Latest Activity...
It's Wednesday, so let's talk updates!
This past week, we released a small part of the "long term stuff" I referenced last Wednesday. But what long term stuff, you say??! Think messaging. Think hosted sites. Think texting. Yeah okay, texting is kind of part of messaging.
In the next few weeks and months, you'll see that area grow more and more. There are some exciting things going on with Hosted Sites as well, but that didn't get out the door in time, so hopefully we'll cover that next Wednesday or the week after. 15 things to talk about this week...
There is now a Airbnb Messages inbox under the CRM menu that shows all of your Airbnb platform messages if you have API integration connected for Airbnb. The menu option shows a indicator of the unread messages which bubbles up to the parent CRM menu as well.
As you read or respond to messages, the indicator will change or go away dynamically.
When you open the Airbnb Messages inbox, you'll notice that it's already full of messages. This is because the inbox shows all Airbnb messages to or from any Airbnb guest, no matter where each message was sent from. In other words, even if you use the Airbnb mobile app or Airbnb website to respond, the message will still appear in OwnerRez. The Airbnb message system syncs all messages in real time to OwnerRez.
There are some filter options above the inbox that let you search for a guest name or date range. Click into a message and a normal message thread will appear underneath the guest record.
The thread follows normal messaging conventions:
It's important to understand that this is a first pass at a messaging inbox inside OwnerRez. We have other things coming in the future, but we wanted to get this out and start experimenting with the Airbnb messages since those are synced with OwnerRez under the covers.
You can send images back to the guest using the "Select File" button on the thread and it will work the same way it does on Airbnb - the photo will appear as its own message.
This does not send any email or text messages or anything other than Airbnb platform messages. We also do not have triggers or other automation built into this yet, but all of that has been discussed internally.
Play with the Airbnb Messages inbox and let us know what you like or dislike, but please understand that this is a limited inbox with no ability to send or receive regular email, texting or other channel platforms. Only Airbnb messages for now.
Enough said on that; moving on...
If you've got PM (property management) premium feature turned on, you can now see the owner's name on the property grid, filter by owner and export owner info to Excel.
While we're talking about PM, you can now also see the owner (and click through to configure) when looking at a property's info tab.
Our PM area has a lot of coming updates, but until we get to those, we are making small iterative changes to spread PM throughout more parts of the system.
By the way, fun fact - did you know you could filter the main bookings list by email templates sent (and not sent)? If you're ever wondering if any future guests haven't gotten a particular email, give that a try.
Channel integrations have also gotten some updates. As a preferred partner, we are committed to closely monitoring and talking to our channel partners (VRBO, Airbnb) and making sure we keep up with all the latest features they are rolling out - and in some cases, hounding them for more.
HomeAway API added some amenities and we jumped on supporting those. The new HomeAway amenities are EV Car Charger, Fire Pit, Enhanced Cleaning and Disinfection, and we now support those in OwnerRez and push them over with all the rest.
Airbnb added House Manual options and we now support that too.
We are also now pushing gap periods to HomeAway API based on the required gap rules in OwnerRez.
Believe it or not, some tax jurisdictions calculate tax per guest in addition to per stay or per night, so OwnerRez now supports that. You can select "per guest" as an option on tax settings and OwnerRez will calculate a special number based on the number of guests on the booking.
When bookings are un-linked from the Airbnb API calendar, it was possible for gap rules to not be followed, so we added special gap blocks around those un-linked bookings to make sure the gap rules are still adhered to.
When historical bookings were imported via Airbnb API integration, the system was skipping past cancelled bookings when merging those bookings with bookings that were already in OwnerRez. We expanded the merge process to also include cancelled bookings for Airbnb API. After all, you might want to do analysis on old cancelled bookings too, so now you can!
Listing Quality Analyzer is a great tool and now relied on by thousands of OwnerRez users. However, it sometimes returns too much information! We added a channel type filter to Listing Quality Analyzer so that you can quickly narrow down errors or warnings to just one channel.
When importing spot rates, the errors were a bit opaque, so we clarified those import messages and enhanced what we are detecting to be clearer.
When releasing a security deposit, the release button says "Release Now" but you might actually be collecting money. Do I press it?!? We updated the security deposit button to say Collect instead of Release if that's the option you're using.
Fixed multi-sort on properties grid. Previously, the grid was default sorting by display order and then property name, only not correctly. That bug has been squashed.
Pending Airbnb bookings shouldn't push availability. We fixed Airbnb API availability to not push API for pending bookings until they are confirmed.
Portal user name on emails. The booking notification emails never showed the portal user name - now they do.
Hosted sites property menu order. Not sure how this one got out the door, but hosted sites property menus were showing a wrong sorting order. After we added custom property ordering a few weeks ago, the hosted site side stopped working correctly. Fixed!
Agree with better marketing!
Thank you for gathering feedback! I'm excited for any new features you add. I've checked my top two, but the idea of having column grid layouts would really customize the look, ease of page scrolling, and more copy on each page - organized!
We have received reports from some users of difficulties sending email to hr@ownerreservations.com. We are looking into this issue; if you received a bounce message, please try again.
In addition, please feel free to also write the Helpdesk at help@ownerreservations.com if you are interested in applying for this position.
We're happy to announce that we've partnered with Wishbox. This allows OwnerRez clients to use smart tools such as online check-in with document scans, guest app, upsells, online check-out, and more.
Good to Know
Wishbox is a guest experience platform offering smart tools throughout the guest journey, from the moment the booking is confirmed until check-out.
How does it work?
The Wishbox and OwnerRez connection allows you to completely automate your guest communication, check-ins and messaging, whilst still providing guests with the best possible experience. The connection is quick and easy. By simply registering to Wishbox and connecting to your OwnerRez account, you will be able to integrate all of your rental and reservations and start communicating with guests in more efficient ways including via SMS and WhatsApp messages.
How to integrate with OwnerRez:
Take a look at our support article on how to integrate your Wishbox account with OwnerRez.
More about Wishbox:
Wishbox empowers property managers to digitize their guest experience by offering numerous smart tools throughout the guest journey from online check-in, smart upsells, branded guest app, digital check-out with review optimization, and much more.
Wishbox’s flexible online check-in wizard allows hosts to get the guest’s arrival and direct contact details ahead of time. Hosts can collect passport scans, payments, signatures, and more, allowing a smooth front desk check-in experience or a self-check-in upon arrival. Using Wishbox, properties are also able to communicate with guests with perfectly timed guest messaging, through a communication hub with direct integrations to WhatsApp, SMS, and Wishbox chat.
In addition, hosts can offer guests access to their very own guest-app, it's a web-app so no downloading is required. The guest-app includes a dedicated personal area that holds all the important information about the guests’ stay, the property, and additional services, all in the guests’ native language.
Before check-out, guests can receive a check-out message with smart review optimization and relevant offerings.
Properties can also generate more revenue from every guest by offering additional in-house services through Wishbox, accepting credit card payments, and auto split payments with external suppliers.
Better ways to market independently.
Price Consistency is an official program by VRBO and something they are requiring in the future. OwnerRez makes this simple, and does away with it as a problem completely for those on the API, but it affects a lot of people. Essentially, it means that you need to make sure your rates are exact on VRBO and not averages or estimates. Again if use the HA API with OwnerRez, we already do this for you.
It's been around for awhile, but VRBO is going to start requiring it soon for all PMs and PMS systems. Paul (the other Paul) mentioned it here recently:
https://www.ownerrez.com/blog/some-friday-news-longterm-stays-more-florida-counties-reopen
More about it on the VRBO side:
https://www.vrbo.com/discoveryhub/a/price-consistency-checklist
Though the term was coined by VRBO, we wanted to extend the same comparison check to Air and TA and other channels to the extent possible.
Now that it's been rolled out, you are correct that it makes sense to see the rate adjuster in there too - after all, that's the real rate.
Thank you Paul. I am not sure what price consistently is, and I did not think that price could be inconsistent since OR pushes it to the channel. I guess I misunderstood the purpose of the tool, i thought it was meant to provide comparison at a glance between direct OR pricing and pricing that is pushed via channel (that can be different from direct pricing due to mark up or mark down percentage).
@BlueMtn and Lydia: Thanks for the feedback - that makes a lot of sense.
The original point of this tool (Channel Rate Tester) was to see "price consistency" between OR and the channels. To our knowledge, nobody else offers this but it's highly needed. We had to lobby VRBO hard to get an API working that would let us test rates from our side dynamically, and they responded positively. In other cases, we're using heuristics to get close.
As we point out on the Airbnb option, price consistency is not possible with Airbnb because their rate engine is busted based on rounding mistakes, tax variations and other things Airbnb will hopefully fix in the future, but at least we're able to point out what the rates will be on both sides.
I think it's a great idea to add an "include rate adjustment" option so you can see your markup on there as well, but the fundamental purpose is to show price consistency as your rent, surcharges, taxes change on the OR side and you can't figure out what/where/why it's off on the channel side.
Lydia B said:
Unfortunately it does the same thing with AirBnB. I think their programming is designed to show what the charges should be based on OR rules (which is the OR column) and then shows what the OTA would actually charge. I'm with you - would prefer to see what someone would pay if they booked direct vs. going thru the OTA.
I did have a fairly terrible experience with Vacasa on Friday 6/5. It's impossible to get on the phone with them. Should mean good things for the small companies or individuals leveraging OwnerRez type software! No doubt volume has returned in the areas I work in.
Unfortunately it does the same thing with AirBnB. I think their programming is designed to show what the charges should be based on OR rules (which is the OR column) and then shows what the OTA would actually charge. I'm with you - would prefer to see what someone would pay if they booked direct vs. going thru the OTA.
I'm noticing that holidays are shown in orange on my calendar widget on my website which makes it look like the dates are booked. How can I remove the color on holiday dates?
I may be slow, not enough coffee LOL. Tried channel rate tester for HA, and it shows same numbers in top table (HA) and bottom table (presume direct?) (and not a comparison of HA vs direct). My HA is +3% so i'd expect one table have greater amounts than the other but I see the same numbers.
Saw a quote from some analyst recently, something to the effect that many tech/digital co's think that they can just get into vacation rental space without prior knowledge and just run it like a tech co but that does not really work. I do not know who bought vacasa, but they obviously do not know that selling vacation rental stays is not the same as selling $5 widgets on Amazon. Vacasa has terrible reputation in my market (and I have heard in many others), so I do not know what they are thinking that a middleman (which is what vacasa is) with very slim value proposition is somehow a good investment.
Happy Friday Everyone!
Silver Lake is betting big on the travel industry despite what is happening with the global pandemic. The top Silicon Valley tech investment firm bought big stakes in Expedia and Airbnb over the past few months, and now it is leading a $108 million Series D round for vacation rental platform Vacasa. The Portland, Ore.-based company manages more than 26,000 vacation homes in 31 U.S. states and 18 countries, and bills itself as “North America’s largest vacation rental management platform.” Vacasa interim CEO Matt Roberts, who took over in February, said he believes there will be a consumer shift toward private vacation rentals as people fear going back to hotels and other lodging options due to safety-related concerns.
According to a report from AirDNA, Vacation rentals globally have rebounded 127% since April after coronavirus lockdowns halted nearly all travel. Short-term rentals on platforms like Airbnb and VRBO reached rock bottom around April 5, but have nearly returned to pre-pandemic levels, according to AirDNA. Beach towns and other leisure destinations, especially in places that pushed to reopen quickly, are seeing the most growth. The numbers are one sign that people are starting to travel again, at least locally, as stay-at-home orders are eased, but the devastated industry is still fragile and a resurgence of cases could shut things down again.
Is anyone really able to go to Florida at this point? Florida vacation rental properties can resume operations subject to certain rules and restrictions. For more information consult Orange County’s full plan. Or consult Gulf county for their rules. Or Pasco county for theirs. Or Sumter county. Or maybe just ignore it all and do what you want.😄
Vacation rentals in the destination state of Hawaii reached only 5 per cent of total occupancy in the month of April. This represents a 68% drop in total occupancy from last year. Covid-19 travel restrictions have created a global drop in travel demand which has led to record low visitor numbers for the islands.
As most of you know, managing vacation rentals creates a lot of anxiety. COVID has impacted the industry greatly, but now that locations are starting to open back up, business is beginning to flourish. Even before the pandemic, vacation rentals were stressful enough. What are the things you worry about the most with your vacation rental business?
(make sure to scroll to the bottom and click the Submit button)
When I click on any items in your surveys, I get an error message that says, "File unavailable. Sorry, there's a problem with this file. Please reload."
@D. Chad Q: Thanks for the kind words. We love what we do, and we like who we work with and for. The folks on the IPM side of VRBO are pretty cool and are great to interact with.
Happy Hump Day! 🐪 Although, I'm getting this out late, so it's probably already past Hump Day for our European and Asian users.
Last week, we mostly worked on major updates that aren't quite finished - long term stuff - but there were a few things that went out, so let's take a second to go over them...
There is now a Channel Rate Tester tool (under the top Tools menu) that shows a side-by-side comparison of OwnerRez rates next to the channel rates. If you haven't seen this thing yet, check it out - it's pretty sweet.
Wondering what HomeAway will show for a property and set of dates? We'll show you directly. The tool hits channel APIs live and then returns a list of charges with the OwnerRez totals next to it. The bottom then shows the full OwnerRez rate tester charges so you can see the breakdown in more detail.
It works for the HomeAway, Airbnb and TripAdvisor channels only and, to be clear, it's only if you have API integration in place for those channels.
We added a 'booking only' option to CanadaStays calendar import (iCal) settings. This allows you to avoid situations where CanadaStays is serving blocked time back to OwnerRez resulting in a loop of activity. Other calendar import types like HomeAway and Airbnb already had this option.
The rate table widget now calculates week and month columns by a range instead of fixed amounts. Previously, there was a lot of confusion about the fix amount calculations. Week and month calculations are hard to get exact because of so many factors with spot rates, exact arrival nights and so on. The range option helps remove the confusion for guests.
Also on the rate table widget, we added a setting so that you can specify these options directly.
Channel Bridge has been enhanced in a number of ways. We are now ignoring empty rows on the Bookings tab of the export file. We clarify that matched-bookings (ie. matched against other properties and dates) are double bookings. On overlapping bookings, we now show the dates and guest name to make it easier for you to research. And past VRBO bookings with an 'unknown' status are now treated as cancelled. The are misc. bugs that are fixed on Channel Bridge on an ongoing basis, but these enhancements should clarify and strengthen how users interact with the normal Channel Bridge workflow.
Reviews widget count. We fixed the review widget to show decimal places properly for large numbers. Some of you have a lot of reviews! We wouldn't the guest thinking that's 200 when it's really 2,000.
Check-in Type lockbox options mention guests instead of hosts. This was confusing previously as the Airbnb documentation mentioned hosts for some reason but we have now changed it to correctly refer to guests.
Ken and team- we appreciate you guys so much. We've spent so much time lobbying our "partner success manager" at VRBO and talking to execs directly at the Partner Summit to yield nothing on the less than 5 properties API access for years and you guys pulled it off! It's working very well now and we can't wait to see what else you have in store!! Well done!!
Yes, I recently channel bridged with HomeAway/VRBO and it is amazing to get paid so quickly! Thank you!
Do I need to take any actions to get the new rendered agreements to show? Just checked in Vrbo and the update isn't active there yet...
You guys are awesome! Thank you for these great updates and fixes!
The ability to send SMS text marketing communications, quotes, and stay-related communications directly to guests' phones would be huge. Emails get lost in flooded inboxes, but guests see and respond to text messages.
We love RueBaRue! We no longer have to spend hours communicating to the guests pre-arrival/post departure/ or even durning 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 instructions, house rules, safety locations. We really noticed the value of RueBaRue durning 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 guest at once of any emergencies or helpful information durning the strangest of times. 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 early arrival, or where to get keys etc. Its all in the guest portal!! All 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 updated those refrigerator house rules. Additionally RueBarRue offers a fun guide with local restaurants and activities to do in the area! HIGHLY RECOMMEND!! The text back feature is also a total plus, so guest do have the real office cell number but they can still text for any needs.
Please contact us at help@ownerreservations.com for instructions on how to connect your OwnerRez account to the HA/VRBO API.
So from a practical standpoint, what do I need to do in order to tie my OwnerRez account with their API? Thanks!
No. If you are not using our API connection to HA/VRBO, you'll be still paid according to their policies. If you are using our API connection, you'll be paid in accordance with your agreement with your credit card payment processor you have chosen and configured in OwnerRez.
Does this change anything about how and when we get paid for reservations through Vrbo?
