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Alas no - we've tried to reach out to them and not had any useful light shed, and as far as I'm aware, no other clients have succeeded in implementing a net-new API connection.

Would chanel bridge be an option in a situation like this? I've never used the chanel bridge and, if I remember correctly, it is no longer being supported by OR.

My latest email from TripAdvisor....

"Thanks for your email about the calendar synchronization.

I understand how important it is for you to know how the calendar sync and ICAL works. Please be assured, I am here to help you. As per your question that how often the ICAL is synced, the calendar syncs are processed every 20 minutes, so bookings may not appear in their calendar instantly.

To update your calendar, simply follow these steps:

• Go to Calendar

• Select the first and last dates of the period you want to change

• Mark the dates as either ‘available’ or ‘unavailable’

• Click Save to confirm your changes

As you wanted to know if you can integrate the Ownerez as a channel manager. Please be advised that we no longer support integrating new channel manager except ITrip. 
 

You can also sync your calendar with other calendars that use iCal technology by clicking on Sync settings on the bottom of the page. Find out more

If you need any further help, take a look at our help section or just reply to this email."

L

I shared the below in both the "Say No to Vrbo Service Fee" and "Unofficial OwnerRez Support" Facebook Groups.

I'm just not sure how many "points" an average user accumulates (or will accumulate) from their use of hotels.com, Expedia, and/or Vrbo. In 20+ years of business and leisure travel I've used only 2 of those brands and only twice... twice! Thousands of nights in hotels, multiple hundreds of flight segments, years worth of car rentals.... only used them twice! I think the program is going to struggle to bring the value to guests... and value is what drives loyalty.

Expedia will be converting profit into cash when loyalty points are redeemed, so a point won't go very far. Just like with any other loyalty program there are blackout dates, or sometimes a franchisee of the brand opts out of accepting the cash (converted from points) amount which is dictated by the program.

I'm not necessarily predicting failure of the program, but I don't think it will be lighting up the sky anytime soon so I don't think those of us who are software connected will be missing out on much.

By way of an update, we have spoken to our Vrbo friends, and received the following clarifications:

A guest can earn OneKey credit on any North American listing, API or not.  But, OneKey credits earned can only be redeemed on platform (non-API) properties.

So in other words, the existence of OneKey does not harm the appeal of your API-connected properties - guests will still earn their OneKey credits when they stay with you.  They just can’t redeem those credits on an API-connected property yet, though that is planned for the future.

Alas no - we've tried to reach out to them and not had any useful light shed, and as far as I'm aware, no other clients have succeeded in implementing a net-new API connection.

Any updates on this?

Your observations are correct, depending on how you use Turno.

If you are just using it to communicate with your own cleaners, then, yes, Turno has no control or financial involvement with them or your business.  As with any other employee, contractor, or vendor you might use, you're in complete control and charge of making sure they actually do the work assigned.

However, I believe Turno also has a vendor marketplace.  If you use those resources, there are extra fees, commissions, etc. to Turno, but, I think in exchange, they do have some sort of involvement for guarantees of some kind.  You'd need to reach out to them for the details of course.

I took a spin through Turno, giving cleaners in the area where our beach condo is a chance to bid and become part of a cleaning "team" for our unit. Interesting concept ... it's like Uber for cleaners. But there seems to be an inherent risk that I'm not sure Turno has a solution for. If I'm missing something, let me know.

Let's say you post a project for a departure clean on July 30, and your primary team member picks it up. If for some reason they have to cancel closer to the date, and no backups pick up the project, it seems you'd be stuck. Turno confirmed to me in a chat that seeing as they are not an employer, they have no authority to guarantee a clean.

Another scenario ... if your primary has exhausted their resources during peak season and all your backups pass as well, what would you do? I guess that's the one thing about having a dedicated cleaner ... it's their responsibility to ensure they get the unit cleaned, or it's on them to try and make it right.

Again, did I overlook something in the process? Thanks!

Very sharp site @Nick F

We use OR Widgets and plugins in our WordPress site, www.Haustay.com.

www.hostfolio.co uses OR's WP plug-in and other custom WP apps. 

I created my website for one property using OwnerRez: taketothelake.com

I see. Thanks for that explanation. Makes sense.

I know you guys are doing your best!

While we generally do try to answer tickets from oldest to newest, that's not a hard-and-fast rule, because, since we're growing the team and they are all at various different stages of knowledge, "newbies" are instructed to skip tickets they don't know how to handle, or ask for help when available, and continue moving down the list until they find one they do.  The more experienced people come behind to deal with the more complex ones, but naturally that takes more time.

For that reason, it is quite possible for a newer ticket to be answered before an older one, if for whatever reason whoever happened to be reading them could handle the one but not the other, or, needed to ask for help on the harder one.

Thanks, Ken. I suspected it had to do with as you describe.

I do wonder, however, why I got a reply (but not answer resolving the question) to a ticket I created yesterday afternoon, but not to my previous ticket created morning on the day before.

The reason is very simple: we are getting more than 5x as much ticket traffic as we did back when it was just me, and, the other folks on the team are not yet as experienced and fast as I am.  On the other hand, they (intentionally) lean towards longer, more thorough replies, which naturally take longer.

Basically - we're growing the team as fast as we can, and also training and learning as quickly as possible, but the growth of the business is such that it is difficult to keep up.

Our objective is to answer all initial inquiries within a few hours, but as you rightly note, we are not currently meeting that standard.  Of course, Monday will always be by far the worst day for this, because we have to dig out from whatever's come in over the weekend.  We are working towards providing fuller weekend support, and ultimately 24/7, but that'll be a bit yet I expect.

When OwnerRez help was basically just Ken, I was always amazed and appreciative at how quickly he'd respond. Now that there are more staff on the help team, I am experiencing replies to be more slow in coming as time goes by.

Example is that I am having a particular technical issue affecting functionality with my Airbnb account. I created a ticket about that in the morning two days ago.

This morning I got a reply to another help request that I made yesterday afternoon. The reply I got was to ask me who had responded to a previous related ticket that I had mentioned and when. I thought that was a strange question, but I replied to that and then asked if I could get a reply to the other ticket I made the day before that was more timely in nature, and I got no reply back.

I don't know any of the internal challenges to running a successful support team. I just hope I can get a response today to the ticket I created two days ago, and it would be fantastic if support could go back to being superior as it was in the not-so-distant past - one of the major selling points I have made to other hosts considering using OR.

https://venturacountyvacationrentals.com/

Designed and built in-house.  I currently have six properties and utilize OR's various widgets (Booking/Inquiry form, availability calendar, reviews) and the Wordpress plugin (description, photo gallery).  Just started using the plugin 1-2 days ago, so the property details pages will be reworked slightly.

Only things currently not using OR are the location details, the amenities (for now), and the map.

I have a smart tv with all the major streaming apps I can think of on it.  Guests can login there and stay in sync with their queue back home.  No roku/etc. device to unplug and no HDMI issues to worry about.  Only thing is that no matter how many times you remind people, there will always be someone who forgets to logout.  I put that logging you out is your responsibility and not mine, into my rules etc.

Unfortunately, he's wrong - that is Converge rejecting the credentials provided.  He'll have to work with Converge to get the right ones.

This may be useful:

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/payment-processing-gateways-converge 

Newbie to OR and my first booking has received the attached credentials error.   The individual assures me that all of his information is correct.   I am using Elavon / Converge as my credit card processor.   Completely clueless as to what the issue might be. 

Thanks in advance for any help in understanding and resolving this error.

Wayne

We're not aware of any way that API usage will be affected, though it's early days yet and we don't fully know all of Vrbo's plans.

How will this affect those of us with API connection to VRBO?

https://www.vrbo.com/one-key

Hello all,

Has anyone integrated TIDY and used TIDY for their STRs?  Has anyone used TIDY's concierge service?  What has been your experience?

Thank you!

-Austin

Hi Kismet,

I am happy to help and can send you a guide on best practices - I don't know if there is a PM mechanism on this forum but I can also share here if you want. However, the QB integration is not yet ready for best practices so I am trying to create urgency with addressing Quickbooks Integration / Accounting issues in OR by having all key stakeholders join together to create a louder voice. To do so I have tried to summarize all the open issues in this theme and have created one master feature request that I am asking everyone that would like to see this addressed cast a vote for so we concentrate our voting and allow OR to see the magnitude of the need. I do have some ideas for a rapid resolution but at this time want to focus on identifying and prioritizing the issues/problems and have OR engage in prioritizing this fix.

The comprehensive thread is that this Feature request (full link below). If you feel this is a need PLEASE VOTE. If you have any additions, corrections, or comments please reply and I will try to keep the top post updated.

https://www.ownerrez.com/forums/go/70573

Thank you for your support and lets get a roadmap for this once and for all!!

Manel

Thank you Ken, I have watched every video on connecting and it still isn't working so I need a little extra help I'm guessing. I have done everything the video's show.

Patti

We are moving away from the BRIVO platform.   I have a number of new in box Brivo controllers that I will sell for a good price and as I pull the ones from my properties I will have used ones at an even better price.   Let me know if you have a need for them.

new myself. If you feel like you have good cleaners, i wouldnt go through setting up and doing inspections. What you might have is them take a few pictures of certain areas after cleans. then if someone was to ever complain about something, you could present the picture as evidence.

I sort of fell into property management by accident (I bought a couple of condos, and then a friend asked me to manage her condos, and I've picked up a half dozen other clients organically over the last few years).

I have 11 2-bedroom condos spread across the region (it's about a 35-minute drive from one end to the other). It's just me--no employees, no business partners, nothing, just me (I contract with a friend who owns a cleaning company and who hires and trains professional cleaners who do a darn good job).

When I started looking into services like Breezeway, BeHome247, EZCare, and others, I found they all defaulted to a workflow where an inspector followed behind the cleaner. This was my first exposure to that process. And now I'm left wondering: is it standard in the STR industry? I'd never heard of it, outside of maybe some large PMs who have untrusted employees on staff and who have lots of properties all very close together. I don't really have any guest complaints about cleanliness, and my cleaner has her ducks in a row and doesn't have issues with missed cleans or anything, so I wonder whether I should implement the same.

On the other hand, I also wonder how I would handle the logistics. I don't have any employees I could task with that, and I do not want to do it myself (not to mention it would take a HUGE chunk of my time). And sometimes there are 5-6 same-day flips that my cleaner's employees aren't wrapping up until 30 minutes before the guests show up, so how can I (or any one else) bounce around to half a dozen different properties that are all a 20-minute drive from each other, all in a 30-minute window?

Any suggestions for what I should do? Am I the outlier here? Asking here because I get the feeling that PMs on OR are probably more in my size bracket than the huge PMs that are often found on other social media sites with dozens/hundreds of properties. :)

The process of authorizing OwnerRez to use your Stripe account is managed on the Stripe side.

During that process, Stripe gives you the option to create a new Stripe account or grant access to the existing Stripe account (and log in to that account if you're not logged in already). This is an important feature since some users need multiple Stripe accounts, but can be confusing if you're intending to grant access to your existing Stripe account and accidentally create a new one. Unfortunately, OwnerRez has no control over the Stripe interface, so we can't improve their layout.

When granting access, make sure you choose the option to use your existing Stripe account and log in to Stripe with the email address you have used on your existing Stripe account.