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so like GV but integrated into OR? Would I be able to keep my GV number?

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!

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.

ha, no wonder I get no bookings from them. They concocted property descriptions as "X miles from such and such tourist trap, and Y miles from such and such tourist trap" those even being I have never even heard of, and I owned there for almost 10 years. . Nothing about cabin itself, the great amenities we have, the unique features. I am telling you, they are more suited for renting some cookie cutter condotels, not standalone VRs. Not ready for VR prime time if you ask me. I cannot fathom how are they "all that" abroad. Very crude site.

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./

This came through my booking.com email. Dated August 2018, like many emails I get from them. Not sure if they are catching up. I have been there for a week, setting up properties.

It deals with how to charge extra fees during a guest's stay, which would be useful for tours, extra services, charges, etc. Not sure if anyone has actually tried this.

My understanding (Airbnb forum) is that AirBnb makes this difficult. Not sure how HA/VRBO works regarding this.

------------------------
Dear Partner,

We’re happy to announce that you can now charge your guests for additional fees directly in the extranet. From breakfast to city tax, it only takes a few clicks to charge the guest for these additional fees.

How does it work?

Go to the ‘Reservations’ tab of your extranet. Click on the reference number of the reservation. On the ‘Reservation details’ page, click the button ‘Request additional fee’.
Fill out the ‘Additional Fee Request’. Be sure to include a description of the charge (i.e. cleaning fee).
The guest will automatically be sent an email asking them to pay the fee. Once the guest accepts the charge, you’ll receive their payment within 3 days.

Please note that you can only request payment during the guest’s stay.

We hope you enjoy this hassle-free way of charging your guests.

Kind regards,
Your Booking.com Team

For the time being, I think I plan to use Booking.com payments, because it looks if I collected to my own credit card processor , itwould not take the payment until the day they check in?? (my read of the Booking.com site)

Or can OwnerRez functionality collect the payment immediately > Lynnebrook > bank?

New to using booking.com...

There's a portal access area in the PM module that you can use to grant cleaning staff user access to view the calendar only, and give them the guest info that way: https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/portal-access

Hi,
I have 4 cabins colocated on a lake. I have a local do the turnovers, and have been having him just look at the ribbon calendar to figure out when to clean. If a booking comes in last second, then I call him to make sure. Seems to work fine.

But, we're offering linens now, and it would be helpful if he could see how many people are staying, which is not available in the public availability calendar.

How do most people manage their cleaning schedule?

Thanks,
-JJ

Multiple bed and breakfast owners are very sold on tripconnect as a cheap source of direct bookings

Ah, I think I read about it someplace. Unless these "pay per clicks" are very cheap, I would not trust TA with this. I used to have VHR subscription (VHR was owned by TA but for a while continued to run as simple old fashioned subscription where they sent you an inquiry and you handled further communication and booking). So when sub was nearing the end, many owners observed that there would be a slew of "inquiries" that lead to nowhere. I was already using Ownerrez , so it responds and it has email tracker. The quotes that were sent in response to these "inquiries" were NEVER opened by "recipient". I strongly suspect that these "inquiries" were generated by VHR/TA employees in order to entice owner to re-up. Having said that, I am very skeptical about anything TA would promise you.

Cpc/commission (tripconnect) and sponsored placements are totally different from FlipKey and TA's other VR sites. They direct visitors directly to your website, as opposed to being handled my FlipKey or their other vacation rental sites

In other words, the web traffic are your direct customers and not handled by TAs vacation rental sites.

Night and day