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I'm curious if anyone has used OR as a booking mechanism for pool use. We have an HOA pool that we are trying to reopen. We need to have a way to monitor capacity, so we are exploring our options. If you had occupancy of x number of people per hour, it seems like you might be able to set this up in OR, and thus create a corresponding door tag and guest entry. Thanks!
This is happening because the seasons are actually all overlapping. They're "Recurring" type seasons which recur every year. You've named them 2021 and 2022, but the date ranges are actually recurring every year.
To fix it, edit the seasons and change them to "Specific Date" type and set the dates on one to 1 Jan 2021 to 31 Dec 2021, and the dates on the other one to 1 Jan 2022 to 31 Dec 2022.
Then they will not overlap and rates will calculate as expected.
In fact if your nightly rates changes all the time, you could do it with percentage discount and rules.
again you would set up multiple discounts with rules.
i.e. if booking is equal to 4 nights, discount by 25%
if booking is equal to 5 nights, discount by 20%
if booking is equal to 6 nights, discount by 16.7%
if booking is equal to 7 nights, discount by 14.3%... so on and so forth
In practice, if doing via discount code, you would give each discount the same discount code and the system would present the right discount amount to deduct by the way of rules
Technically I think you could do this with discounts and rules.
i.e. create a set amount discount equal to your nightly rate. then set the rules to only apply to bookings of equal or greater than 4 nights. If you have seasonal pricing, then you would duplicate the discount but adjust the discount amount and only apply it to that season in the rules.
if you have different rates at weekends to weekdays, then a 4 day booking that straddles a weekend, I assume it is the weeknight rate you would discount, so no real issue there.
The only issue I can see you having, is if you use variable intelligent pricing model were your rates constant fluctuate to market demands.
Not sure if it's me or if their is an error with the rates widget.
For some reason I can't get the LOS discounts to show on the rates widget other than against the top/first season.
I think i've tried everything. I've set the LOS discounts to apply to all seasons, just one season, created LOS discounts specific to a season. I've tried LOS discounts to all properties, just one property, created different LOS discounts. I've tried showing as a percentage, i've tried showing as a calculation.
Nothing I try makes any difference, it will only show a LOS discount against the top line season in the widget.
Is this a bug? Am I doing something wrong?
You can see what I mean on our website here - https://www.kehwindsor.co.uk/book-now/
Appreciate any insight, thanks
Cheers Joel, I'll keep a look out for it.
It's done, just hasn't made it all the way through testing phase yet. Should be coming out soon! 🙂
That sounds very much like this suggestion, which you can vote up:
https://www.ownerrez.com/forums/requests/allow-discount-code-to-be-flat-rate
Hi Guys,
I see you've released another update yesterday, but I still can't seem to verify a .co.uk domain.
If it wasn't included in the latest update, will it be included in the next?
We haven't actually gone live with using ownerrez as we are still setting everything up and testing before we do, but we are quite close and really would like to verify our domain email address before we do.
many thanks
We are looking to do a discount for one free night when you book a 4 nights stay. (We're currently just doing a % discount off fo 25% when you book) but that doesn't work if they book a 5-night stay because it will give them a 25% discount on the whole stay.
We would love to be able to do a single night free when a guest book with a discount code!
No, no particular update, but there is an extensive discussion on how best to do this currently over here:
https://www.ownerrez.com/forums/requests/template-fields-for-agreement-info-guest-needs-to-add
I upped my rates by the same , but I doubt there will be any bookings once that takes effect.
Any update on "Photo ID" upload/requirement?
Are people accomplishing this with Custom Fields?
Does anyone require the full name of all registered guests (and is that accomplished with Custom Fields, too)?
Ideally, we'd be able to require:
-- Full name of all guests on the reservation
-- Photo ID of the person making the reservation (option to require one for each guest)
My current backup plan is to have a Contact Form on my website at MyDomain.com/upload and do the legwork manually, but would definitely be helpful to have it baked into the reservation/agreement process!
When the promotion came out we went ahead and set them up but we assumed that they would be in the 15% range so we set their pricing with the 15% upcharge just to see how much business they would generate for us. We got a couple of bookings is all. I got the notice and told them no thanks.
Any news on this?
since you process your own payments, I doubt HTG will do anything about chargeback. You should vet HTG guests just like all other guests. I hope you have rental agreement and require ID. No OTA will vet guests for you but if you have documentation (signed rental agreement and ID) chances are you will win the chargeback.
Why won't the From Email Address on the theme work? You can set that even on the primary/account theme. No need to add a secondary theme.
Ack. I might still put in the feature request, then. :P
Two way to do this...
You can also create a secondary Theme (or 3 or 4 if you want) that has a different Email Address field and then assign that as the theme for all properties. The Theme itself will be used the From address by default for whatever properties are assigned to that theme.
You can also do this via email templates. You can set the From Address to anything you want and, if it's a Verified Email Domain, the system will use it as the actual FROM header on the message. To do this for all geust messages, you would need to change every system message to use an email template and put in your custom From Address.
I'd like to mention that the bookings we received from HomeToGo are coming from very low-quality guests. On top of that, one of these guests recently disputed the card payment he made as fraudulent after he stayed without any problems. I contacted HomeToGo about it (for their support) but heard nothing in the last 10-11 days although I sent them a couple of reminders.
Wait, you can?? This has been a long-standing thing I’ve been meaning to put a feature request in for. Where is that setting??
Yeah, it does seem like it's taking a while, doesn't it? We talk to them regularly and they are moving forward with the integration. It should be done very soon.
The "team" email account is actually the best approach at the moment. They won't necessarily get payment notifications though - you can use a different email address for your main login (that gets the system alerts and messages) vs the one used as a return address for emails sent to your guests (that they'd likely reply to).
Hello! Did this integration happen?
Thanks for your detailed reply, Chris L.
Long story short: I should communicate with guests via E-mail for Direct Bookings.
I guess guests will just have to deal with responses being slower. Sometimes it takes awhile for my business e-mail to route to my Gmail. Maybe that's the problem I need to solve. Or maybe giving myself a longer leash with guests is a welcome change.
Alternatively, what about adding a "chat" feature to the direct booking website with push notifications to mobile? Could also be used to help increase booking inquiries (ex: Olark): https://www.olark.com/
Still wondering: how do you give access to your co-hosts and cleaners so they can communicate with guests as guests as necessary? I could make a "team" email account and help them set it up to route emails to multiple people, but then they'd get EVERYTHING including payment confirmations etc...
Thanks for the follow-up, Chris!
FYI - we hope to have Vrbo messaging integrated in OR in the next couple quarters. It's right around the corner according to our Vrbo contacts. (Ask them that on the webinar tomorrow!) 😆
Yes, my experience is that people who book through non-Airbnb channels do receive and view the emails that OR sends to them.
I don't know what you mean about constantly refreshing the OR CRM tab. When a guest sends a message, it goes to your email, not the OR CRM tab. (The only thing that shows up in the OR CRM tab right now is Airbnb messages, if you have Airbnb connected via API, but you can also receive those via push notification in the Airbnb app, too--I mostly use the Airbnb app for that because of the lack of a mobile app with push notifications on the OR side.) So as long as you have your email set to push alerts to your phone, you're good there.
I do find that people who send emails (direct bookings and Vrbo bookings) tend to be less expectant of an immediate response than Airbnb guests. So if you can respond to emails within an hour or so, that's generally good enough to present yourself as a responsive host.
The last question is sort of moot at this point because at this point, only Airbnb messages get routed through OR's messaging center, so as long as your co-host has access to your Airbnb messages through Airbnb, there's no need for them to view messages in OR.
Hi, I have the ribbon calendar, but it doesn't let me select dates that would populate the form....?
The dates appear bunched up so it's almost impossible to see the actual dates.
If we could scroll right instead of changing the Month above the calendar, that would be optimal.
My biggest hesitation with OwnerRez is communicating with guests.
Airbnb makes it really easy. Most people have the app installed with notifications for everything. SMS and E-Mails further alert you. I have some helpers (co-host and cleaner) who get all the messages (without financials) and can jump in for an emergency or if I'm unavailable or on vacation. It doesn't seem OwnerRez solves this problem so I'll continue communicating with my Airbnb reservations through Airbnb.
When someone books directly through my website, how can I smoothly communicate with them while providing access to others? Do I assume they'll reply to the automated e-mails? Should I push them to communicate through other channels for support?
Guests want QUICK responses to their questions and constantly refreshing OwnerRez and checking the CRM tab at the top seems like a terrible way to respond to guests as quick as possible. What works for you?
How can I give messaging access to co-hosts and cleaners, allowing us to stay on the same page without giving them full account access?
Yes, you would create the new Airbnb listing in OwnerRez -- just don't publish it. You will still be able to see it in your Airbnb profile and preview it over there before publishing.
