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It's per property + an extra dollar to push to two.
Yes, I noticed that. I'm not sure if they charge per property, or per property pushed to a certain PMS/OTA. So I think for now while I'm trying them out I'll push to AirBNB only. Once OwnerRez can push to AirBNB and VRBO, I'll switch over to pushing to OR only and have OR push everywhere else.
Yep, that's the gist. You can also actually push to Airbnb right now because PriceLabs can do that push for you: http://blog.pricelabs.co/feature-update-mapping-listings-between-channels/
So, if I understand this correctly, I can use PriceLabs to update my OwnerRez pricing (provided I want to pay their fees), and then around the end of the year I can use OR to push those prices to AirBNB and VRBO, as long as I'm using the new channel integrations?
@BlueMtn: To sign up for Channels, go to the Billing section in the dropdown menu in the top-right. Hit "Change Premium Features" and turn on "Channel Management". We'll do a sweep of everybody that has channels enabled at the end of November and then apply the discount that way.
@Bennett: We're hard at work on knocking out those channels! VRBO should be in around the end of the year, with Airbnb to follow shortly.
@Maged: Thanks for the kind words! We spend a lot of time to try and simplify and standardize these channels... glad everything is working smoothly for you!
We can currently push to booking and TA (although TA requires the 5+). We'll have a channel bridge based rate push for VRBO, Air, TA etc. around the end of the year.
That's great news. I love everything that Owner Rez has to offer. It always feels very turn key compared to other solutions and they know exactly what we need before we do ourselves. I've tested the Beta version of the Channel Management and it's already more polished than many of the"established" Channel Managers out there (I've tested a few).
Channel integration is great but with missing out on full integration with all the majors (ie VRBO and Airbnb) and the fact that this is new and not fully integrated, I'm going to wait. When you have full flawless integration with all the majors, I'll def be signing up.
saw announcement, but where is the "sign up" to have 1st year for a $1/mo?
Awesome! Than you!
exciting, I have been using Wheelhouse (tripadvisor, Airbnb), and beyndPricing (VRBO). If I can use PriceLabs (provided that their fee is not too high) and then push Pricelabs driven pricing via channels to VRBO, TA, Booking etc , that would simplify life immensely! My observation lately beyodnPricing was wildly off the mark coming up with unrealistic prices. So I am hoping for better solution here :)
You're welcome *smile*
Don't forget to ask then to add OwnerReservations to their page. https://www.pricelabs.co/
It is a valuable Back link for you! Or any other dynamic pricer you use, usually have a list.
To others, PriceLabs has a good reputation. That is why I asked for them to be integrated.
We're very excited to announce our integration with PriceLabs! We've been hard at work on features to support this integration -- like the new Spot Rates concept that lets you "paint on top" of seasonal rates to set rates for specific days.
To learn more and set up the integration, follow the instructions in our PriceLabs Integration Guide.
PriceLabs is a powerful revenue management & dynamic pricing solution for vacation and short-term rentals. A data-driven approach, automation rules, and customizations to manage pricing and minimum-stay restrictions help vacation rentals increase revenues and save them hours in the process.
The customization options layer on top of market data help you automate things like cascading minimum stays (e.g., lower min-stay as a date gets closer, reduce min-stay to fill gaps), last minute discounts, orphan gap discount/premiums while still giving you good control over your pricing strategy. Learn more in this short video demo!
Yes. TripAdvisor Rentals and FlipKey are the same thing now. If you have a listing on TA Rentals, it will show on FlipKey and their other family of sites. They merged all that a couple years ago and now it's the same account. Basically, you need to follow our instructions in contacting them and saying you want to be use OwnerRez as a channel manager and then TA will convert you over to a new type of account (your reviews will be preserved) and give you a new Account ID to use. After connecting the TA channel in OwnerRez, read the instructions tab.
By "TripAdvisor", does that include Flipkey , etc?
We push all rules, rates and content for the listing. So the payment schedule (eg. 50% due up front, rest 45 days before arrival) is one of the things we push across. The TA channel settings in OR have some of these things broken out on the channel settings area. The rest come from the property data under the property menu. There are some channel-specific things (house rules, cancellation policy) that are unique to the channel, so those things are on the channel settings.
I am on pay per book with Tripadvsior, will it follow the settings set on OR or will Ta settings prevail (i.e per cent of down payment) etc.
Hi BlueMtnCabins,
We don't have a signup form. We'll be announcing additional channels directly. The direct channel integrations already in place are able to be connected if you have a channel (eg. Booking.com, CanadaStays, TripAdvisor) account in place. Go to Settings > Channels > Connect to get started. TripAdvisor is in active development right now and will be over the next couple months. Content/rate/availability/rule pushing is out and working. The booking part is in active development.
>>>> The promise of being on "hundreds" of channels rings hollow. The key is to be on the big 5 or 10 channels in your area and the rest are a distraction. More channels means more work and more things that can go wrong -- even with a channel manager you still end up running around doing little one-off fixes. <<<<
I SO AGREE. A VR owner being on Booking.com, HA family, TA family, AirBnB... Is full usage of these not going to bring you 95+% of the bookings? I follow their forums some and the constant problems and complaints. Communications that were lost, misunderstanding, new features, double bookings, wrangling with CS over problems or reviews...
So trying to get 5% more bookings and the potential complexities/problems of 50 more little sites? If you are on BringFido, aren't they likely also to select the Pet friendly places on the major OTAs? Doesn't the LGBQT market really strongly use the major OTAs more than MisterBnB? You are already getting a lot of the specialty market in the big OTAs. Besides, some of those small sites (like BedAndBreakfast.com) will probably be absorbed anyway.
I would only really be interested in additional things like PPC type ads or Social Media campaigns that bring people to my site without introducing breakable functionality between me and the customer.
Where is sign up form?
sounds great
Sounds great! I'll be waiting anxiously for the ability to push rates to AirBNB and VRBO
You may have wondered why it's been so quiet around here recently. We've been hard at work on a huge new feature: direct channel integration!
We've had two-way iCal sync and inquiry parsing for years, which provides the basic availability updates and inquiry quoting and auto response.
Direct channel integration has so much more potential: updating channels with rates, listing description, amenities, photos, receiving bookings with full financial and guest information, two way messaging with guests... and the list goes on from there.
In typical OwnerRez fashion, we evaluated the third party channel manager options and ended up developing our own direct channel sync engine which powers all of these integrations. There are four reasons we chose to build it ourselves instead of teaming up with a channel manager partner to save time:
You've seen a lot of "coming soon" language on OwnerRez this year, and we recently centralized the direct and synced channels into a main Channels area. All of that is currently free while we're in beta. Synced channels (iCal and inquiry parsing) will always be included with the base OwnerRez subscription. As of 1 December, direct and channel bridge channel integrations will become a premium feature, which will cost $9.99/mo for the first two properties and $1/mo for each property after that.
Here's what the premium channels feature will include as of 1 December:
As a bonus for our customers, whether you've new or have been with us for years (those of you around since 2009, thanks for making this all possible!) we're waving the $9.99 fee for the first year for anyone who signs up by 1 December. You'll just pay a flat $1/mo per property for premium channels until December 2019.
We've got great plans for more channels and more channel related feature throughout the rest of the year and into 2019.
As vacation rental owners ourselves we're salivating over the possiblities and can't wait to get all of this stuff done! The current roadmap starts with booking.com content push, then into VRBO/HomeAway and Airbnb content push (both via channel bridge for everyone and direct integrations for 5+ property users). After that we'll branch out into additional channels like Expedia and Agoda, and then fully integrate seamless messaging through all sources (channel direct, SMS, email, phone, etc).
Don't miss this OwnerRez-sponsored opportunity!
Our friends Tyann Marcink and Alanna Schroeder teach the VR Mastered #vacationrentalbootcamp only once a year. This year it is in Santa Cruz, California in October.
Here's a little note from Tyann and Alanna:
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The four experts are names you have seen everywhere:
See the full agenda on VRMastered.com
VR Mastered Santa Cruz
Dates:
October 4-8, 2018
Location:
Paradox Hotel
Santa Cruz, California
Price includes instruction, several meals, flash drive of templates and goodies, hands-on help, and more.
Does not include transportation, lodging, some meals, and the optional tour. We do have special pre-negotiated room rates for VR Mastered attendees at the host hotel.
Pack your flip flops and sunglasses - we will see you soon!
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VR Mastered | #vacationrentalbootcamp
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So... this might be a sensitive question ... but what is the consensus of the best gateway to use? Does anyone have any favorites? Right now I am using Sage (I think a long time ago when I joined Ownerrez I was able to use it free if I used Sage payments). if you go on their 'virtual terminal', it is pretty much that... a old terminal dump bolted onto a web page ... it seems like. I want to change my bank account that receives $ but the interface is so poor, there is no guidance on how to do that. I am wondering if there is a better gateway out there? Maybe one that has an interface that is not 1980's style? Anyone have any preferences?
This post is pretty old -- we're up to 20 gateways now: https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/payment-methods -- is yours any of those?
If not, which gateway is it? Sometimes a processor will support other gateways like Authorize.Net or eProcessing Network and/or they have different named gateways.
I have a gateway but it is not listed. Can I still use this or do I have to set up a new account with one of the 11 accounts you list?
Diana
We just released a new update for Triggers that adds several powerful features and lays the groundwork for new criteria. Here's what's new:
We've had a Paid in Full trigger event for awhile, and that works well for some situations. However, there were a lot of situations where you wanted to send the email on a certain date but only if the booking was paid in full. There were other cases where the booking got flagged as paid in full but wasn't -- like some listing site transaction imports.
The new Payment Status criteria handles those situations by allowing you to create a days before arrival trigger but only send it if the booking matches the paid in full criteria.
Combined with the next item -- send before triggers the first time criteria matches -- you can make a property details email that will go out a certain number of days before arrival, but only if the booking is paid in full. And if the booking were to be paid in full after that time it would send later rather than fizzling out.
Definitions:
In the past, date based triggers have always only executed once, on the day they are due. If they don't match the criteria for whatever reason on that day, or the booking is a last minute booking that was made after that day, the trigger is never sent.
We added a new option to run the first time criteria matches on before date events. This is the new default. This option will send the first time that the criteria matches between the initial day and the event day (i.e. arrival or departure). It'll only send once, but will have a chance to send after the initial day.
For example, if you have a trigger with this option enabled, for a welcome email template set to go out 14 days before arrival and a booking was made 10 days before arrival, the trigger would be sent the next day after the booking was made (9 days before arrival). Without this option, the trigger would never be sent because 14 days before arrival criteria would never match the booking.
Another example combined with the Payment Status criteria above. With a trigger set for Payment Status: Paid In Full, to go out 20 days before arrival, and send the first time the criteria matches. If the guest misses the last payment and doesn't make it until 15 days before arrival, that trigger would now be sent 14 days before arrival rather than fizzling out and never being sent.
Airbnb includes a proxy email address on their iCal feed, which our Calendar Import handles. This lets you set up a trigger for a request for contact info and renter agreement signature that goes out automatically.
HomeAway/VRBO does not include the email address in their iCal feed. Instead, we have an Import Bookings from HomeAway/VRBO function under Tools > Import/Export that populates the guest contact info.
We just added an option to send create triggers and/or booking confirmation emails when importing that file. You could always do that by hand before, but this will automatically send those emails when the guest email address is populated during the reservation import process.
You've always been able to see the status of triggers on a booking by booking basis to see what's been sent, what will be sent later, and what can't be sent because criteria doesn't match, it was skipped, etc. But there was never a way to get a bird's eye view on what triggers were doing in the system and the overall emails that would be sent.
That changes today. While developing these changes, we started to build an internal debugging tool to check and make sure that all triggers were configured properly. We realized that it would be very useful for everyone, so we polished it up and added it to this release! To access it, go to Settings > Email Triggers and click the Forecast button.
This opens up the Forecast grid, which shows all triggers that may go out in future, when they will go out, or why they won't go out. You can click into any booking, template, or trigger to make changes.
You use the Batch button to do bulk skips or un-skips of triggers. The Filter button will winnow down the list to a specific template, trigger, property etc. and only view triggers sent for those specific options.
We've had a trigger on renter agreement signed for a few months, but haven't announced it yet. This dovetails nicely with the option to send create triggers on HomeAway/VRBO reservation import. You can now create a request for contact info and renter agreement signature, send that out on booking create for Airbnb and HomeAway/VRBO, then create an additional booking completed template and send it out when the renter agreement has actually been signed.
We've had these criteria on triggers for awhile, but there were only two options: All or Specific. Many times you want to target everything but a couple of listing sites or properties. So we split the criteria options for all of these to "All", "Everything but" and "Only". That lets you target everything you used to (All is the same as the old All, Only is the same as the old Specific). The new "Everything but" lets you target everything but a few listing sites, properties, seasons, etc.
This is currently available on Triggers and Taxes but will be applied to other items like Rates and Surcharges over time as well.
Go to the Transactions tab of the booking, find the scheduled payment and click on it in the list. Then you can delete it from there.
Ho do I cancel a scheduled payment?
