours of arrival starting in September.
So if you gotta go to Hawaii, you might end up being stuck for a couple weeks. ...Not the worst place in the world to be stuck, I guess.
Please add me to the SMS as well!! Excited to text instead of email!!!!!
Hi! SMS is must for me :) I'm doing manually today, so please add me to SMS.
I'm also waiting for Airbnb messages trigger :)
I'd love to understand how the SMS works along with how you have updated the triggers to accommodate.
It's Wednesday, so let's talk updates!
We released 37 updates this past week which mostly focused on bug fixes and enhancements, particularly on SMS and messaging. We also released a first pass of our new Tags feature.
There is now a new Tags feature in OwnerRez. In a nutshell, tags gives you the ability to find and group data (properties, inquiries, quotes, guests and bookings) into common buckets so that you can filter or perform actions on those groups in the future. It's a way to slice and dice your data by another dimension.
For instance, need to label someone a "bad guest" and then filter out all bad guests from a report or export? You can now do that, or at least you can assign tags and start to filter some of the lists. We haven't fully implemented everything we'd like to do, but you get the idea about the purpose.
To get started, head over to Settings and scroll down to the new Workflow & Devices section. There's a new Tags option there. Click that and you'll see a basic list where you can create a tag. Enter whatever name you want there and save. Right now, that's all there is - just the tag name - but we'll be adding more settings to tags in the near future.
In the above example of marking bad guests, your tag name might "Bad Guest" or "bad-guest" or even "BG" depending on what kind of tag pattern you want to create. Then go find the offending guest and drill into their record. You'll see a new "Tags" spot at the top of the sidebar.
Click that change button and your tags will appear:
Select the tags you want and save. Instantly, the guest will have that tag set on their record and the selected tags will show from that point forward when you view the guest.
The tag will also show on the main Contacts (eg. Guests) list on the far right. You can also filter the Contacts list to show or exclude that tag as well.
Following this pattern, you can find and set tags on inquiries, quotes, bookings and properties, and then filter those records from their respective lists.
A good rule of thumb is to create and use tags that you will only use on one type of record. For instance, you do not need to use the same "bad guest" tag on both guest and booking records simultaneously. Tagging the guest is good enough. Any booking that the guest is on will also show the guest tags for the associated guest. So if you navigate to a booking for the bad guest, it will show both the booking-specific tags and the "bad guest" tag next to the guest name as well.
Before you ask, we know that Tags needs a number of additional features like:
The above ideas, and others, are already on our drawing board, so please be patient and try not to bombard the support desk with requests for these things. 😉
Sometimes you block off a property (ie. blocked-off time instead of booking) but the period of time is really more like a booking. For instance, the owner is staying there. We added an option on door locks to generate door codes for blocked-off time in addition to bookings. You can set it for booking only if you want the previous functionality to remain.
Calendar importing (iCal) is messy by nature because it does not contain a lot of booking-specific information and many channels support it in different ways. Because of this, we've had problems with cancelled bookings being incorrectly reactivated when a new booking occurs for the same dates. To help with this, we now check for a wider range of name/token matches when reactivating cancelled bookings from calendar imports. If not found, a new booking is created instead.
Ever wanted to export your seasonal rates to Excel? Now you can. This will dump out a spreadsheet that looks like just the seasonal rates editor.
Tax reports used to include all booking charges in the "taxable amount" figure where the charges had "taxed" selected. The problem is that in some cases, charges are marked as taxed but there doesn't end up being any actual tax line items. This would create an imbalance between the taxable charges and the taxes collected. To clarify this, we changed the default behavior of the tax reports to not include those charges (even if marked taxable) if no tax were collected for the booking. If you want the amounts to still show, you can do that with a new setting on the report.
Have you ever connected the Airbnb API and then later changed your email address on the Airbnb account? The email address on the API connection still shows the old one forever in OwnerRez. This doesn't hurt anything - it's purely for display purposes - but was irritating, so we fixed it. You can now request that the Airbnb API connection be refreshed and the new email address be shown. This is an admin-only function, so let us know if you need your connection refreshed by contacting our support desk.
We updated our surcharge logic to only evaluate season criteria on the arrival day only. We believe this will help clarify which surcharges are selected and why. This aligns with what all the major channels do already.
When guests are supposed to pay by check - typically because they selected that for a discount when booking - we show a warning so that you don't run a credit card later on. We now also show a link where you can to see and correct that payment restriction on the booking in addition to the warning.
Our support area has grown enormously in recent times. We noticed recently that when reading a support article, the sidebar expands too much (showing all categories) which makes it hard to see the category that the current article is in. So we changed the support article sidebar to auto-shrink except for the current category.
Now let's talk messaging!
Most OwnerRez clients have not yet seen or experienced the new SMS feature, so I apologize for mentioning stuff you may not be able to see yet! 😇 But oh well, here I go anyway...
If you have more than one SMS number on your account, it was previously picking the default number. You can now see, and select, which SMS number to send your message from if you have more than one number.
Want to send an MMS (or photo) message but you really want to send a PDF or non-image attachment instead of photo? You can now do that! If you attach a file that is not an image, we will automatically create a file attachment out of it and insert a link to it in the body of the text message. When it shows up on the recipient's phone, they'll see a link they can click to download the file. Pretty cool. Makes me wonder why the major cellphone carriers don't do the same thing.
As the inbox grows, so does the potential chaos as messages show up from different sources and channels. We added a column and some indicators to the inbox to show if the current message is a SMS or Airbnb message. You can also filter for that in the inbox filter.
Want to mark messages as read because the guest said something final (eg. "Thanks, sounds good!") and you don't need to respond? You can now do that in bulk. We added check-boxes to the inbox and a Mark As button with read and unread options. Select the ones to update and mark them as read instantly. That will help take the top menu counter down as well, so that it stops bugging you for stuff that no longer needs attention. If you want to go the other way, and mark messages as unread, you can do that too.
You can also filter on the read/unread status and delivery status. This would help you find something unread from 3 pages back in the list so you can mark it read and stop the top indicator from bothering you.
Because your contact records (ie. guests) can be duplicate in OwnerRez, the same phone number could be on more than one guest record. So when SMS messages come in, which guest message thread should OwnerRez attach it to? There might be 5 Joe Blow's with the same phone number. Currently, OwnerRez uses default logic to guess which guest is the right one and show it on that message thread. However, this is often wrong and you need to move the message to a different guest. We added the ability to move a single message to a different guest. This will help you to clean up your messaging. Of course, you can also find and merge multiple guest records into one, so that is often the better solution.
Email History is awesome for showing you the nuts and bolts of what actually was sent - both to yourself and guests on your behalf. If you don't know about this, you're missing out. We have recently expanded this feature. It's now called Communication History and you can still find it under the Tools menu. We also added tabs to it for SMS, Calls and Airbnb messages. This shows all in and out-bound messages that we are sending or receiving at a granular level. We plan to add filters and other settings to this area, but for now this should help you debug issues as you use guest messaging and SMS.
Speed issues on communication history. We fixed some things to speed up how fast those lists load.
Vrbo rate logic for date criteria. We changed up how date criteria is evaluated so that it's evaluated separately instead of together.
Channel Bridge booking matches. If Channel Bridge imported a booking that matched, but without a token, and had no actual updates, it would throw an error. This has been fixed.
Airbnb API overwrite all availability rules. Some fields in Airbnb aren't used if you're on the API but they're confusing to look at because they might show old information. We are not overwriting all of them even if they aren't used. Clean slate approach!
Excel exports number columns. You might have noticed that some number columns would produce a textual value in the Excel cell where sorting and other number-related functions would not work correctly. This has been fixed.
Hosted website menu page order. We have fixed website menus to properly show the correct order of child pages.
Travel Insurance cannot be required. This has been a problem for awhile, and we finally got around to fixing it. Travel Insurance cannot, legally be forced on the customer to buy. It is opt-in only. We have changed in OwnerRez. It is now only allowed to be enabled or disabled.
Phone error messages are unclear. When filling in a phone number, you may have seen a message about length of the number but not understood what this is becase phone numbers are typically filled in from other records (like guest or booking pages). These error messages now refer to phone numbers for added clarity.
Missing space before "manually" on the booking overview tab. Yep. Fixed.
Property description angle brackets. Angle brackets can cause weird situations in web applications because web apps are made up of HTML which is communicated by many angle brackets. Because of this many web apps and web servers look for, and block, angle brackets. This was causing problems with our property description pages. It is now fixed. Enter all the angle brackets you want.
Mutual blocking when disabling properties. Before, if you had mutually-blocked property calendars, that blocking would stay in place even if one or several of the mutual properties was disabled. This created problems down-stream and has now been fixed. When disabling a property, any related mutual blocking is automatically removed.
Bedroom drop-down options. If none of your properties have 3 bedrooms, why should the property filter on your website show a 3 bedroom option to guests? Now, it doesn't.
Widgets showing show pets. Same as bedrooms above. If none of your properties allow pets, why have a pets option on the widget? You could always turn that off, but now the widget is smart enough to know that none of your properties allow pets and remove the option by default. And just like that, OwnerRez is one step closer to reading your mind.
Security hold instead of deposits. Scheduled security holds were using the word "deposit" which we stopped using in most places. This has been fixed.
It's not "checkout". Likewise, we removed the word "checkout" from places that are referring to the point of initial booking. On the internet, it's common to refer to the shopping cart process as having a checkout where the order is submitted. In the hospitality industry, "checkout" has a completely different meeting, so we changed that.
Reviews filtering by property. This is now fixed. By which I mean, it now works again.
SMS sending empty message. We fixed SMS sending to not try to send if the attachment is empty or a bad file type. Before it would try to send and then the failed delivery would show in the thread below.
SMS failed delivery email. Speaking of failed delivery, when that happens, we send an email to the user saying what happened. But the failed delivery email was referencing a bad link which has now been fixed.
SMS preview not previewing. For SMS templates, the preview window was not resetting correctly when selecting a different booking.
SMS templates not in triggers. Just like it sounds - the trigger template drop-down wasn't showing SMS triggers. It is now.
Mobile inbox needs to look like mobile. Before, the message inbox was unreadable on mobile. It showed the first column but clipped the others. We changed this so that it shows the guest name above the message in one readable column.
PLEASE include me in SMS. I am so waiting for this feature!
OwnerRez has a ton of great features that we are constantly updating. We love partnering with companies that can add even more functionality for our users. It’s even better when a company can bring something to the table that we don’t support.
RueBaRue does just that. RueBaRue offers owners and property managers the ability to send property guides and destination guides to the guest for their booking. These guides reduce the time you spend communicating back and forth over email. Not only is this good you, it’s good for your guests.
Here is a testimonial from one of our esteemed users who integrated with RueBaRue:
"We love RueBaRue, and we highly recommend property management companies explore this easy to use integrated and online guest portal property guide! We no longer have to spend hours communicating to the guests pre-arrival/post departure/ or even during the guest stay. RueBaRue is such a great tool to take property management services to the next level and stand out!
The integration is working perfectly with ownerrez. Guests get an email and a text with a link to their guest portal specific with their booking information. It includes check-in instructions, house rules, safety locations, and informational tools on how the house operates. We really noticed the value of RueBaRue during the COVID-19 Pandemic. We had a fast, easy way to communicate to all our travelers the local laws/ordinances to keep compliant. We were able to update all guests at once of any emergencies or helpful information. It takes some time setting up RueBaRue but once you have all your properties custom it does all the work for you from there. We don't have nearly the amount of phone calls pre-arrival from guests asking what kind of coffee maker or where to get keys etc. It's all in the guest portal!!
Everything about the home is at the tips of the guests fingers and this means when the wifi password changes, you no longer have to send a staff to the property to update those refrigerator house rules, you can simply update them on the property guide. Have complicated TV instructions? Just snap a video and upload it to RueBaRue. Additionally RueBarRue offers a guide with local restaurants and activities to do in the area! The texting feature is also a total plus." - Beachside Rental
Here are some examples of what the guides looks like:
If you’d like to play around with this on your own, here is a link to Beachside Rentals guest book:
https://www.ruebarue.com/rental/5198118023069696
Check out RueBaRue by following this link:
Well, don't worry about Airbnb getting rid of the proxy email - you can turn that back on again in your Airbnb control panel. You can opt back in to getting the proxy email if you use a hidden setting in the account area under "Professional hosting tools".
We strongly recommend that you do this. OwnerRez uses this address specifically to have the guests sign your rental agreement, just as they say, so this is not a violation of terms.
Ditto on Airbnb message triggers, especially with them getting rid of the proxy email!
Great. here is another idea. A trigger that can be set up for un-booked inquiries.
Meaning, there was an inquiry, dates are available, quote or response was sent, but travelers has not booked did in <number of days>.
So something like this:
Inquiry quoted = yes;
Inquiry booked = no;
Days after quote created = <number of days>
So that we can create a triggered follow up email or text.
Please put Australia on the list too. Understand it cannot be done straight away but it is something a lot of us do already outside of OwnerRez. Would be so much easier 'in' OwnerRez :-) Thanks!
Could some sort of Tag be added to the cancellation policy screen?. I have properties grouped in Countries so it would be nice to see which policies relate to which group.
Absolutely awesome how you're constantly improving the product! I'd be honored to be in the first batch of SMS users.
Short links for guest forms has already gone through engineering and is currently in testing/QA. 😇 Look for that out live by end of August.
What we're doing with Air and SMS messaging necessitated shortening those, but also Booking.com broke their message thread awhile back and any link beyond 100 characters or so is broken in half and completely unusable. So we had to change up how we do links.
As an example, the default link for quotes will look like this:
https://orez.io/v1/q/1234567890
Which will auto expand to the current version that looks like this:
https://app.ownerrez.com/forms/quotes/1234567890
The short version will become the default output in messaging and field codes.
Paul W said:
Sure. And I'm guessing we'll add some kind of auto-responder setting as the Inbox grows in use so that you can configure that yourself.
Sure. And I'm guessing we'll add some kind of auto-responder setting as the Inbox grows in use so that you can configure that yourself.
Paul, could you not set up the SMS service to send out and auto response to any texts that received a reply with the auto response saying this number not monitored and to contact via another method?
Thanks, Kara!
In general, there is no way to stop guests from responding to a text message. If their carrier supports it, they can always respond. There are no SMS or MMS specs for "not allowing a response".
However, to stop responses, you could simply say something like:
"AUTO-REMINDER: Booking blah blah blah. Please email [x] to respond"
So that it looks robotic and official.
And since you're using a separate phone number, nothing will come back to your own cell phone. The response would simply hit the inbox in OR where you could to ignore it. 😇
Yes, would love to be added to the SMS beta group. And I agree with others, I'd be using this to send key code and a "thank you" at check out. I don't want it encourage unnecessary back and forth with easier accessibility. It would be great if it was something like a Remind type of thing where guests wouldn't respond back--I think. I need to think about this more though. Excited to check it out. You guys are great! Thanks!
For light use, you can always use an external email-to-sms service instead. I also, want one-way door codes and payment reminders, etc. I do NOT want to get replies, as that creates chatty guests who want to know where the spoons are and how to work the TV....
