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see if this looks bland to you https://www.smoky-mountains-cabin.com/ridgeviewlodge
The above are a few suggestions I have garnered from multiple business seminars in the hospitality industry.
Your VRs may not be commodities to you, but how well you present your VR units and how well you present/sell them to past guests and online profiles is what may determine whether your guests view yours as a commodity. Around here, most of the VR listings on airbnb/vrbo/etc look pretty similar. Mostly bland.
Your cleaners can refresh your cards.
I am pressed for time, but some answers.
-- ours is tourist area and most people come on vacation . can be variations (family reunion,. attend a wedding ). But mostly multigen families vacationing. My places sleep 10, 12 and 16 people so that is kind of my typical clientele; Vacation with family. There isnrt any busines stravel etc.
-- yes I know it is LT business. been in it since 2011. I am on all sites plus some
-- well mine aren't exactly commodities in a typical sense. Maybe a condo building with 200 exact same units only distinguished by carpet color are that. I have 3 unique custom builds, all different architecture and vibe, all set in acres of nature with amenities like seclusion, firepits, pool tables, hot tubs etc. Handmade rustic furniture (not rooms to go stuff) etc. The biggest thing is that none of them is in any cookie cutter "subdivision" or "resort". You can actually see starts at night and roast marshmallows on a campfire. You get the idea.
-- I do not get to see my guests so I cannot "hand" the business cards to them. Business cards are oin console table but I replenish them only when i am there.
My #1 goal is to stop instant bookers (especially new to a listing site) from dialing me up to confirm or "have a nice chat" or to complain about trivial things. I aint a bed and breakfast, and I dont want to get random calls - I already am hesitant answering due to robocalls and being at work or asleep.
I was surprised by Booking.com in giving out a phone number. I ONLY want to talk "through the AirBnB/VRBO/Booking.com" communication channel. I stayed at 3 b.coms last year, and I never called the host - we texted I believe. What gives with calling me 1 minute after he instant booked??? When someone calls, I have NO idea which property they booked or what days or what they did or who they are.
Otherwise, instant booking does not have value to me. 1 booking, 1 guy wanting to chat up what he had just done and then he cancelled in two hours. Text me, guy!!!
This is an area I have some research knowledge. Thoughts:
--- most of the value of an email list is during shoulder or off season. You need to target offers to fill those dates mostly.
--- a generic email list may not cause much activity. Do you request and record special events or events in their lives? Why did they stay with you? The one booking I accidentally got said they fell in love in my town. I would have recorded that in a "reason for coming" column. Birthdays. Weddings. Family Reunions. Whatever. Is your list go our with their name
--- it may be worthwhile investing in a brilliant email template from some vendor, if you can find it. Content, email subject, timing are all important. Does your email go out the week of Mothers Day? Valentines Day? Holidays?
--- people with hospitality businesses - VRs, B&Bs, tours,etc - do social media/blogging updates (campaigns) which rarely appear to result in bookings. But it keeps your name in front of them. This might indirectly cause future repeats or referrals on your website.
--- This is why you need to be on all the listing sites. There is apparently about a 7% billboard effect, where people see you on B.com, VRBO, AirBnB, Flipkey, etc. Your listing titles need to be clearly related to your properties on your website so they can find you. I have Founder's Home on OTA, and that is the name of the property on my website.
--- VRs are actually a longterm business. Perhaps they will come back in 9 years, Perhaps they refer someone you weren't aware of because they werent in your past guest list.
--- VRs are a commodity business. You need to make it clear why they should be booking with YOU over the cabins down the road. Are you brilliantly themed?
--- Salons/spas try to rebook people before they leave from their appointment. Repeats: Perhaps leave some biz cards - with an offer "A Special Offer for You" or "Come Back and See Us Next Year". Referrals: Give each guest 5 business cards to hand out with a line for their own name. They put their name on it and if they refer someone successfully, they get 10% off a future booking of their own (perhaps put 1 year time limit on it).
Anyone using constant contact, mailchimp or similar to email your past guests (or inqures) to send them "newsletters" specials etc.
Any success with that? I have been doing this since 2016. I send maybe once a month. Over 1600 addresses on my mail list. I can trace maybe 2 repeat bookings to it.
I would say this is pathetically low response rate. Either I am bad at composing these emails (and I try to write about local attractions coming up - not just about my cabins), or it does not work in my market and my size of cabins. But every time I send I just get a few unsubscribes, few opens, and fewer clicks on links. My list is replenished by mail sign up popup on my website and I get a few sign-ups a week. If someone has a sample of their successful email campaign ( that generated at least inquiries if not bookings) , can you send a copy to mybluemountainlodge@gmail.com. TIA
Exactly like Google Voice. You can port the number, yes. You'd port it out of Google Voice and into our VOIP provider (Twilio) and we'd then have to map it for you. I confirmed that Twilio does support porting.
Paul W said:
Some of our users have access to something called Call Center which is a virtual dialer (with your own custom phone number in your area code) that lets you make calls from OwnerRez. We've been sitting on it for a long time. In the near future, when SMS is released, everyone will have access to it. Not only can you register your own business virtual number, you can receive SMS in/out of it and you can set voicemail, After Hours forwards and more. I hate to tease people by mentioning this early but couldn't resist.
Some of our users have access to something called Call Center which is a virtual dialer (with your own custom phone number in your area code) that lets you make calls from OwnerRez. We've been sitting on it for a long time. In the near future, when SMS is released, everyone will have access to it. Not only can you register your own business virtual number, you can receive SMS in/out of it and you can set voicemail, After Hours forwards and more. I hate to tease people by mentioning this early but couldn't resist.
If you mean the main email (that you login with and/or get notifications at) do that under the Account > Profile page. That's the top right button, then Profile. There are many other "email" settings in the system though, so let me know if you meant something else. Theming, etc.
1) that is why I started with payments by booking.com, I ain't collecting at the door. I went payments already have been made
2) I both got somebody who's willing to change a property name to what I wanted, and someone who told me the 25-character max. You may have to send in emails a few time to get somebody will help you
3) great idea on the Google Voice. Truthfully, the concept of instant booking is to not have to talk to everyone except for problems. I got a booking,, and they called me a minute later to chat. They booked one night, they wanted to check in 6 hours early, and then they used the early cancellation. I wasn't really ready for clients, but due to booking.com confusing setup I set one property to live trying to figure out how to do things. I don't want to chat. The voicemail with text sounds great. Thanx.
Sort of the opposite of Airbnb and HomeAway try not to give you the contact information when you want it . Why can't these listing sites just find a simple and logical way that doesn't make life miserable?
4)
IT DEPENDS.
1. In my case, it defaulted to saying that I will collect deposit in "Cash" at check in( which I never do - I am 700 miles away), and I had to explain to each of the 3 renters that secdep will be by credit card.
2. Every time I need to change something like property headline I need to call them. And forget any meaningful property description - there isn't any except for some crude concoction created by some computer algorithm from amenities.
Crazy.
3. Phone number - non issue. I have Google Voice number that is specifically for my rental business. I can set it up to go to voice mail between X and Y hours of day. If they leave a message , it transcribes it and send to my email. I can text them back or call back at my convenience. That is for ALL bookings, not just B.com
4. yes , agreed. confusing
5. Biggest one of all (pun intended) no bookings form Booking dot com.
How do we change our email within the OR system?
Good: There's a lot about booking.com that gives you much more direct control and Airbnb or HomeAway does. A real security deposit, unlike Airbnb with their synthetic deposit. Immediate changes to my profile stuff and amenities and they even call me to confirm and see if there's anything else they can do for me
Bad: guests get my phone number. Like, they think I am going to chat with guests at work??? My exact address is listed on the search results. Security issue. They definitely have a hotel mentality.
Ugly. Confusing when you first start trying to thread a property into the system. Nothing is obvious and it does peculiar things you don't anticipate
That is why I'm going to let booking.com collect the payments. There's no way in the world I want to try to get money from people at the door. I want them to pay well before they show up
Hi Michael,
No, that is not possible currently. Thanks for the suggestion though!
JTVRs said:
Can ownerreservations, using Lynnbrook, to collect payment from the guest earlier on booking.com?Yes, but only if they authorize you for passing guest cards over to OwnerRez. You typically have to call Booking.com and talk them into it these days unless you have established reputation. It used to be that everyone got that by default. I think a few bad apples spoiled it for everyone.
JTVRs said:
Also didn't realize you cannot enter text into property profile. They weave it out of your selections. Makes it harder if you have particular instructions not in their complex checkbox pathways
Cant wait to see how vrbo and airbnb strangle me with such simple stuff.
I've successfully linked the reviews widget to my personal website.
I would like to have a second reviews widget that only shows the rating, stars, and based on X amount of reviews to place near the top of the page to highlight my 100+ 5* reviews. (So next to the proerty guests can see "5 star rating based on 100 reviews" and have it update in real time like current reviews)
This would remove the actual scrolling and ability to view the actual reviews. Like a review summary.
Is this possible?
Yes, it was a one-off fee you could collect during the guests stay via booking.com. It seems amenable to offering tours, upgrades such as a wedding or picnic package, upscale services, Etc.
My understanding from and Airbnb forum I follow, is that Airbnb makes it difficult for complex to try and request an extra charge such as this.
I don't think it exists, but it would be nice if owner reservations unifed the above two along with VRBO, to have a request payment from guests during their stay function ( maybe along with direct booking or the hosted website)
The two choices I got were using booking.com payments if I wanted to have the guests pay before check-in, or I could collect a payment from guests at the door, and there is no way in the world I want guests to be able to wait until check in to pay!!!
Can ownerreservations, using Lynnbrook, to collect payment from the guest earlier on booking.com?
Amazing how many arbitrary difficulties these sites set up to make it hard. Working on booking.com profiles.
Once I register a property, I cannot (on my own) modify the: property name (as published), taxes, fees.I have to contact them to do this via b.com email. I also cannot have them make the property name more than 25 characters, even though someone did this a few days ago or me!
Also didn't realize you cannot enter text into property profile. They weave it out of your selections. Makes it harder if you have particular instructions not in their complex checkbox pathways
Cant wait to see how vrbo and airbnb strangle me with such simple stuff.
OwnerRez pushes the nightly rate and a per guest fee if you have one.
Any other fees like cleaning fees, and also taxes need to be configured on the booking.com side and will pass through to OwnerRez.
This is talking bout a one-off payment request change -- if you do that, it'll come through to OwnerRez as well.
OwnerRez supports all of the above (charging the card directly, booking.com payments, etc.). It will select the correct option based on the policy sent over from booking.com and whether they include credit card info.
You should be able to do a policy setting for 60 days or nonrefundable on booking.com but sometimes they like to hide that and encourage looser policies -- contact booking.com support if it's not showing for you.
Same thing on the credit cards. Sometimes they force new accounts to use booking.com payments for the first few bookings, then allow switching to the credit card integration after that.
They let me choose nonrefundable policy for my properties. At least it looked that way.
The booking.com payment collection said that it would charge guests ahead of time. My other option was collecting from them at the door, which is absolutely not what I want
My theory is that more cookie curter hotel like units (like condotels) may be better suited for b.com and they get booked there. Unique stand alone whole houses are not.
If you are new (i.e do not have account from the past already) they no longer allow non refundable policies for newly signed up listings. just wanted you to know.
As I said, someone else in the building only gets his bookings from booking.com. I think it is Highly regional, as Airbnb and VRBO are oalso highly Regional.
My cancellation policy will be non-refundable. I will also allow them to cancel a few hours after booking is that apparently cuts down the cancellations
I have ownerrez set up to collect 60 days prior stay. Prob is, that B.com advertises that they do not have to pay till day of arrival even though my cancellation policy says 60 days. I made up uuuuuge poster among my property photos saying that payment will be collected 60 days prior to arrival. I think couple of people questioned it. But since I only had 3 bookings that actually stayed (and not canceled among 2 properties, and almost a year) I guess this is an inconvenience to explain to them every time that I have to deal with. I am about ready to pull the plug on b.com as they ironically bring no bookings./
