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We'd like to announce that OwnerRez now supports integration with PointCentral, recognized leader in enterprise-scale Property Automation solutions for short and long-term property managers. The PointCentral integration automatically assigns unique access codes for the keyless locks installed in rental properties and updates as needed for date changes and early/late check-in and check-out times.

How to Integrate PointCentral Locks to Your OwnerRez Account

PointCentral, a subsidiary of Alarm.com (Nasdaq: ALRM), provides short and long-term property managers of single-family and multi-family assets with an enterprise-class solution that monitors and controls Smart Home technology across all properties in their inventory over a best-in-class secure and reliable cellular network – increasing property awareness, reducing operational costs and improving resident satisfaction. PointCentral’s solutions allow property managers to realize operational efficiencies, enhancing the asset for guests and residents.

" nice results" includes not having to track and worry about pricing for 27 units. Your time is also money.

Yes, but there Comes A Time you need to let go stop trying to get the last dollar. How much is your time and energy worth? If pricelabs cost 1% of your revenue and brings 2% additional, it was worth it. Nothing stops you from tweaking their prices, as they allow you to override as much as you want. But I doubt over time really is as useful as you suspect. It's like people who just had to screen everyone, while others went with instant booking and said you know it seems over time that it really doesn't make much difference.

So far so good, I turned it on for 1 of the 27 condos and just got our first booking using pricing from them! Woohoo! We will continue to monitor and report back but so far so good... Not having to worry about pricing is key here... I'm hopeful it will produce nice results over time!

@JTVRs - yes, the same kind of approach. I personally prefer to do the analysis myself, but I'll admit it's time consuming. I just don't trust a software algorithm to find the right comps, or do the proper weighting of tangible differences such as
- which direction a unit is facing (mountain view or side of building)
- full sized fridge or tiny
- degree of updating of furniture
- etc

I'm not dissing any of the dynamic pricing algorithms. They can do things in real time, repeatedly, night after night, week after week, which I cannot. They can detect (I presume) when there is a diminished supply and jack up my price. I find myself generally just reducing price as a date gets nearer, but I sometimes realize (duh!) that I was the last unit available and I rented for $100/night when I might have held out for another week and gotten $200/night.

In any case, my market of VRBO is about 40 comparable units. I don't really have competition outside of the building when I'm located (ski resort, limited condos).

That is sort of what pricelabs or wheelhouse do isn't it? For example pricelabs help will show you different price ranges and how many Studio through 5 bedroom units are in each along with other types of information. But they do it for a whole Market not just a couple of units

It would work for other units as well since we use the same public method you demonstrate in your video. You'd have to create a property for it in OwnerRez, though, to store the information.

Great idea on the competitive analysis tool! Although if that becomes well known I wonder if they will hide the rates on the public pages :-o

Chris - that would only work for your own unit, correct?

My use of this is to gather competitive pricing from 5-10 other properties.

But since you mentioned the capability, could you incorporate this kind of competitive pricing gathering into OR? Perhaps the ability to identify a set of 5-10 comparative properties, click a button and get a table of the competition's rates, with Max/Min/Avg/Median identified per night? That would be awesome ;-)

Yep! You can actually suck these into OwnerRez directly (we use the same method) -- go to Settings > Spot Rates and use the Import from Channel button to pull in the spot rates from VRBO or Airbnb.

You can also export your current spot rates to Excel in the same location, or import a spreadsheet of spot rates to update them.

Hey folks - a bit off topic, but still relevant for diy pricing .

I made a screen recording below that shows how to grab a full calendar of nightly rates from a vrbo listing. I retrieved nightly rates from 7/19/2019 - 7/17/2021.

https://p14.f2.n0.cdn.getcloudapp.com/items/2NuxgYKy/Screen Recording 2019-07-19 at 09.37.11.23 AM.mp4

requires using excel but pretty straightforward and much easier than visually retyping rates.

That may also depend on your area. The Smokies are a highly efficient place with a lot of supply and lot of demand. My town has several dozen vacation rentals in the vicinity of a small tourist town. We get maybe 1/40 of smokies visitors.

I am of the opinion that if 1% of my Revenue yield a 2% gain, it is worth it. In addition, I don't really want to try to constantly adjust my prices manually. My time has value. Supposedly wheelhouse is in cahoots with an event knowledgeable organization, but it doesn't integrate with ownerrez yet.

Not pricelabs but other tools I used for 1.5 years./ namely Wheelhouse (AirBNB and TA) and beyondPricing (vrbo). I can say this - both have missed some "events" locally when the rate should have been raised and it wasn't. Wheelhouse was a bit better. Overall, once you are an established owner and KNOW your market and your competition,. the value of such tool diminishes to almost nothing in my experience. After 1.5 years I turned off. Yes I know it is not PL specifically but similar tools.

Chad, I'm using it on OR and AirBNB. I can tell you that it's increased my bookings a bit, as I'm better able to fill gaps now. But even in cases where I've had the same or even less number of bookings in a month, compared to last year, I've made more money. In some cases around 25% more.

Looks like no users have commented on this yet. I can tell you, Chad, that many users do use PriceLabs and we don't see it being turned off much. From what we've heard, they are happy.

Has anyone turned on PriceLabs with AirBnb and OR? How's the success rate? Would like to hear of someone using them and how they are doing with their pricing.

Thank you,
Chad

My neighbor's guest house only uses booking.com and gets a lot of bookings.

VRBO, ABB, BDC, etc seem to be regional. Wise for host to try them all and see which works

Maybe in Europe. In my US market booking .com brought TWO bookings between TWO properties in about 10 months. That is it. Very unimpressed and will dump them after the last guest's stay is over. If you have a property on Homeaway/VRBO with Instant Book, it is already listed on Expedia. Also not impressed, as Expedia vacation rentals listings look like booking dot com vacation rental listings which is crummy. No real descriptions, etc. USELESS.

Hi,

You should extend to Expedia asap. It is going to be a big player here in Europe.

Extension from Homeaway to Expedia is very limited and can not make complex settings. Homeaway is not a real competitor to booking.com. Expedia IS a real competitor and sales VR rooms with its travel packages, so it brings very good customers.

Today I have to put rates manually in Expedia:(

Please, it is very similar to BCOM to implement so please GO ON :)

Regards

Glad you're loving it!

Channel Bridge is amazing!

A large update went out yesterday afternoon, and I wanted to drop a quick note about some of the major changes that were part of that release.

Security Deposits now automatically release in [x] days

For many years, users have been asking for this and we finally got around to it.  Instead of being emailed every day endlessly, the system will now automatically release security deposits based on your settings.

You are still reminded - once after departure and then again the day before release - that the release will happen, but there's nothing you need to do in order for the release to happen.  If you take a look at your property rules, you'll notice that the security deposit rules have changed a bit.

The Release Days field is still there but now it's the number of days after departure when the system will auto-release instead of the system just emailing you.  We updated the Release Days setting for all properties, system wide, to be 7 more than what was there so that you have plenty of time to adjust it before your first set of open security deposits are automatically released.

You can turn off the Release Reminder email if you don't want to get anything, and you can select the type of email template the guest should get when the auto release happens - system default, nothing or a custom template.

If you want to extend the time period for a particular booking, holding onto the funds a bit longer, you can do that too.  Go to the open security deposit and you'll see an "Extend" button that you can use to push back the release period.  The Extend button only shows if it's 7 days or less until the security deposit is going to be released.

We have a lot more work to do with security deposits - like adding refundable deposits instead of only holds - but we are excited about this update and believe that it will help users a lot with their post-departure workflow.

Menu customization for Hosted Websites

This is another frequently-requested update. You can now customize the menu bar on your Hosted Website to nest menu options inside other menus, easily indent and re-order and create menus that link to other pages or websites.

Let's start with the easy one.  Instead of having to type in a numeric order on every page to change the order of the menu, there is now a special Menu Layout button above the list of pages:

Clicking that will take you to a drag/drop page showing the current list of menus in order and showing their indent level.

To change the order of the menus, click on an item and drag it up or down in the list.  You can also do this on touch devices, such as mobile phones or tablets, by long pressing on an item for a second until you see it move and then dragging your finger up or down in the list.

Clicking the little indent button will move the page under a parent menu if that is available for that particular page. You can only have one indent level - that is, each menu can only have one menu inside it. We do not support multi-level menus.

It's important to understand that "pages" are now different than "menus".  Previously, the menu bar just showed pages.  Now, you can create menus independent of pages.  Each page has a setting for it's Parent Menu.  If you want the page to be the menu itself, select "Main Menu" as the menu.  If you want the page to be underneath (or inside of) a different menu, you would select that other menu as the page's parent menu.

Menus can be clickable, linking to a page on the site or some other page on a different site (ie. a URL that you enter), or they can have a list of items inside them.  If they only have a list of items inside them, when you click the menu, it opens to show what's inside without redirecting away.

In the picture below, the "Raw Menu" menu is an example of a menu that only has a list of items inside it.  It opens when clicked to show those items.

In the picture below, the "Properties" menu is an example of a menu that is both clickable and has a list of items.  Clicking on the word "Properties" directly will redirect away, while clicking on the caret to the right will open its menu of items.

Play with the menus and let us know what questions you have!  This should solve a lot of problems that users have had with nesting items and being able to link away to other sites.

Manual Mode for Channel Bridge bookings

Another user-requested enhancement was to make it so that charges can be edited for Channel Bridge bookings.

Previously, when Channel Bridge imported the charges for a booking, those charges were not editable.  We did this on purpose so that we could separate and keep track of the charges from the channel versus the ones you add yourself.

However, there are many times when you need to change the charges from the channel because of things like channel errors, bad imports or special situations that Channel Bridge doesn't translate correctly.

To solve this, we have added a "Manual Mode" button that will put the booking into a mode where you can:

a) edit the charges directly
b) make sure that future Channel Bridge imports do not overwrite your changes

To find the button, go to a booking's charges and click Change.  You'll now see a little button above the charges for Manual Mode.

Follow the prompts and warnings and then you'll be able to edit the charges.

Please be aware that once you go manual mode, there is no way to go back to Channel Bridge mode for the booking.  You are responsible, from that point forward, to keep the booking's charges up to date.  Payments, refunds and fees will still continue to be imported via Channel Bridge, but the charges will remain in manual mode.

That's it for now!  Lots of other minor things were fixed or updated, but these are the big three.

As many of you have already noticed, Airbnb bookings are coming in (via the calendar import) without any guest name, phone, email address or other details on them.

This is happening because, sometime yesterday, Airbnb changed their calendar sync engine (the iCal feed) to remove all of the guest information.  They have not offered any explanation for this; the guest info just disappeared.  They still show the Airbnb reservation # and dates but nothing else.

Will Airbnb put the guest information back in the calendar sync?

We don't know.  It's possible that this is a temporary glitch and Airbnb will fix it soon, but that's a pure guess on our part.

If you have a contact at Airbnb, try reaching out and asking about this.  Many PMs are part of a "Airbnb PM support group" that you can email directly with questions - see what they say.

Our guess is that Airbnb did this, on purpose, for security or privacy reasons.  Frankly, it was always strange that Airbnb included the guest's phone number and (proxy) email address in the calendar feed.  This is unusual for iCal feeds.  No other major channel did this except for Airbnb, so it was probably a matter of time before they plugged the hole.

How do I get the guest's name, phone and email?

Two words: Channel Bridge.  Our Channel Bridge tool will continue to find and download everything about the booking regardless of what the calendar import (iCal) includes.

The reason we created Channel Bridge was precisely for situations like this - VRBO and Airbnb do not provide users with guest and booking data, and the data they do provide is often incomplete.  Channel Bridge attempts to correct this problem by logging in to your channel account, as the user, and normalizing and downloading all the information possible about the booking.

We are continuing to make Channel Bridge better.  We are days (hours?) away from releasing a "manual mode" for Channel Bridge that will allow you to make manual tweaks to the charges that Channel Bridge creates in case you need to fix something.  We are working on a "direct injection" process where you can bypass the Excel file download and have Channel Bridge do direct imports.  We are also designing a future "auto" mode that will run every 10 or 15 minutes on your machine.  So lots in store for Channel Bridge.

We are tracking updates to this Airbnb sync issue on our forum here.  So if you want to ask questions, to us or other OwnerRez users, or provide updates that you find on your end, please do that so everyone can stay on the same page.

It is a great deal. I dont know about your area. But I have posted before - in our Smoky mountains group a lady just had her window bashed out to a tune of $1400 . Most of our insurance policies have typical $2500 deductible so that is not high enough to claim form insurance, but not a small peanuts either. I guess it depends. If you have small 1bd cottages, it is less likely. With group cabins you are bound to have rowdy people and damage no matter how much you try to screen. So while this particular option may be an overkill, I am starting to think about the ARDI option.

....but that's not to say that it isn't a good deal. I should add that that price ($29 for 10k coverage and other background checks) is quite good. I wonder if that's a spread risk model where they require that it be paid for on all bookings. I would think it would have to be.

It is extremely rare (if ever) when you need to make a claim beyond a few hundred dollars.

Chris and my rentals have been running for 12+ years and we've had over 6,000 bookings. In that time the most expensive damage claims we've made is a $800 fridge screen (one of those stupid touch-screens on the front of fancy fridges that are more trouble than they're worth) and a $700 love seat. Cracked windows, broken doors, damage to lawns, deck boards, floor scratches, stained sheets, etc - all are never more than a few hundred bucks at most. Having 10 grand of coverage is pointless if you never use all that.

PS. Our regular HOI insurance on the houses covers really big stuff with a 500/1000 deductible (and short term renter/liability is specifically mentioned as a named coverage) so anything that would be 10 grand we can cover with that.

True. But the ARDI coverage here is $20 for $1000. This is $29 for $10,000 plus a lot of other stuff.

HomeAway is trying to get people to elect $49 pdp. This is much better compared to that.

Thank you, $29 being cheap is relative. My lowest rates start from $139 per night, and our market is very stingy. we are competing against 10K of other properties. People literally bargain over $5 per night.. this would add $10 per night. So that;s why I asked if there is lower amount.

$29 is the lowest. That is for a 3-day booking. But again, it includes 10,000 property damage with only $100 deductible. And it provides $100,000 liability and building coverage. And it does a background check on the booking party. And checks their own million night database of problem renters

Seems a bargain. They are a significant company and have been around for a while. If API used, I think it can auto background check the booker.

They offer an API that is supposed to work easily with others. .. https://www.safelystay.com/technologyplatform

Do they integrate with OR? and are there lower coverage amounts?

For $29 (3 day booking) , the safelystay I mentioned in other post gives you $10,000 in contents coverage with $100 deductible, $100,000 of liability and building damage coverage, and does a background check on responsible party! Through their API. They also maintain a database a problem guests from over a million booked nights.There are other costs for longer stays or more liability/building coverage.