General Help and Questions

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Do I need to have my merchant account set up before doing integration with HA? This thread is AWESOME.

I agree. I think a better use of your email list is ancillary services. In other words, if you do tours or something else, it makes sense to Market them. But I never got the idea that there are repeats and referrals in vacation rentals. How many times you never see them, so there isn't really any bond. There is in bed and breakfasts.

over 1600 addresses on my email list. Periodic newsletters. repeats from those: About 3 in 3 years among 3 cabins. Not worth the effort in my case. Maybe when ownerrez introduces coupon codes...

Every time i looked at Smart (dumb) prices on Airbnb, it is ridiculous. Like they suggest that I rent a 3 bd 2000 sq ft cabin for $100 a night. yes, sure, I will just drop everything and do it (NOT). I will rather let it sit empty than rent to low budget crowd.

Go to Guests > Reviews -- looks like they are all marked not to be shown right now. Use the checkbox to select them all and then hit the Show button up top and that should fix the issue.

Yep, the configuration there is a bit complex. If booking.com passes a booking.com payment setting to us on the booking, that will override the credit card required setting on the OwnerRez settings.

Having difficulty.. I have reviews. When I create a review widget, in the preview, it says no reviews found. What am I missing? All my other widgets in preview work fine. Thanks.

So I reset my properties on ABB from my hardcoded prices to taking a flyer on ABB Smart Pricing

8ish properties there and not ONE booking in 3 days during peak season.

So I ask myself - whats wrong? I went in as a customer to see my properties. Sheesh

They are asking PEAK prices for stays the next two days. Way to catch those last minute bargain seekers.

OK, I turn off Smar Pricing and need to get PriceLabs activated!

@Regina H - If I can add one suggestion it would be to harvest all of your guests emails.

I send out periodic newsletters to all former guests with info on our rentals and of course, a link back to my website.

Every little bit helps and repeat guests are usually some of my better guests.

I am using Payments by Booking.com - they process credit card not me - there are positives (payments collected ahead of time) and negatives (secdep = collect cash at door)

However in your explanation in this link, I am not totally clear whether your processing CC payment explanation is them or me (or both) collecting payment.
https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/connect-ownerrez-t-booking-com

Hi Carlos, like JVTS said, you would use email templates and triggers to do this. Here are some support articles to get you started:

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/email-templates

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/pre-arrival-email-templates-triggers-custom-fields

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.