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The new Channel Bridge version 10.19 has been released to solve the issue.
Make sure you've got the latest: https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/channel-bridge-updating-to-latest-version and you should be able to push rates to VRBO/HomeAway again.
Unfortunately, this is a limitation of Airbnb (and HomeAway as well). They evaluate min nights based on arrival day only. I'm not sure why.
OwnerRez for direct bookings evaluates min nights based on every day of the booking. For HomeAway we actually enforce this via API because they allow us to pass back a "stay not allowed on that day" message to the guest. But Airbnb only has a "this is unavailable now" message that would be very confusing to the guest, so we let their rules stand.
I'm not aware of any workaround if you want the day restrictions -- that just seems to be an artifact of how they display them. I agree -- it's extremely confusing... to the point that while we were developing the API integration we thought we had a bug doing extra blocks. Then we realized that we were sending the right data, it's just a strange display they do on the calendar picker.
If you're giving some money to the owner and keeping some as the PM you can control that split and it'll correctly factor in to the owner and PM statements. Is that what you're looking for? Like a cleaning fee where the owner is paying the cleaners so you want to send them $100 of the cleaning fee and keep $20 for yourself?
Or are you expensing the entire $120 cleaning fee to the owner, but want to track that you sent $100 of that to cleaners and kept $20 for yourself? This isn't something you can do yet. OwnerRez doesn't currently track payouts to vendors like cleaners, so there's no way to get down to that level on an expense split.
Yep, that's a great trigger concept!
We don't currently have a way to target other bookings in a trigger, but it's something to think about for sure.
My suggestion would be to go the other way -- mark the listing site criteria for direct discounts "everything but" Airbnb, HomeAway, VRBO. That way it's simple and clear. And then set the channel based discounts specifically for the listing sites where you want them to apply.
Similarly, for nightly rates, put in your standard direct rate. Then in the settings for each channel you can set a percentage adjuster to increase it.
I just want to hear from those who are in a situation similar to mine:
~ Mostly family destination (but occasional spring breakers);
~ Drive-to destination;
~ Semi secluded or secluded cabins/houses sleeping 10+ (i.e sorry I am not interested in condo buildings, apartments, or homes in densely populated area, or very small ones);
~ NOT a luxury / high end pricing and clientele (middle of the road).
WHAT DO YOU USE:
a) Traditional refundable damage deposit ( collected before stay and refunded after stay same way it was paid).
b) Sec Dep (credit card hold).
c) Ownerrez-linked damage insurance:
~ pass on to renter?
~ pay yourself?
d) self-insurance (i.e collect non refundable fee for each booking to use it as a damage repair reserve)
e) have you recently changed form one method to another? Any change in renter behaviors observed after you changed? (i.e if you went from refundable deposit to nonrefundable damage waiver fee, for example).
TIA
We've noticed some issues with channel bridge rate push over the past couple of days. Turns out VRBO changed the interface a bit, which caused channel bridge to stumble.
We've submitted a fixed version of channel bridge to Google, but they have recently made the review process for extensions take perhaps a couple of days. As soon as the update clears their review process, this problem will be fixed -- we'll keep you posted here.
This doesn't affect HomeAway API or channel bridge downloads. Just the HomeAway/VRBO channel bridge rate push.
My email client has an annoying habit of gathering emails together by subject line, which ends up confusing me when I have threads from unrelated bookings shown together.
Occurred to me that it's more personal (and possibly more effective) to include custom fields like {CFIRST} and {BARR} into most of my email templates. Hopefully it will increase the likelihood of guests opening the emails I send !
The way AirBnB displays availability is not what it should be. Definite PITA for many of us. I'm not sure what your goal is (maximizing nights booked, not splitting a weekend, etc.) but would it help if you said all bookings had to be a minimum of 6 nights but then did Gap Nights with a minimum of 2 or 3?
I totally agree with you! AirBnB's display is not good. Interested to see if anyone has a work-around because it's not helpful.
I'm a noob and testing my calendar integration with Airbnb API.
I'd like to disallow check-ins on Saturdays, as it 'splits' the weekend. I see how to set Arrival Restrictions, but in Airbnb it makes it look like every Saturday is booked/unavailable (even though in actuality you can book over the 'unavailable' Saturdays).
1) is there a way around this? ie a way to show Saturday as available but NOT allow Saturday as the check-in day?
2) anyone have the 'no-check-in-Saturday' rule, and if you've operated it for a while, any impact on people booking your weekends?
thanks!
For a while now, we've been talking about a Housekeeping module for OwnerRez.
Well... we're still talking about it. But we do have one initial feature that may be useful to many of you: a way to schedule a property to be cleaned on a specific day after a booking. Read about that here:
https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/housekeeping-scheduling
Chris L said:
> Woefully inadequateThis I will agree with. :)
At the very least, though, everyone else you're competing with on BDC also has crappy descriptions about being X miles from Y. Just make sure you stand out with a good money shot as your lead photo. :)
Chris L said:
I manually send it via the Airbnb app (or website) when I see the booking come in. It's saved as a template, so it's just a couple of taps/clicks.I like it, thanks for the suggestion !
I manually send it via the Airbnb app (or website) when I see the booking come in. It's saved as a template, so it's just a couple of taps/clicks.
Chris L - how is your post-airbnb booking messaging sent? By email? Or somehow through their app?
Blue Mtns - if keycodes are sent by sms they'll be available even without cell coverage. So even in your case with spotty cell coverage, almost certainly your guests will have cell service sometime in the 1.5 days before a visit. Now maybe they'll forget, but I think it would be pretty hard for a guest to be upset if they were emailed and texted several times.
In any case, sounds like sms is being worked by OR so maybe we'll see it sometime in the coming months ;-)
You just need to define multiple discounts. One for bookings of 7-10 days. Then a bigger discount for 11-20 days. Etc., etc. That way the longer they stay the greater the % off. As for the person booking 20 days paying more than if they'd booked for 29, maybe keep the rates the same for everyone and only apply the huge discount to days equal to or greater than 29. A lot of that will depend on how the rest of your market does things.
I have LOS discounts (6-28 days) 10% off regular rate and LOS discounts (28 day or more) 55% off regular rate. To stay for a week or a week and a half for example....its currently cheaper for a guest to pay....than lets say....the same guest was to put in a month (29 days). BUT when a guest selects for example...like 20 days....now they are actually paying more more!...for just 20 days...then if they selected 29 days. So what I am saying is how do you put a CAP on it? At some point, those days...that fall between 18-28 total days...it ends up being more affordable if the guest had simply booked for 28 or more days. But that doesn't make sense right? How do I control this? They should not be paying more. Should it be capped? or is there a trick that I am missing?
> Woefully inadequate
This I will agree with. :)
At the very least, though, everyone else you're competing with on BDC also has crappy descriptions about being X miles from Y. Just make sure you stand out with a good money shot as your lead photo. :)
You can already reply via vrbo. But that can end up in spam also.
In my case I do not care for digital brochures etc. We are in the mountains and reception can be poor I want to ensure that they check their email and actually PRINT directions on paper and bring with them b4 driving to the destination as they may lose satellite and phone signal.
I guess I need to emphasize EMAILINg part more - just today had airbnb person whop was asking about door code (was emailed 3 days ago). I guess ppl do not check their emails...
so why not make cleaning fee a $120?
well maybe it works for condos. I have 3 mountain homes, all different. So whatever descriptions BDC concocts form the list of amenities , like " holiday home is X miles from Y and A milez from Z and has air conditioning" is just not very appealing in my market where people try to outdo each other with descriptions of desirable amenities and nature views. Also, as I understand, a customer on BDC cannot simply browse a property calendar to see open dates. The property only shown is exact dates they enter are available. Which is also not conducive as we are a family destination and people like to browse before booking , even not knowing exact dates. We do not allow 1 night stays either.
I still cannot fathom how BDC is supposedly #1 in short term rentals. Maybe in other countries. Not in my market. Woefully inadequate.
my properties bluemountaincabins.com/cabins
Sorry in advance if this is already address elsewhere - I can't find it. Is there a way to mark up surcharges. I want to set up a property cleaning fee to $120 with $100 going to cleaner and $20 going to PM. I believe there is a way to do this and I read it either on support or forums...if not I must have imagined it.
Of course I will help in any way I can. I am still trying to put the whole thing together, but am hopeful it will be much better.
the OwnerRez customer service has been wonderful.
I'm still testing it out on 2 of my 8 properties, but it's been a weird channel for me.
I use Payments By Booking (I guess I could try to call them and convince them to let me run payments myself, but eh). One nice thing: they don't seem to pass along any kind of credit card transaction fee, so that's an extra ~3% I earn.
I was optimistic, because in my market, there are many hundreds of condos on Airbnb and HomeAway but only (AFAICT) 60-ish condos on Booking, so being a big fish in a small pond held appeal.
I had four or five Booking.com stays in our fall season that went well, which got my hopes up, because they came pretty quickly after I turned on the channel. However, now that we're in our deader-than-a-doornail post-holiday season and rates are in the toilet, Booking.com seems to be attracting some not-so-desireable customers. They do absolutely no screening of people, unlike AB/HA, and so anyone can just go to Booking.com and book. So I've gotten two Booking.com guests in a row that have caused a giant mess for my housekeeper (she actually billed me an extra 2 hours of work on the second) and also stolen things from the property (towels, cups, etc.) and left some minor stains and damage (nothing major, but still annoying).
Earning 3% extra on a $50/night rate for a 2br condo doesn't make up for that. I did keep the security deposit on the second guest (praying for no chargeback); for the first guest, I didn't realize I didn't have my system set up to enforce not emailing the door code prior to receiving the security deposit, so I didn't even get a security deposit I could keep. Total damage/loss cost between the two guests was about $350 (although I really could lower that to about $200, since my housekeeper worked really hard and got the stain on the quilt 90% off, so it doesn't really need replacing, and the melted carpet is in an invisible place, lol). I did earn more than that in rent, so at least I didn't lose money, and both were last-minute bookings that might have otherwise gone empty, so I think I'm still actually (slightly) money ahead, but it's been more stress than I would rather deal with.
I've added a big surcharge to my Booking.com channel, at least for the winter season, just to sort of scare away the bottom-feeders, and I've tightened up my email triggers to not send guests the check-in info until they've signed my RA and added a security deposit. I've also finally decided once and for all (maybe...) to disallow same-day bookings, because they are often more trouble than they're worth; HomeAway doesn't support them, anyway, and I think my settings still allow Airbnb guests to *request* (but not instant book) same-day check-ins.
I'm still continuing the experiment, but we'll see how it goes. It's always a balancing act trying to grow revenue without making things worse. Experience has taught me not to get greedy and allow one-night stays (even during 1-night gaps) or let rates drop below the $50 mark (Pricelabs was suggesting $33/night this time of year!), and maybe experience is now teaching me not to go after same-day bookings and maybe not even to use certain channels. We'll see. :)
From what I've heard, OR is working on getting channel messaging (i.e. replying through Vrbo, Airbnb, etc.) implemented, so once that goes live, we'll be able to send some stuff there, although rich content like PDF welcome packets and things might still have to go via email, and URLs might get censored (TBD).
I signed up for Touch Stay (they were a vendor at the Scottsdale Vrbo conference). It was about $300 for a year for my 7 properties. It allows you to set up a very nice-looking and easy-to-use digital guidebook and then send a URL to guests they can use to access it. They have an option to do booking-specific URLs (so info can be customized per guest and some info, like access info or directions, can be hidden before or after their stay); however, the system to manage this would be pretty cumbersome to use to manually input every stay in. I had a call with the CEO the other day and asked him about integration with my PMS; he said they've actually talked to the OR guys and have found them very friendly and open, but they have to prioritize the big guns like Escapia and V12 first before they can get to smaller players (but they are interested). I guess it's a race to see whether they launch their integration with OR before OR can get their guest portal built. ;)
That said, I've had decently good luck by emphasizing in my post-booking Airbnb message multiple times and very clearly that my system will be *EMAILING* them *VERY IMPORTANT* documents to their EMAIL, not their Airbnb inbox, and that these will be delivered to whichever email account they used when signing up for Airbnb. I have a pretty good open rate and haven't had many issues with people not finding their codes. I also send the welcome packet and door code immediately after booking (I integrate with RemoteLock, so the door code doesn't start working until their check-in time anyway) and again 7 days before stay and once more 1 day before stay.
I do kinda wish the emails didn't go out at 3am...something more sane like noon Eastern time would be more logical, or even better, allowing me to specify the time as part of the trigger...
Posting this because I haven't thought to do this before.
I just created a trigger using booking criteria of 7 or more night stay, and using it to send an email to my cleaner with a request to plan for stocking extra consumables (toilet paper, paper towels, dishwasher pucks, etc.)
This saves me having to notice/remember to tell the cleaner manually.
The only difficulty is that this kind of message would ideally be sent on the day before departure of the booking previous to a long booking. , because that's when the cleaners will be at the property. If there were a gap of multiple days ahead of a week long booking the reminder could be too late. Triggers don't currently allow something like "1 day before departure of the booking previous to this one" but in this case it would be helpful.
Trying to make sure my direct website rates have a larger discount than my other channels. So I set up different rates...a series of monthly rates for my channels. Then I set up monthly rates for "My Listings - Phone In". But the only selection I see as an option is to classify the rates as applicable to "Phone In". There is no category to apply these larger discounts for "Direct Inernet/Web Booking". Is that possibly the same thing?
So if a guest comes to my website...uses the OwnerRez widget...will it show the largest monthly discount? The "Phone In" discounted monthly rate? Because one monthly rate rule was associate with the "My Listings - Phone In"? I would attach picture but I can not.
Don't worry. They will likely cancel anyway or give you a bogus credit card. in 1.5 years with 2 (last few months 3) properties I had maybe 3 or 4 total reservations that actually paid and stayed, and one charge-back. Not worth the hassle. Pulled the plug last year.
