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Love hearing that SMS is being included into OR. $15/mo is so doable, considering I'm paying $60 plus per month right now. Would love to be included on Beta testing!!!
Happy Friday Everyone!
Florida gang members are hosting large house parties at vacation rentals with the aim of spreading coronavirus, cops say. Yes you read that right. ...Wow.
These “COVID-19 parties” with crowds of up to 400 people have received more than 600 noise complaints since March, stated Osceola County Sheriff Russ Gibson. Good thing OwnerRez offers Damage Protection.š
Florida continues tackling tough VR issues in court. A FL appeals court ruled Wednesday that the steep $20,000 fines for illegal vacation rentals the city of Miami Beach imposes is in violation of state law. This affirms the opinion of the lower court and strikes down what is considered to be the harshest fine structure any local government has imposed to crack down on short-term rentals. According to the ruling, Florida Statute states that a city’s fines “shall not exceed $1,000 per day per violation for the first violation, $5,000 per day per violation for a repeat violation, and up to $15,000 per violation if the code enforcement board or special magistrate finds the violation to be irreparable or irreversible in nature.”
During the Covid-19 pandemic, short-term rentals outperformed hotels, according to the preliminary findings from STR, and AirDNA, hotel data intelligence and global benchmarking firms. The most recent week of the analysis showed, larger short-term rentals had the highest occupancy level of 61.4 percent. Short-term rentals came in at 58.2 percent, while traditional hotels were at 39.2 percent.
And this is while many hotels were open and STRs were not! It makes sense of course since most travelers want isolation and better cleaning standards. Vacation rentals win again!
If you haven't already, let us know what is the right word to call you: https://www.ownerrez.com/blog/what-is-the-right-word-to-call-you
Thanks Paul
Guess why i left my old provider amongst other reasons! I think its going to depend on how people envisage using the service? Personally i look at it as more of a push only service rather than a 2 way chat. For sending those important message such as key codes or don't forget to do this etc. A text provides more confidence that such messages have not been blocked by a spam filter. More in depth conversations would be via email or direct text. It would be nice if there was some scope for lighter users. Typically 2- 3 messages per booking is all that's needed.
Iām sure you already know I want to be in the early round of SMS testing, but just in case... ;)
@Brendan C: Yes on both. The time of day option is already through development and in testing. Look for that in a month or so.
Apologies, I forgot to include another important note in the blog post. I just added it:
"SMS is only available for US/Canada phone numbers to start. Our infrastructure supports the ability to add other country codes in the future, but we'll be starting it off with the US/Canada limit in place. If you're a European or Asian client, you could still use it, but the phone number you select would have to be US/Canada based to start."
Le Touquet Holid made me remember this when he mentioned GBP currency. Apologies for not mentioning that up front!
Are you still working on being able to send messages directly to the AirBnb/VRBO inboxes? Also, are we able to pick times that triggered emails get sent? I would love those features.
Please include me in SMS
Please include me in Sms
Wow, your old PM was pretty expensive! That's about 13 cents (USD) per message that your old PMS was charging. At that rate, the base fee $15 we are charging would barely cover 100 messages.
We are including 300 outbound messages and unlimited inbound which works out to 2-3 cents per message depending on your ratio of outbound/inbound. It's 3 cents/outbound after that.
It's not hard to hit 100 messages. 1 trigger on each booking plus some back and forth small conversations. Consider a simple trigger with some polite responding...
Automated trigger: "Make sure to read the welcome packet email we sent for your stay at [x]"
Guest: "Got it, thanks. Who should I call if I have a problem?"
You respond: "You can call this number or my cell. Have a good stay"
Guest: "Will do, thanks"
You're at 4 messages, even without having an actual extended conversation. In testing, we saw this routinely. It's not hard to hit 100 messages in a month even with 1 or 2 properties.
Thanks Paul i understand you have to cover the back end costs for such a system - Just to give you an idea my previous PMS did this for around 10 UK Pence per text on straight usage system. :(
@Le Touquet Holid: The cost is both monthly and usage based combined for all users. There is a monthly fee to have the service connected and running (which covers your phone number and the premium features built into OR). And then the usage is billed as you use the number in excess of what is included for free. Larger PMs will have a usage charge in addition to the monthly. Smaller owners may end up paying the monthly fee only. The telephony costs and features are too expensive to operate going purely on credits as this point in time. That may be something we're willing to look at in the future.
@Tim: You'll register a new phone number which you can pick from a list of available ones in your area code. You will essentially "own" that number on your account so pick a good one. Later you'll be able to use the same number to make calls, etc. Guests will fully be able to respond by SMS and the message will come into OwnerRez and show in the guest's conversation thread and inbox. Guests can also call the number and they'll get a voicemail message that you can see and configure on your account. If they leave a voicemail, you'll be emailed the message. In the future, you'll be able to use the number to make and receive live calls as well, so pick a good number that you want to use moving forward.
Please include me in the text beta program. Jim Willis
Does the message appear to come from our own phones, or a different number? Also, what happens if the guest responds to it? The LAST thing in the world I want is guests being able to reply!!!
Its good to see the introduction of SMS. A little disappointed the way the ongoing payment has been structured which will effectively make it expensive for smaller users who probably won't use it for that reason. It is a shame because it's a powerful feature. I would prefer to have a credit arrangement where you buy credits in advance, top up as required and maybe have a slightly higher cost per message to cover the costs. In other words pay per usage not a fixed monthly fee. Or Have 2 systems pay monthly for larger users and PAYG for others.
Please add me to SMS!
Yes, I'd like to be included in SMS!
yes to SMS!
We would love to trial SMS :)
Please include me in Sms...
Scott Knight
Reservations@tropicwinds.net
Happy Wednesday, property managers and owners and hosts and clients! That's right - you were all over the place as to what we should call you. 24% said "property manager". 22% said "owner". "Host" got an honorable mention at 18% but the rest was a mix of craziness. So, as expected, there is no single word that handles everyone.
8 solid updates were put out this week all of which were enhancements or bug fixes. I guess we liked the last clean-up week so well, we decided to do another one.
After a couple weeks of watching how you were using the new hosted website header/menu area, we noticed a number of things and made some tweaks. First, we added some new style options for headers:
Additionally, we changed how the Site Menu option is rendered and allowed it to be mixed into Links & Text sections. This allows you to create buttons and ad hoc links right next to your menu without choosing one or the other.
We also removed buttons from the Site Menu so that you could define those where and how you want right in the header line section. The process for creating and managing button is now much more intuitive.
Across hosted websites and widgets, you'll notice that icons (on buttons or call-out amenities) look new. This is because we upgraded our icon library to use FontAwesome 5. We are in the process of upgrading that to FontAwesome 6 and then doing the same across our main app as well, so you'll see more on that soon.
By the way, fun fact - did you know your Links & Text items on hosted website headers can reference any icon in the FontAwesome library? There almost 8,000 icons available, all of which can be any text color and size. And yes, we support all the "PRO license" icons in their library too. š
While we were updating the icon library, we took the opportunity to add more call-out amenities on the widget and website property pages. For instance, pool and hot tub are call-outs amenities now and have new icons.
Awhile back, we added a cool feature to email templates where an active template would show you where it was used with links to those items. So you could instantly see what trigger or system message, for instance was using the current email template in view. This was cool but a little to verbose. Overtime, we noticed that scheduled emails and other things were filling up the "used by" area and creating a lot of needless information. We simplified the "used on" section of email templates to only show highly relevant information.
Now let's see who's still reading... SMS (ie. text messaging) is out. Yes, that's right - the system now will allow you to register your own phone number (in your own area code), send SMS messages in guest conversation threads (along with images) and even create SMS-based trigger that will send SMS templates automatically. However, major caveat - this is a private feature that only some users will gain access to up front. We will be selecting small groups to email over the next week or two as we expand the feature to include more users. If you would like to be targeted for inclusion, please drop a comment on this blog post and we'll make sure to put you in the first groups that are emailed. Couple of important notes:
Some of this might change, but that's the broad strokes. Again, drop a note in the comments if you want early access; otherwise, look for emails about this in the coming weeks.
Condensed view empties. Our new condensed view feature was a little too aggressive and was condensing away $0 line items. Sometimes you need a $0 line item to brag on yourself a little (eg. "Including free pool heat!!!"). This is now fixed. Back to bragging about free pool heat!
Condensed view order. It was also not honoring the standard order when not collapsed. This is also now fixed.
Owner
Hey guys pleaaaasseee add triggers to Airbnb message quickly as possible. You are the best!!!!
Paul H said:
If you went above and beyond our policy expectations and provided full refunds, credits or flexible rebooking options: corresponding listings will receive ranking increases equivalent to getting a 5-star review, and an icon and recognition on the property page
It’s finally Friday!
One of the hottest pandemic-era getaway spots are California desert vacation rentals. Vrbo says there is a 15% jump in demand for vacation homes within a 500-mile radius of where someone lives. A day's drive, roughly the distance between Palm Springs and San Francisco, is what most people are looking for when vacationing. Close to 95% of the demand is for non-urban destinations. In Southern California, Vrbo is witnessing more demand for Palm Springs than it typically would in the slow summer season. A third of the guests are coming from Los Angeles, but other top origin cities are San Francisco, Phoenix and San Diego.
Hawaii owners and PMs are claiming their rights have been violated by restrictions placed on short-term vacation rentals on the Hawaiian island of Molokai. The group has filed a federal lawsuit against the county of Maui. The lawsuit said, some of the homeowners must cancel reservations and answer “potential claims” from customers as a result of the county’s action. Some owners had permits that would have allowed them to operate into 2021.
Honolulu-based lawyer Terrance Revere said, “Instead of grandfathering in existing permit holders, they told my clients — with no due process whatsoever,” He added their short-term rental housing permits “were being yanked away”.
In Newport Beach, California the city has placed restrictions on short term rentals. Rentals will be limited to people over 21 to help minimize the number of parties. Evidently, Newport Beach feels like Miami did last week.
Operators must have a “Nuisance Response Plan” to ensure owners take responsibility for issues with their guests and say how they will deal with unruly guests. Owners will be required to include their rental permit number on all advertisements so that the city can identify legal and illegal property rentals. City staff will work with online platforms to reduce and eliminate illegal rentals.
Vrbo is giving out increased ratings for hosts that refunded 100% for March and April. Here is what Vrbo is doing for those hosts:
Some of you already know this because…. you recently got that email from Vrbo telling you what they’re doing with your listings. Hopefully, OwnerRez clients got the boost and not the decrease!
Thanks a lot for the improvements and fixes.
Could you please explain the following for me? May be you can give some example scenarios where the following is useful?
"There are times when you might have multiple Identifier Mappings numbers for the same property and channel in OwnerRez. We now support multiple numbers. You can add multiple, and we will support the other numbers."
Thanks again.
Hump Day is here, so let's talk updates! šŖ
We put out 21 changes this past week all of which were enhancements or bug fixes. No new features. It's good to have a clean-up week!
Our Listing Quality Analyzer (under the Tools menu) is pretty cool. You can use it to see where your properties have incomplete listing content, rates, rules or where settings conflict or do not follow best practices. It's invaluable when preparing for Channel API integration. We just added a bunch more checks to the Listing Quality Analyzer tool. It now looks for cleaning fee errors, bathroom/shower conflicts, guest fee conflicts, duplicate fees, conflict surcharge criteria and a dozens of other things. Give that a fresh look and see if any of your properties are showing new issues!
Have you ever tried to target a surcharge to certain days of the week? You had to use numbers like "day 1" or "day 2" instead of readable day names like Monday, Tueday, etc. We just updated the criteria area to use readable day names instead of numbers on surcharge criteria.
Trigger and booking filters now show a clearer list of email options so that you can fully target all email scenarios. If you want to target bookings that only have a platform email, you can now do that by selecting "doesn't have real email address" which would filter for no email or platform email only.
To reduce confusion, we are no longer showing bookings, quotes or inquiries (on their respective lists) where the properties are disabled. This was confusing before because we were showing bookings, quotes and inquiries after the property was disabled. If you want to still see those items, go enable the property first and then come back.
Cancel For Any Reason (CFAR) travel insurance now excludes the state of New Hampshire so we updated our code, pages and carrier information to reflect this change. Sorry, New Hampshire - you're out!
Have you ever noticed that the bottom of some OwnerRez pages kind of ran into the bottom of the browser? So do we. It was annoying so we added some padding to the app footer. This should make it visually easier to work on those pages.
We increase the maximum number of characters you can input when using our global Contact Us page. It was some paltry amount before like 500 characters. Now, those of you with grievances to air can really cut loose! š
There are times when you might have multiple Identifier Mappings numbers for the same property and channel in OwnerRez. We now support multiple numbers. You can add multiple, and we will support the other numbers.
Added redirect back to hosted site after logout
One of the things we try to correct (when we see it) is where page entry is inconsistent from one area to another. We have a large design overhaul planned, but we expect the current app to be consistent regardless. Part of that is date entry. We changed the season add/edit page to auto-fill the End Date field after picking a Start Date. If you see this in other similar add/edit pages, please let us know.
Another week, another set of updates on the rate table widget:
Damage Protection isn't shown to guests. When turning Damage Protection on and off, there was a misleading sentence about showing it to guests when security deposits were configured. Damage Protection is never supposed to be shown to guests, regardless of your security deposit preferences so we removed that wording.
Internal property order. We continue to find places where a list or group of properties isn't showing in the right display order based on your setting, and we're fixing them as we find them.
Deleting owner statements not updating PM Lock. Just like it sounds. If you delete an owner statement, the booking should remove PM Lock, but it wasn't doing that in all circumstances. This is now fixed.
Broken links in forum posts. When dropping links to OwnerRez pages in forum posts, some of them would come out mangled or as half-links. We fixed this. To be clear, our forum won't show a clickable link unless it's a URL referencing an OwnerRez page. We plan to change in the future when we expand and overhaul our forum.
Reviews widget showing reviews from disabled properties. This has now been fixed. If a property is disabled, any associated reviews will also not show.
Import reviews bad math. We corrected the total that shows when importing reviews.
Locked or closed account checks. We fixed an issue where some trigger emails were sending even after an account was closed.
Duplicate property using old date. When you clone or duplicate a property, you want all the property content to copy across but not the "added" date stamp. That should be new since it's a new property. This is now fixed.
Current blog post in RSS. Wondering why you weren't getting emails for new blog posts or didn't see them show up by RSS? We fixed an issue where the latest post wasn't showing up correctly in syndication feeds.
Channel Bridge fixes. Are Channel Bridge changes really "bug fixes" if we're just adjusting to correct what the channel does? Not our fault, right? At any rate, this week we did this Channel Bridge:
Thank you so much for these new features and enhancements!
I feel like the addition of the state to the locations in the search was a personal gift! :-)
I am super happy about the customizable cancellation policies and have been experimenting with it. I've chosen:
Up to 60 days before arrival, guest receives 100%; Up to 30 days before arrival, guest receives 50%; No refunds within 30 days. ($100 Cancellation fee)
However, it presents like this to the guest:
Fee: $100.00; Up to 60 days before arrival, guest receives 100%; Up to 30 days before arrival, guest receives 50%; No refunds within 30 days
I think that could be confusing, since it is not actually a 100% or a 50% refund if we choose to charge a cancellation fee. Guests could argue that we promised a 100% or a 50% refund if they don't understand what the vague "Fee: $100.00" means.
Could the wording contained within the macro be changed to something like:
"Cancellation Fee (charged for every cancellation regardless of the refund policy): $100.00;
Up to 60 days before arrival, guest receives 100% (less the cancellation fee if applicable);
Up to 30 days before arrival, guest receives 50% (less the cancellation fee if applicable);
No refunds within 30 days"
Chris Hynes said:
Aha! I see it. So here, since it's a quote email, you need to use {QCANPOL} instead of {BCANPOL}.I tweaked that for you, how's it look now?
