General Help and Questions

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There's no automated way to do this, but there are a few useful tools that can help.

Of course, you can easily check on your ribbon calendar, which guests are arriving in the next few days.  There's also the Date Range report:

https://app.ownerrez.com/reports/bookingstayrange

OwnerRez keeps track of repeat guests as far as it knows, but, it isn't always reliable at identifying them because people have different email addresses, maybe the wife booked one and the husband booked the other, etc.  You can see a complete list of your guest contact list here:

https://app.ownerrez.com/guests

Often you can immediately identify instances where the same guest has multiple entries in the list.  Here's how to merge those:

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/separating-merging-guest-records

Then, you will likely end up with individual Contacts who are known to OwnerRez to have multiple bookings - and on those bookings, a "Repeat Guest" badge will be displayed.  :-)

Note that this badge doesn't consider dates - if for example a guest rents two of your properties at the same time, that's two separate bookings so both of them will have the "Repeat Guest" badge, even though chronologically it's not actually a repeat visit.

Ken,

Is it possible to offer a filter for this repeat guest label or a tag since it already exists? It would also be helpful to have a Date of Booking Stay Arrival and Departure Column in the Guest section since this would allow more filter options to quickly find relevant data instead of the current massaging.

Thanks!

Cody

Is there a way to change the booking calendar labels that say "Blocked (in yellow)" and "Selected (in gray)"

Guests always message asking why dates are blocked when they are actually just booked by other guests. 

There's no automated way to do this, but there are a few useful tools that can help.

Of course, you can easily check on your ribbon calendar, which guests are arriving in the next few days.  There's also the Date Range report:

https://app.ownerrez.com/reports/bookingstayrange

OwnerRez keeps track of repeat guests as far as it knows, but, it isn't always reliable at identifying them because people have different email addresses, maybe the wife booked one and the husband booked the other, etc.  You can see a complete list of your guest contact list here:

https://app.ownerrez.com/guests

Often you can immediately identify instances where the same guest has multiple entries in the list.  Here's how to merge those:

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/separating-merging-guest-records

Then, you will likely end up with individual Contacts who are known to OwnerRez to have multiple bookings - and on those bookings, a "Repeat Guest" badge will be displayed.  :-)

Note that this badge doesn't consider dates - if for example a guest rents two of your properties at the same time, that's two separate bookings so both of them will have the "Repeat Guest" badge, even though chronologically it's not actually a repeat visit.

Has this been added yet?  I'm assuming if we create/edit the photo tour directly on Airbnb, that the OR photos/content sync won't overwrite it?

No, there is no API functionality to control the photo tour from OwnerRez.  We tested this on a linked account, and, the OR photos/content sync did indeed not overwrite the photo tour.  Of course, since this is a new feature, there's no telling what changes might occur in the future, but for now it should be safe enough to control directly in Airbnb.

How do I find out guests who are staying in the next week who have stayed multiple times?  
That was I can offer a free outdoor movie night where we come setup a movie night with popcorn etc as our way of saying Thank You

Not that I'm aware of, no.

Hi Ted,

The payment form has options for the guest to pay via check as long as your property is setup to accept checks, and generally would automatically be sent if the system determines a booking still owes nearing the time of booking. Here's a snippet of what that payment form would look like taken from a test booking:

This payment reminder is enabled by default within your account and is worded in generic way, see below for what that message typically looks like:

However you can modify that message from Settings > System Messages > Action dropdown for the message labelled "Send Payment Reminder to Guest"

A quick glance through your account and I believe this is correctly configured to autofire, however if you're unsure of this please reach our to our helpdesk and we can discuss further specifics.

Have any of these been added, Ken?

Has this been added yet?  I'm assuming if we create/edit the photo tour directly on Airbnb, that the OR photos/content sync won't overwrite it?

I have the same problem.  I added pricing for 2026, and EIGHT new surcharges were mysteriously created with a 2026 label on them, and associated with new seasons during the 2026 year.  I was able to delete seven of them, but it won't let me delete the last one.

The error message I get is "You cannot delete this surcharge because there are booking charges associated with it."  I can't find any bookings with this surcharge used, nor could I find any quotes with it used, and there is no way to search quotes or bookings for a particular surcharge, so I don't know where the problem is coming from.

As I type this, It occurs to me that I could disable the surcharge so that guests won't see it on their booking forms (Update: that worked), but it is a weird kind of bug that adds unwanted surcharges to new seasons when they are created.

UPDATE: There is a selection box in the create new pricing seasons process which causes surcharges to be duplicated when new seasons are created. It is obvious what it does when you see it, but not so much if you're not looking for it when creating new pricing seasons. At least I now know how to prevent this in the future, and it was my mistake to have not spotted this earlier. At the same time, it took almost a week for anyone at OwnerRez to be able to tell me why this was happening, so it obviously wasn't common knowledge amongst the help team either.

The Rate Push tool is a deprecated feature and has not been a supported feature for some time, as noted in this support article:https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/channel-bridge-push-rate-airbnb-vrbo

Unfortunately, the Channel Bridge rate push didn’t make it through the upgrade process when Google enforced their new manifest v3 in Chrome this month. 

We recommend for most users upgrading to the full API integration which syncs rates, and all other content, automatically. While this does require handling taxes for these bookings as well as direct payments, a payment processor is already required if you're handling Security Deposits and taking any direct bookings. This also gives you more control over the financials for your properties, including enforcement of your cancellation policies without Vrbo having a say in whether to cancel a booking with refund or not.

I noticed that the Channel Bridge rate push tools have been removed as of today (7/10/24) with the following comment: "Remove Channel Bridge rate push tools due to lack of Manifest v3 support".

When should we expect to have this feature back? I don't want to switch to VRBO API, as I don't want to deal with credit card payment processing and additional tax payment responsibilities for VRBO bookings. Therefore, VRBO rate pushing was an important feature for me.

Thank you.

This is not a real solution that assist with marketing. A guest that find our add wants to be able to book immediately, not later when staff can go through the 17 step process. Hope it gets back on the list soon.

I'm replying to this (old) topic again because this continues to be a pain point for me and I can't imagine I'm the only one.

There should be a way for OwnerRez to recognize that a repeat guest should only be required to sign a new rental agreement for a subsequent booking, but not have to upload another copy of their ID, since they've already provided one when they submitted their first booking.

Ken, we only ask to see the ID to verify their name and date of birth, so it doesn't really matter if the ID is expired or valid since that information does not change.

I thought a good way to handle this would be to be able to add a condition to a custom field to only present that field during the booking process if a certain tag was not present on their contact record.

Has anyone else figured out a way to avoid having your repeat guests supply a copy of their ID on every booking? I'd like to know, if so!

Has there been any updates on this?

We paused work on this due to some other underlying accounting considerations. Here's what's possible at this time:

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/0-booking-1-quote

You can always create a quote or booking with a Security Deposit in place and request a card from the guest to apply the hold or refundable deposit!

If you have further questions surrounding this topic, please don't hesitate to write to us at help@ownerrez.com

You are correct that this is not an OR question, so we don't have a solid answer for you.  However, from what you're describing, if you're sure that you have not yourself changed the password, this sounds like there may be a security issue of some kind.  I'd recommend calling in to BDC tech support for assistance, just to make sure you have not been hacked in some way.

Hi

This isn't an OR question as such but I am hoping someone here might know the answer.

I have tried logging into the Booking.com extranet today and told me my password was incorrect. Strange as I rarely change these and save them in a password vault, but hey ho. So I reset the password.

Now when I try to log in it gives me Looks like this password was recently updated.  and still won't let me in. However if I deliberately get the password wrong i get The email and password combination entered doesn't match..

Anyone else come across this weirdness?

Have a guest that paid the initial deposit by CC but wants to pay future payments by check.  That is fine with us.  We have many elderly repeat guests that rent our homes for their large families and many still don't trust the internet :).  I can figure out how to change the future payments to send them an email reminder to send us a check.  Is that possible?  Thanks

Have you looked in to Farehabor? We used it at a dive company, and you can link it via api and iCals to a bunch of other things, never tried directly with hotels. Their CS is on point too. https://fareharbor.com/

Has there been any updates on this?

It's not entirely clear what you're trying, so, please write in to the Helpdesk with more detailed information, screenshots, and links, so we can investigate and get you the right answer.

Yes, unfortunately, the space Vrbo allows for house rules is very limited.  Therefore, the proper place to put rules of any length is in your Rental Agreement, that your guests should be required to sign.

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/renter-legal-agreements

This also gives you a legally binding signed contract that can be enforced outside of Vrbo if necessary.

 I am unable to adjust my pet rules that show up on my Airbnb listing under House rules - show more- additional rules-show more- pet policy.  I've tried editing the pet rules everywhere that  can think of on Ownerrez and it still is not syncing that change.  Where exactly should I be updating the rules on Ownerrez? Thanks everyone 

I am having difficulty changing the house rules for pets in VRBO. The character limit is only 50 and its cut off.  I tried adjusting the rules, then pets policy and forced sync the API integration and it is still showing as cut off in VRBO with no changes for both of my properties.   Where should I be going in Ownerrez to properly change what is shown on Vrbo in the listings page?  

I wanted to update my answer to this as things have changed a bit. There are more fees we pay and there is more B.com activity lately

I was just working on a B.com (Booking.com) invoice and saw that they charged a commission for cleaning and other admin fees. I searched and low and behold found this post.

Since this 2018 post (time flies) I have moved from simple to more complex in fees.

Rent
Cleaning
Admin Fee (where I roll in the insurance costs)
Credit Card Fee of 3% (where I can charge it) Guests can take this off if they pay by check or ACH etc.

I also boost my prices 15% on B.com and check "Adjust both rent and surcharges"

I might change the Admin Fee to Security Deposit Insurance or a similar name. Thoughts?

Here is what B.com say

Commission charges on taxes and fees

We charge commission on the reservation costs and any additional fees added at the time of booking, such as cleaning fees and service charges. Not all of these additional fees will appear individually on the commission invoices, but you can see them listed separately on each reservation.

Not a fan of B.com but someone has to pay Tina Fey for all those commercials.

The same caveat still applies though - K.I.S.S.

Here are our general instructions:

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/extending-a-stay

Basically, changes to Booking.com bookings must be made on Booking.com, and not in OwnerRez.  You would need to check with Booking.com for specific instructions on how to do that on their platform.

I’m able to update my reservation easily with Airbnb, but not booking.com. How would I do this with booking.com?

Thank you. The shift + enter does the trick.

Hi Christina,

Hm. Odd that clearing the formatting isn't doing the trick for you.

Try holding shift + enter to insert those spaces and see if that works, please. It may be something about the way that content was first inserted that is causing trouble. Shift + enter should fix it.

If that doesn't work, please write an email to help@ownerrez.com so we can take a closer look!

Is there a way to edit an email to create "paragraphs"? My check-in template, for example, contains lots of information. It looks too busy because I can't figure out how to put in line spacings to break the info into easier-to-read sections. I have tried highlighting the sections, hitting the "unformatting" button, saving, then adding in the extra line (via the "enter" key), but nothing takes. Is there a formatting "trick" to adding in a paragraph break?  TIA