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OwnerRez is an incredibly powerful tool. We are constantly trying to improve and add new features for our users. That being said, we would love to hear what you think the single biggest feature missing from OwnerRez is. We have compiled a list of commonly asked features we will be implementing in the future. Please select what you think is the most important and/or write what feature you believe is missing.
(make sure to scroll to the bottom and click the Submit button)
Just to update, it was indeed a bug, and it was resolved very quickly--within a couple of hours of contacting them, so kudos to their support and their dev team.
I've just switched over from PriceLabs to PerfectPrice and I like the UI. I'm still analyzing their default pricing recommendations compared to PriceLabs--they're higher, but I'm not absolutely sure that's a good thing in these times, but they are more transparent about how they come up with the price and they let you see the rates of comparable properties more easily, so that is helpful.
fair number of inquiries. But in our market panicked owners dropped rates too low and now travelers expect luxury 5 bd homes for a rate close to a 3* motel room. Until this turmoil settles, who knows. Luckily I am in a position not to have to drastically drop rates. rates that are too low for property size/type tend to bring undesirable, disrespectful and even destructive guests in our market ( I know, all these pricing tools think that you should not have a Min price, but that is not worth it).
Sorry to hear that, BlueMtn. Our stats show huge surges across the board. In fact, we've had record days lately in several booking categories - with specific channels and types of bookings, not everything. Of course different markets will be different. Hopefully you get going soon!
Not really, sadly. mostly non converting inquires form discount seekers
Happy Friday everyone! In many places around the world, bookings are surging back strong and we're glad to see it.
If you haven't seen it already, check out the To Guests, With Love campaign. đź’“ Great video from vacation rental leaders around the globe. OwnerRez was a sponsor on it (which basically means we went "that's awesome, please put our logo on it too"), but many others did the heavy lifting.
Most of you already support the #DirectBooking movement. Looks like COVID has kicked that into overdrive. CNBC talks about how Airbnb hosts are building their own booking websites in revolt. By the way, have you ever noticed how the press always refers to all VR people as "Airbnb hosts"? HomeAway's gotta love that.
We're keeping our eye on Florida vacation rentals. Very strange that hotels are allowed to operate but short-term rentals aren't?? There's a lot of very upset people wondering the same thing. Lawyers are having a field day.
Speaking of lawsuits, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that Stays-At-Home orders are unlawful. It will be interesting to see the implication of this with other states. Monkey see, monkey do? Or the normal heavily-politicized angry name-calling that happens instead.
Have a great sunny May weekend! 🌞
I have done so. I expect you'll hear from them before too long. Please update us with the resolution! It's not impossible that you've run into a bug of some sort, or some other random glitch as is common with any new software implementation.
Yes, that’s fine. I did already reach out to them through their intercom chat function, but feel free to share my info.
FYI, I talked to our contacts at PerfectPrice. They think they found you in their logs and will be reaching out. Or, if it's OK with you, I can give them your contact information so they can know for sure who they need to talk to. Obviously, it's kind of important to them for OwnerRez clients to actually be able to hook their service up and use it. :-)
Hm. You know me. I'm always intrigued by anything that involves AI and better automation. :) And I like the transparency and direct comparison to actual comparable properties; that's something that I've liked about HomeAway's MarketMaker and the lack of that info is something I haven't loved about Wheelhouse and PriceLabs.
Also, saving $112/month across my 8 properties during this time of lean revenue certainly wouldn't hurt. :) Unfortunately, not a lot of detailed info/reviews on their service around the Interwebs (of course, that's expected, since they seem new), and in any case, their site is mildly buggy and just shows me a blank screen on the page I'm supposed to connect my PMS. I'll definitely be looking at this with interest, though!
I'm afraid not - we don't have any special insight into their pricing. Wouldn't hurt to ask them though, they may know what their 2021 pricing will be already.
Paul, can you tell us what Perfect Price will charge after their “free for the rest of 2020” deal is over?
We're happy to announce that we've partnered with Perfect Price to offer its customers the industry’s first AI-based dynamic pricing solution. Perfect Price brings something unique and compelling to the industry and wanted to offer the best to OwnerRez customers.
Perfect Price is more than just dynamic pricing. Perfect Price is about complete revenue management.
Successful property managers know that optimizing pricing is crucial. But there’s more to revenue management than just prices. Revenue management can be summed up as "constant vigilance". Successful revenue managers keep a close eye on bookings and revenue coming in. They keep an eye on the market and what comparable properties are doing. They know when events and holidays are, and adjust prices (or make sure they are adjusted) to meet demand. In fact they’re constantly adjusting pricing based on demand – implementing strategies, like lowering the price to pick up last minute bookings, or capturing more value from people who plan ahead.
Revenue management goes beyond dynamic pricing. Successful property managers use dynamic minimum stays to prevent short bookings from blocking long ones, to pick up last-minute bookings, to maximize revenue at peak times, or to fill gap nights between longer bookings.
"In the aftermath of COVID-19, property managers need the best tools to return to growth and profitability. With OwnerRez and Perfect Price, you can automate daily tasks that might be going undone today – that will yield revenue immediately," said Alex Shartsis, founder and CEO of Perfect Price.
"OwnerRez users already know how much additional revenue can be wrung out of vacation rentals with the use of better technology and automation. This integration with Perfect Price pushes that automation even further with smarter rates that take full advantage of the leading algorithms in the pricing industry," said Paul Waldschmidt, CEO of OwnerRez. "The days of just doing seasonal pricing with a simple table of weekly rates are long over!"
Leading property managers choose Perfect Price because of its intelligence, transparency and control. The most advanced AI algorithms, coupled with an easy to use interface built for professionals, enables anyone to experience success.
Intelligence means smarter pricing, with the AI automatically finding comparable properties, detecting seasonal and day-of-week fluctuations, and more. It also means intelligent dashboards, showing you exactly what is going on in your business – revenue, bookings for each month and how that compares to last year and your comparable properties.
Transparency means knowing what’s going on under the hood. You can see the performance of Perfect Price and your business on an easy to read dashboard. See what the AI thinks your comparable properties are – and edit them if you disagree; it’s not hidden behind opaque and inaccurate market averages. Know every calculation that went into a price, so you can adjust as you see fit.
Control comes from working with some of the largest brands in travel, understanding how their professionals work. However accurate the AI, everyone will from time to time want to take control. Through a sophisticated rules engine, or simple overrides, you can implement exactly the strategy you want.
By combining intelligence, transparency and control Perfect Price has a unique offering that is different from other dynamic pricing providers on the market.
Thanks to OwnerRez's robust and capable APIs, it’s easy to try Perfect Price and OwnerRez together. Simply sign up for an account at PerfectPrice.com, and choose OwnerRez as your PMS. You’ll be walked through a guided tour and given a free trial on the spot.
Or take a look at our support article on how integrate your Perfect Price account with OwnerRez.
Hi everyone, we'd like to announce that we now support Parakeet door locks!
For those of you that don't know, Parakeet has a platform that can automate door locks, thermostats, sensors, garage doors and more.
Like our other door lock integrations, OwnerRez will automatically create door codes for your Parakeet door locks when bookings are created, changed or deleted in OwnerRez. OwnerRez will drive your Parakeet door locks - no need to lift a finger!
Learn how to Integrate Parakeet door locks with Your OwnerRez Account.
Parakeet, recently acquired by Brivo (the global leader in cloud-based physical security solutions,) is now Brivo Smart Home. Parakeet's reliable cellular gateway and cloud-based dashboard enable property managers to control locks, garage doors, thermostats and monitoring sensors from one central, cloud-based dashboard, accessible from any computer or smartphone. Parakeet’s platform also collects data for property managers to track, monitor and manage their staff.
I use LOTS of trigger emails, including info similar to what you mention. And, yes, it's a 3 AM thing! Hahahaaa! I've not had an issue with it, but I'll keep an eye on whether folks are opening them to get a better idea.
Market Maker's data comes from VRBO's internal system. Actually, it's likely the best and most accurate data of any pricing system out there. One key metric they have access to that PL/BP/WH don't is *demand* -- as in the number of searches being performed. Other pricing providers are predictive (based on calendars of events) and/or reactive (based on price movement of other listings in your area); only VRBO Market Maker can actually see where demand is spiking and react in real-time.
They also are fairly transparent with their interface--you can manually go in and edit your "Competitive Set" so that you can see and compare your rates with those of the properties near you that you specifically compete with. If you have a luxury 5-bedroom lodge with top amenities, you aren't really competing with the 5-"bedroom" double-wide mobile home with a lean-to add on that's one street over, so you can remove it from your competitive set and whatever that owner does with their rates won't affect yours. They also have extremely accurate and specific data on occupancy rates, whereas the other yield-management services can only guess (leading to things like owner block-offs causing falsely higher occupancy, etc.), as well as internal data on your listing's performance (views/clicks/inquiries/review scores/etc.), although I don't know to what extent they use that data in the MarketMaker product. The MarketMaker team also has the support of a very large corporation (VRBO, owned by Expedia) that has a ton of data and expertise in this area. They're not perfect, though, and I've corresponded with their support team quite a bit to help squash some pricing bugs that cropped up after they released an update a couple of years ago.
The big downfall to Market Maker is that a) it isn't automated, so you still have to manually go in and click "accept" on their pricing recommendations every day (unless they've changed it in the last year), and b) the data doesn't sync out to third-party software integrations (like OR), so you can't rely on it to adjust your Airbnb or direct-book rates. You could monitor it and manually update rates in OR whenever you feel like it, but I don't have that kind of time or patience.
That said, the third-party pricing services are pretty good at what they do, and pricing trends are pretty well studied and the math behind the whole science of yield management is an entire and well-developed branch of the field of data science, so as long as their source data is accurate, they all tend to be at least in the ballpark of adjusting your rates. You may need to take the reins a bit more in setting an accurate "base price" with all of them, though, whereas VRBO will pretty much tell you what your property's price should be.
One thing I completely forgot to mention before: the biggest difference between BeyondPricing and PriceLabs is the cost: BeyondPricing charges (like Wheelhouse) 1% of your rental rate, whereas PriceLabs charges a flat fee per month (starting at $19.99 per month, but it goes down significantly if you have additional properties). For a single property, that means that if you get at least $2,000 per month in revenue, BeyondPricing will end up being more expensive than PriceLabs (1% of $2,000 = $20), but if you're just renting a small, cheap condo part-time or in a slow season, BeyondPricing will end up costing you less.
Well, right now, everything goes out at (I think) 3am on whatever day you check.
I have a follow-up email that goes out the day after check-in welcoming them to our home, thanking them for their stay, and encouraging them to let us know if they have any questions/comments/concerns/maintenance that needs reporting/etc.
I also have a follow-up email that I send the day before check-out reminding them about check-out times and procedures (and again encouraging them to let us know how their stay was and if anything needs fixing--my goal is to reinforce the point numerous times to let US know of any issues instead of waiting to leave them in a review).
We see a lot of 2-night stays in our market. You can see where this goes--the guest receives the welcome AND the check-out reminder at the same time. That can be a little odd and confusing and also make it look less personal (you'd be surprised how many people reply to my email just thanking me for my concern and that I was so thoughtful! I'm like, you're welcome, but that was an automated message from an unfeeling computer, lol).
3am is rarely an ideal send-time anyway as people are not generally awake and reading their emails, and often emails that are sent overnight are not really read or dealt with in the morning (I know this from the half a million emails we send a week at my day job, LOL). So it would be nice to specifically send the welcome one at, say, 8am and the check-out reminder one at, say, 7pm.
Totally out of curiosity - what would need to be that time specific? I'm always looking for good ideas from other owners/managers.
Great work and looking forward to a time based automation. It would greatly enhance what I can do. Could a scheduled option (check out time) so an email would go out say 1 hour after check out time?
I don't see anything in particular that's amiss, can you send in a support ticket with the particular dates and issue you're having, with a screenshot?
First thing to do would be to ask them -- most will tell you if you're in a good market for them.
Next thing you can do is try them -- most of 'em have a free trial period where you can use their system, review the rates to see if they make sense, and see if you get more bookings.
Hi Katy,
That information is many years old. RentalGuardian is now our carrier and carries a better product line. TravelGuard was a great option at the time, but again that's many years old now.
Here's the information you want:
https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/configuring-travel-insurance-settings
Scroll to the bottom and look under the Insurance Policy Details for the links to include.
Can I send this Insurance company info to a guest before they book?
How would we know which of the available pricing engines would be best for our market? I own beachfront condos along the Alabama Gulf Coast and have used vrbo's "market maker" but really don't have any idea how their data is generated and how it would compare.
@Julie B, I did a bunch of research on this topic a year ago when Beyond Pricing entered my market. While I did not actually demo Beyond Pricing myself to see, the consensus from numerous online discussion forums was that PriceLabs has the best data, Wheelhouse has the second-best data and the best user interface, and Beyond Pricing's data was less accurate.
That information is a year old, and I can't vouch for it personally (and so it may be completely wrong), but it's my take from the research I did on the topic.
As well, different pricing providers can have varying strengths in different markets.
I'm not sure what's going on with rates but I can't figure out my monthly rate, though it shows set up correctly in the legacy settings, it does not show up correct when putting dates on the calendar. What am I missing?
How does this compare with PriceLabs?
Before you run home for the day, here's an exciting little Monday tidbit... OwnerRez now supports integration with Beyond Pricing!
For those of you that don't know, Beyond Pricing is a recognized leader in automated pricing for vacation rentals. The Beyond Pricing integration will dynamically insert rates into your OwnerRez account.
Like our other dynamic pricing integrations, Beyond Pricing will create spot rates automatically in your OwnerRez account every day or whenever their algorithms deem it necessary. Beyond Pricing will drive your OwnerRez rates - no need to lift a finger!
Kam Bain, Director of Strategy, Beyond Pricing says "Customers frequently contact our Support Team to request an integration with OwnerRez. OwnerRez was built by property managers, for property managers. It is this unique insight that ensures the PMS covers everything a property manager needs, from managing enquiries to offering travel insurance options. Their commitment to listening to feedback from their customers and building community around their users is great to see.”
Learn how to Integrate Beyond Pricing with Your OwnerRez Account.
Founded in 2013 by veterans of revenue management in the airline and hospitality space, Beyond Pricing is the world's first revenue management and dynamic pricing software for vacation rentals. Driven by big-data machine learning and predictive analytics, Beyond Pricing has priced over $4 billion in bookings for 300,000 listings in more than 7,000 cities.
