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Hi Chris
Bob Bourassa is building a website for us.
Our domain is floridarentalbyowners.com
I'll let you know when it's up!
Michele
Great to hear! It's a matter of building up the regional sites bit by bit. I've actually made one as well for the area around my vacation rental cabins: https://shenandoahcabinrentals.com
You're right, it may be tougher to build a new site in an area where there already are a bunch. It'd be a great experiment for sure.
You've given me another good idea -- we should have a list of all known regional sites to help out owners with finding places to list, and identify regions that might need more sites or not.
I've started with a few here: https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/regional-listing-sites
If you know of or own a regional site, let me know and I'll add it to the list.
I absolutely LOVE this concept. A group of us are working on something similar at our ski resort in WV. I don't want to hijack this thread so when we get a little further along and post in another thread.
Personally, I hate what vrbo has done to their long time users. 12 years ago one of my listings was #1 on the default page for our ski resort out of 100+ listings. Then it all went to hell. Now there are 421 listings which are a mix of true rentals by owner and managed properties.
I thought VRBO stood for Vacation Rentals By Owner. Not Some Vacation Rentals By Owners and Some By Property Managers. People still identify "vrbo "not home away - at least in my markets.
I think the biggest challenge is ranking a regional site in a competitive areas - like Myrtle Beach, SC. There are soooo many sites listing rentals, it's impossible to compete.
Bob - good luck - I wish your site all the success in the world !!!!
The following is a guest post written by Bob Bourassa of CarolinaVacationHomeRentals.com.
As the hammer slowly comes down on vacation rentals owners from HomeAway and other sites -- and we all knew this was coming -- many new vacation listing sites are popping up trying to capitalize on owners who are dissatisfied with the direction this is all going. Some old listing sites that have lived in the shadows for years are trying to become relevant. Service fees, limited cancellation policy options, worst best match, forced BIN. It is only going to get worse for owners.
Some of the new vacation rental listing sites are trying to capture a national or worldwide audience. However, they lack the capital to effectively market on that level and have shown little success. Without the cash to back it up, they can never be an effective alternative to the big guys who have been in the market for years.
A viable alternative is Regional Vacation Rental Listing sites.
Why regional sites? Unlike national vacation listing sites that have been developed since HomeAway began its changes, regional sites do not require massive amounts of marketing dollars in order to be even remotely competitive. Regional sites can target their marketing efforts on specific areas where typical vacationers come from, thus being more effective for far less money.
Since we developed Carolina Vacation Home Rentals in response to the detrimental changes to the industry caused by HomeAway, we have received numerous inquiries on what what it would cost to develop another regional vacation rental site. They asked what script we used for our site and what is involved, and they expressed frustration with the lack of options available for developing such a site The amount quoted from developers ranged anywhere from $15,000 to $30,000.
We have since created several regional sites for others using the script we used (Texas, South Jersey, etc.) and are currently working on one for all of Hawaii. We also plan to create a single site that will link to all of the regional sites to help travelers find what they are looking for without service fees.
So, where do you start?
There are multiple scripts available that can be used for creating a regional vacation rental listing site. However, most of them are clones that come out of Asia and are geared towards the AirBnB model. While AirBnB does have it's niche market, it often does not fit well with vacation rental owners. The clone scripts require substantial customization to fit the needs of vacation rental owners, which can easily run up the development costs. Some have also expressed frustration with difficult communication with the developers due to the language barriers.
A simpler option for some has been to use the WordPress platform and purchase a $54 theme. As a 18 year web developer, I can tell you definitively that WordPress is not the answer. It may be fine for creating a small homemade site, but it would be wholly ineffective at being used for a larger listing site. This is not an alternative we would ever consider, nor recommend in creating a viable regional vacation rental listing site.
Before we developed Carolina Vacation Home Rentals we evaluated all of the scripts that were available and tested each one thoroughly before choosing which script to use. Most of them would not do what was needed. The script we chose does everything that is required, and much more. We chose it because it was capable of being a back to basics HomeAway & VRBO type website (our ultimate goal) without forcing vacation rental owners into restrictive cancellation policies -- being able to display contact information and not having to charge service fees among other things. We found the script to be extremely versatile and contain a lot of additional functions that we disabled because they were not needed in what we were creating.
The script has an online quote system which we left entirely optional as to whether the vacation rental owner wants to use it. Some owners do, and some owners don’t. It generates a quick quote and then allows a person to request a booking. Visitors also still have the option of contacting the owner through the inquiry form as well or calling the owner. One of the goals for our site was to offer the options to the owners and leave it up to them as to whether they would like to use the tools provided. Owners also have the option of whether they want to display their calendar, rates or phone number. We left it completely up to them.
Even though the script does have the capability of accepting online payments for bookings, after careful consideration, we decided not to offer an online payment system for bookings. After researching the matter and seeing what is happening with AirBnB and state tax authorities it really wasn’t something we wanted to delve into. There was too much uncertainty and possible liability. We leave it entirely up to the owners to use their own payment processing. This fits with our policy to allow vacation rental owners as much flexibility as possible without restricting them to any certain way to do things.
Other features we have in our site that are available with the script are:
So, what would it cost for your to start your own Regional Vacation Rental Listing website using the script and method we used? Not as much as you think:
So, your initial costs for all of the essential scripts and third party services for your site would run you less than $1,000.00, with annual recurring costs of about $500.00.
We spent many hundreds of hours customizing our site -- look, feel & operation -- to get it to work and look as we wanted. As our site grew we made other modifications based on both owner and user experiences and asked owners for feedback and made adjustments based on their preferences. We still make tweaks as we feel are needed based upon how people interact and use our site.
Does that mean you would have to spend hundreds of hours on your own regional vacation rental listing site before it is even launched? Well, you could, but there is an easier way.
Once you have purchased the necessary scripts, the editable site files from our site, which have been customized, can then be used to overwrite your site files and tweaked accordingly. This saves a lot of time of having to manually customize your site and do everything we did for ours. However, there is still a lot of manual configuration that has to be done setting up regions, rental types, guides, slideshow, features, activities etc. However, as we are intimately familiar with the script and it's capabilities, we can get this done faster than you would if you were to have to learn the system from scratch.
If you wanted to take the quick route and have use do the setup and customization for you, the cost would be $1,000.00 for us to customize your site and get it up and running. That's less than $2,000.00 startup cost for your own Regional Vacation Rentals Listing Website. We could have your site completed in 3-4 weeks.
We do need to let you know that operating a regional vacation rental listing site does require some time be put into it. It is not a static site that you can build and just let go on it's own. You will have some interactions with property owners and site visitors. So, if you are not able to devote time to the site this may not be a good option for you. It is a business opportunity and like any business, it requires nurturing and attention. However, we found that as time progressed and we tweaked our site based on user experience, that the amount of time we have had to dedicated to maintaining the site greatly diminished.
You will also find that there will be some expenses for marketing your site. This may be in the form of ads on search engines or social media, or just getting hands on and promoting your site in other arenas. We can offer guidance to you from our experience of what works, and what doesn't.
Some of the difficulties we've encountered is getting owners to list their properties. A lot of owners are simply oblivious to what is going on. Believe it or not there are still some owners who do not know HomeAway charges a service fee. Getting travelers to come to your site is easy, it is the owners who are difficult.
For those owners who have listed with us, we found we needed to offer a little guidance along the way, not just for listing with us, but for listing on other sites. Some were using dated photos of their rental (some even with 2011 time stamps), didn't list their rates far enough in advance, had short unappealing descriptions etc. Listing your vacation rental anywhere, you still have to sell it and stand out. If you have a crappy photo and one paragraph description, you are not exactly enticing people to rent your house.
Starting a Regional Vacation Rental Listing site is a great business opportunity for someone who wants to start their own business and help vacation rental owners.
We will be happy to answer any questions you might have, so don't hesitate to contact us.
Bob Bourassa
www.carolinavacationhomerentals.com
Oh, i see. no I have not had a booking yet, I thought the quote will trigger it (when person does quote on the website via widget), I guess i will wait till after a booking! Thanks
That's the right place, but have you had bookings since you turned it on? The last booking I see in your account was 3/26.
GA only captures events going forward, so you'd need a new booking to come in to trigger it.
Chris Hynes said:
Usually it will take a day or two for the items to accumulate once you turn it on. Are there events from a couple days after you've turned it on that are a couple days ago?
Usually it will take a day or two for the items to accumulate once you turn it on. Are there events from a couple days after you've turned it on that are a couple days ago?
BlueMtnCabins said:
I have enabled ecommerce in GA for the tracking ID I have assigned to OR, but still see no events listed under ecommerce? GA has 3 default GA categories with 0 in all of them. Or I should wait longer for GA to accumulate data?
I have enabled ecommerce in GA for the tracking ID I have assigned to OR, but still see no events listed under ecommerce? GA has 3 default GA categories with 0 in all of them. Or I should wait longer for GA to accumulate data?
Honestly I am not sure,. Every time I look at FB ad manager, the interface changes, so I am thoroughly confused! Maybe it is one....
I believe you can create one pixel that is for all of your FB pages. Are you seeing an indication somewhere that each FB page has its own pixel?
How do you add pixel if you have more than one facebook page? Like I have separate facebook page for each property?
Great, thanks. i already have GA, will try pixel
With the rise of walled garden listing sites that block you from guests, more owners are doing direct advertising through other means, such as Facebook Ads, Google Adwords, and ads on other channels like Craigslist etc.
With ads driving traffic from various locations, you need to be able to track what ads are leading to sales. The best way to do this is using analytics tools like Google Analytics or Facebook's Tracking Pixel.
When you configure either of these in your OwnerRez account, we'll send them information every time a guest interacts with your website (if you're using our hosted websites), widgets on your own site, or the quote checkout process.
With the Facebook Tracking Pixel, you can drive ads that are targeted directly to your audience. You can also target ads to people at certain stages in the buying process. For example take people that have gone on your website and submitted an inquiry but not yet booked. Facebook allows you to target an ad campaign directly to those guests.
We've had Google Analytics for awhile, but we were just tracking pageviews. Now we've added eCommerce to that so you can track booking value and see what sources sent what bookings:
To set up analytics tracking, go to the Analytics Tracking section in your profile. We've also prepared a support doc on setting up analytics tracking.
Thanks for posting your example. I had set up a reminder email for 37 days out, but hadn't thought of giving the guest instructions for using a different card. Those instructions would eliminate guest questions, I'm sure.
The booking email tab has had information about triggered email that has been sent or will be sent, but not a place where you can see all communications in one spot.
To fix that, we've added a new search in each booking on the email tab that will search for all emails sent and received for that booking -- including quote, inquiry, payment etc. emails. If you click the link:
It will take you over to the main Email tab (at the top), filtered to show just for that booking:
This leads into the new filtering support we've added to grids. The grids everywhere in the app have had inline filter support for awhile. We've recently added a couple more things to make filtering easier and faster, so let me walk you through a few different things you can do on grids...
To add more power to filtering, we've added a new form filtering mode. To access it, use the Filter button above the grid:
This allows us to add more filters. In this example, I used one for whether the renter agreement is signed. If there's something that'd be useful to you for filtering, let us know.
This is the original way of filtering that's supported on most grids. Under each column heading there is a display of the current filter for that column. If you click it, it will open and allow you to change the filter:
This is great for quick filtering, but a bit limited in more advanced scenarios.
While we're talking grids, I wanted to mention another thing you can do -- sort a column by clicking on it. Each grid has a default sort, but you can change the column or sort order by clicking on the column:
Thanks for the idea, BlueMtnCabins!
That's exactly what I would recommend too. Create a warning/reminder email and send it a few days before the due date with their booking's payment link.
Continuing in our march to support local/regional listing sites, we've just added integration with Emerald Coast by Owner -- an up and coming listing site for the Gulf Coast of Florida and Alabama.
We receive inquiries from ECBYO through our email parsing engine. We also support two way calendar sync with ECBYO through our iCal calendar import and export.
Once you get your listings set up on Emerald Coast by Owner, use the following guides to get integrated with OwnerRez:
If you use or own a regional listing site and are interested in OwnerRez integration, let us know and we can explore that process with you.
I think you have to set time triggered email (say 37 days before check in if your final balance is due at 30 days prior to check in)_ to just send them a reminder that unless they wnat to poay by other means, the final balance will be collected at 30 day mark form the same card . here is mine:
Hi Susan,
We wanted to remind you about your final payment for your upcoming booking at XXXXXXXXXXXX Cabin. IF YOU HAVE ALREADY PAID YOU BALANCE IN FULL, PLEASE DISREGARD THIS REMINDER.
Your final payment is due by Mar 24, 2017 which is 10 days from now.
If you paid deposit by a credit card and you want your balance payment charged automatically to the same card, then no action is needed. Your card will be charged 30 days prior to check in.
If you want to pay by a different credit card, or to pay by other means (PayPal, check, Popmoney) please click link below and follow the instructions.
<link>
Please remember that you are responsible for making sure your booking is fully paid by Mar 24, 2017. Any manual/offline/check payments must be received and cleared by the due date. If payment is not received and cleared by the due date, the booking will be canceled and amount paid to date retained by us.
Thank you for choosing XXXXXXXXXXX Cabin.
Since I am going to automatically collect the 2nd payment from the guest's credit card, I'd like to be able to chose "send 1 time" and choose how many days ahead to send the reminder.
Since this isn't possible from what I read here, I'm going to make up a custom template under booking templates and attach a trigger.
Please let me know if I'm missing something on how to do this. Thanks!
@Marina's - Thanks for the kind words!
@Susan - You can turn premium features on or off at any time in your account Billing section (https://app.ownerrez.com/account/billing), using the "Change Premium Features" button. I'll get you refunded for the PM charge.
I've changed over, but want to remove the property management setting. Not sure how to do this.
Thanks!
Best money I spend on managing my business, unquestionably!
Thanks for making the management of our business so painless (even fun!)
(If you joined in 2017, nothing to see here, keep walking :-)
Dear Legacy Users,
The time has come to talk about pricing. Yes that pricing - the price you pay OwnerRez to use our awesome software.
Back when we started OwnerRez in 2009, per-booking pricing made a lot of sense for us and for you. You generally did all of your bookings yourselves, through OwnerRez, and blocked off times were typically used for things like maintenance or your friends staying at the property.
In the intervening years, the model has changed. With the rise of AirBnb and now VRBO's new fee model, a good chunk of bookings are done on other sites and then imported into OwnerRez for tracking, management, reporting, etc. We now have a fair number of users where the majority of their use is imported bookings and blocked-off time, and many users do nothing but use OwnerRez as nothing more than a calendar synchronization hub.
That's a problem for us, because we don't get paid ;-)... but it also presents a quandary for users to decide whether they want to add a booking done on AirBnb or VRBO to OwnerRez so they can use all of the features we offer, like scheduled and triggered emails, reporting, searching, travel insurance, and much more.
We thought through all of that, and came up with the idea to switch to a per-property pricing model vs. the per-booking model we had before. That way, there's no question on whether to book or block and you can add as much information to OwnerRez as you need. You can set up processes like pre-arrival emails and post stay review requests and have them applied across everything instead of only working for bookings made in OwnerRez because AirBnb/VRBO sourced ones are blocked off time.
We've actually had this new pricing structure up, live, for a few months now. You can see it on our main pricing page:
https://www.ownerrez.com/pricing
We also added a support article about how the pricing breaks down including premium features:
https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/costs-and-fees
As we watched and analyzed the new pricing model, we made adjustments and then made some models for what fees would look like for many different types of users - mom and pops, mid size, large PMs, etc.
We feel that the new pricing model is fair, easy to understand and provides a great platform for the future - both for users and our internal business needs.
The time has come to ask our Legacy users (those users who signed up prior to 2017) to join the new pricing model.
You can do this already by clicking on the "Change to Normal Pricing" button on your account billing page.
Many Legacy users have already seen the button and moved over- thanks for that!
For everyone else, please take a moment to use the pricing calculator to see what your monthly rate would be. Then use the "Change to Normal Billing" to move over.
If you have any questions or concerns, just shoot us an email or comment on this blog post. We'll explain whatever we can!
By May 1 2017, we would like all Legacy users to have transitioned to the new pricing model. After May 1, we will begin reaching out to Legacy users directly to help with the transition. We will not be supporting Legacy pricing past May 1.
If your business situation is such where this pricing just won't work for you, let us know. We'll work with you. We'll talk with you about your business and what works.
Finally, please understand that we spent a long time agonizing over these decisions: what the pricing should be, what is fair for users of different sizes, what revenue our business needs to stay healthy, and a lot more. None of these decisions were made lightly. In fact, we originally started the research for "coming up with better pricing" almost 2 years ago. We changed, paused, pivoted and delayed several times over those 2 years to make sure we were getting it right.
As a business, we are deeply committed to being the best vacation rental software on the market. That commitment only gets stronger every day!
-Paul and Chris
I should have figured -- you're already on top of it!
Sam Westcott said:
@BlueMtnCabins: I told Chris he should change the title of this blog post, which he did. Just wanted to point that out... This is about sharing widgets with a link, not embedding them into your website. You may already understand that, but I wanted to point that out in case you were thinking this is about embedding them into your website. This feature adds the ability to share and use widgets WITHOUT a website.
@BlueMtnCabins: I told Chris he should change the title of this blog post, which he did. Just wanted to point that out... This is about sharing widgets with a link, not embedding them into your website. You may already understand that, but I wanted to point that out in case you were thinking this is about embedding them into your website. This feature adds the ability to share and use widgets WITHOUT a website.
Love them! Was asking about them for a a while, already incorporated in the site!
We adding a lot of widget improvements recently. Here's one more thing. Widget sharing, aka hosted widgets!
We've had widgets for awhile, and have added hosted websites recently. Sometimes you need something in between the two, whether that be to share a calendar with housekeeping, give a special quote link to a guest, or what have you.
So we added hosted widgets. Any widget you have currently can be accessed using a special link that you can share via email etc. That link will show the widget on a page branded with your form header and footer.
So go to any widget and grab this link (or use the Preview button):
You'll be taken to a clean page, hosting the widget, and including your information:
If you choose "All Properties" in the widget settings, a property selector will appear if you have multiple properties to allow selection of the property.
Share that link with people you want to have access to the widget and they will be able to access it as long as you have it enabled.
