General Help and Questions

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Great write-up, Rich. Thank you very much!

Quick pro tip... You can see "which bookings have not signed" at any time by going Bookings menu > List view > Filter > Renter Agreement signed = no. It will show them on the ribbon view too if you're on that view. Great way of seeing which upcoming bookings are the deadbeats.

This is my first year using OwnerRes and we have 18 properties. I'm hoping to get best practices into what reports you supply to owners show the year in review. Total Gross or net income, all expenses, etc.

Can anyone share what they typically do using OwnerRez for end of year?

By trigger, you mean you have a discount created. There is no way add "not for holidays" on the criteria. However, you could target it to seasons. So if you create a season for each holiday (using the "specific date" type of season) then you could set the 15% discount to be "everything but" and then select those seasons.

By the way, instead of doing a 7 day discount, you could also set up a "Weekly" rate type instead that lowers the price to what you want for a week.

My opinion is that anything other than owner reservation hosted site for someone new to websites and or new to vacation rentals is going to find a lot more problems than they expected. There are things below the surface that a newbie does not think about.

After getting my tourism website up and running with a lot of work I put into it, then my web developer logged in with a virus on his computer that also wound up hacking my website. You become your own support team and you're probably not qualified.

Thanks. Will look into those. I have a full time job so working this around. Trying to get the property to pay for itself and be a vacation for us.

Can anyone help me please?

Anyone using the ResortCleaning app successfully?

I do same day bookings, haven't had a problem, did maybe 2 of them last ski season. But both were for 2 day bookings where I explained that they needed to book officially for 1 night (+24 hours in future) but once I saw the booking I'd import to "my management software" and they would see the correct dates reflected there. I imagine there might be a 24 hr wait period for vrbo for them to do some kind of background checking, or waiting for cc payments to process.

But as far as the agreement goes, I would just explain that I'm doing something outside of the normal guidelines for vrbo, and that the only way it will work is for the guest to book, and then look for and sign my rental agreement. And I'd explain that without the RA signed I won't provide the key codes. It shouldn't slow things down more than a few minutes.

I am going to be allowing same day bookings against my better judgment, and I am mulling having them sign it at check-in. There's no way to get them to receive and read and send it back to me in time. This is my first month and I need to get the revenue moving

Triggers and email templates

Hi,

I was wondering if there is a way to automate welcome messages that go through Airbnb with OwnerRez after a guest has made a reservation.

Thanks,
Carlos

I held off nearly a full year before starting to require a renter's agreement. Since I started about 2 months ago, I've had 15 bookings and 12 guests signed within 24 hours, most within 2-3 hours, and they didn't need any additional prompting. For the remaining 3 I had to repeatedly contact each.... Was kind of the same response with each case, I first sent a friendly email, then waited a few days, then sent another and called/left message. A few days later I called and then texted. In all three cases the text was what got it done, and each guest was apologetic about not doing it earlier.

I had been expecting there would be resistance at least some of the time to actually signing a document, but I have yet to see it after 15 guests.

So for anyone who is still on the fence about whether or not to use one, my experience says guests are okay with it. Of course I'll never know whether some person picked a different condo because I state that a rental agreement is required, but I suspect that's a pretty rate case.

I paid an attorney in Colorado, who I found online by google search, total cost was about $1,000. I did that because every state is unique, and I figured for a document I will use forever I might as well be confident that it's done correctly.

Not having a rental agreement would leave me with no recourse for pursuing a guest if damages had happened. And even for simple disagreements with the online booking sites like VRBO, having a signed agreement can be the difference between he said/she said disagreements. The agreement can clearly address cancellation scenarios, person limits and can establish penalties if they are violated.

Some final details - The folks at OR helped me get it set up with their electronic signature. Instead of initials on each page, the guest just signs once at the end. I did include a custom field where guests (mostly) put the names of their party which is useful.

Enjoy !!

I have a trigger for stays 7 or more nights receive 15% off. How would I set a parameter that if if a guest goes to book 7 or more nights and one of the days they are booking is labeled as a holiday the 15% of won’t populate?

It is my understanding that if we don't submit a form W-9 (USA), that AirBnB can tax withhold 28% of our payments and submit them to the government. Obviously, the theory that we calculate and submit our own federal inc taxes quarterly.

Having problems verifying this. Getting conflicting results online.

Is this true also for Booking.com, VRBO, Flipkey/TA?

OK. 4 groups have booked so far ( I am taking it slow).

Major annoyance

2 scratched up several pieces of furniture. Only saw 1 chihuahua.

1 bloodied up a brand new king bedsheet (ok, was only$25)

1 left a permanent waterstain on a wood side table.

Not at all what I expected. The Mrs. is very unhappy.

What would ARDI have done in these 4 instances?

I don't know, based on what I have read on many VR places, trying to charge per person is a wild goose chase. Things such as:
-- Encourages people to sneak in guests and you having to try to do a head count
-- Trying to collect a head count charge on people doing so and leading to unwanted negativity such as bad reviews, etc.
-- Wear and tear on owner trying to monitor and assess.

This is a hospitality business. Charge what the market can bear, and don't obsess over small things. They broke a $20 toaster - how do I collect? They snuck in an extra person! They overstayed 15 minutes! Be more patient/tolerant on small things.

Yep, the per guest multiplier is what you want!

We've got an article with more than you ever wanted to know about the rates in OwnerRez over here: https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/rate-engine

Nevermind, I found "guest" - duh. Sorry!

You need to be on booking.com, vrbo, airbnb, trip advisor- ALL. Also Houfy.. Through ownerrez of course. Just set your price/service fee to account for commissions. About 7% of that traffic will see your listings and book direct on your site. (Called the billboard effect). Ignore naysayers.

I went with wix for my website. www.lifeisgoodinthemountains.com. I've been on VRBO for a few years. Bookings dropped when the fees were added for the guests. I have been working on the website for a while off and on. Just launched about 2 months ago. On facebook and created a pinterest page. Thinking about a blog to add to the website. Hoping to drive people to my website. Would love any critiques.
Thanks

We've got an article about Wix that will help you on the layout part: https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/wix-widgets. I can't see the mobile view on the feedback link but that has instructions about getting everything to lay out on both sized screens.

In terms of the font itself, you can set things like text color on the widget settings but for actual new fonts you'd have to come up with some CSS for that. Wix doesn't let us pull in the font settings from the containing page, unfortunately.

Yes, I mean a widget for Wix. The site is pretty basic but design heavy and I'd love it if I could make it coordinate a bit better. I know zero about code, but can hire it out if it's possible.

You can preview it here if you like. Widgets are on the "availability" page at the moment.

http://feedback.wix.com/?sharedId=a8c80671-caf1-4305-a80b-5d78a76d35b8&iFrameUrl=http%3A%2F%2Feditor.wix.com%2Fhtml%2Feditor%2Freview%3Ft%3DJWE.eyJhbGciOiJBMTI4S1ciLCJlbmMiOiJBMTI4Q0JDLUhTMjU2Iiwia2lkIjoiQkFZSGZGVFYifQ.h_tk42EVxFdl_KT9i_NTRYiTaUPIGpD09h8Sla54zudbPdWQ9nAN-w.Amj6rsrhuYpNLg45asMx6Q.AxARnOb6ET39BR-BAgE7CY7lXVi5N29R-epkSG3c-cjYZcleg3DE5h9oLJQLMT9_6hJR0G26xalfhnpqPk7QtJJkywDHLodWotv2eQKFFD6tGCSF9bVbSCGKjAkOanifqn6bIQnaj6ihZHWcqKaCqpkFXd3WZ_dzaToGmxBTF9fX0ZdDz3RNfrVpqXqidZQkqYMJAEBrEoFMm4DA6i5rvQtJmdNla1UWvDFxRp4L7CFLc27RR8WTlUij9FC_vsbdBpCXTcmoL4XAF9gKvHCuV6nO2jRz_5DKaJ2FYocIgDXoZBuEMioObgkuXosrHyDl.4FtjAHfjGw4gitwgLf-RLg

wow, that's a long link.

~Marie

And the key here is that there are two different gap rules:

a) Relax minimum nights in gaps (what Paul outlined)
b) Deny bookings if they would create a gap of a certain size (what @BlueMtnCabins was referencing)

You can't delete properties after they have been used or reference throughout the system. For instance, if you have issued a quote or configured some property settings, the property can no longer be deleted. However, you can "disable it" instead which is basically the same thing - you will no longer see it in the interface. A true delete only works for properties that were just recently created but never used.

Gap logic is pretty sweet. You an specify gap min nights that override regular min nights. And that will push across to VRBO and AIrbnb in our rate push to where we set min nights there (both by API and in the Channel Bridge push). This is super important because it allows you to "fill the holes" in the calendar without compromising your normal min night preferences.

Basically if a gap min night is set, the system will allow any set of nights that is less than the normal minimum to be booked as long as it doesn't violate the gap minimum.

For instance your regular min nights is 3. However, someone booked and now you have a gap of 2 nights between the bookings. Ordinarily, it would be tough luck - no way to book those gap nights because the 3 night rule would kick in every time a guest tried.

However, if you set your gap night minimum to 2, the system will allow those 2 nights to book. Or you could set you gap min to 1 and even 1 night can be booked.

You can couple this with a 1 night surcharge if you want so that the guest can book one night (if it's a gap) but also get charged a 1 night special cleaning fee or something.

The big thing here is pushing this to VRBO and Air. That allows the calendar to keep changing on their side so that guests can book gaps they otherwise would not have been able to.

Hi Marie,

Do you mean on our widget? If so, you would have to use the CSS field to customize the widget's styles.

On our Hosted Website product, we have a coming update that will introduce theme fonts and colors and some other quick-pick options for easily changing the palette and font of a site. But that would not apply to Wix, only our OwnerRez websites.

It doesn't error if that's what you're concerned with. If you're wondering if it will maintain the old rate (prior to booking) the answer is no. It will update. Keep in mind that the booking could cancel and be re-booked by someone new at any time, so you want to continue maintaining rates.

Don't see an option to delete listings

Can u elaborate about gaps? I thought gap rules were just for quotes to tell inquirer not to leave gaps between bookings when inquiring. I did not think it actually reduced min stay to number of gap nights remaining?

There is a min gap nights rule you can set on the property in OwnerRez. If you set that it will reduce the minimum to the length of the gap -- for example if you have 4 night min rule and a 2 night min in gaps rule... if you have a 3 night gap it'll get 3 min nights. 2 night gap will have 2 min nights. And a 1 night gap would not be bookable because your min nights in gaps is 2.

That min nights in gaps rule is the only rule that overrides the spot rate min nights.

There isn't a way to do spot rates on min nights only, but that's an interesting idea. Either update the settings in PL if you're using them. Or do a season in OwnerRez -- you can have a season without rates for min nights, and then spot rates with rates only (no min set).