General Help and Questions

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I have one condo unit listed on 3 different platforms (Airbnb, VRBO, Houfy). Is this a single property or three different properties? If it should be a single property, what are the issues of integrating the 3 different OTA's?

FWIW, this is the insight I have collected about dealing with Booking.com cancellations. Most from one post. Maybe here on OR or elsewhere - don't remember:

• Unless you choose the very strictest policy ("no refunds whatsoever of any amount paid at any time", regardless of how early they cancel -- which I wouldn't advise as it will alienate many potential guests and cost you a lot of bookings) then the next strictest setting is "full refund for all cancellations at least 60-days in advance", with all options after that being more and more lenient.
• There is a lot of cancellations from overseas, as people will try to use your address to show an American (or other country) address, for a variety of immigration or other reasons. Russian, etc. On the other hand, they are a really great source of foreign bookings, if that is your cup of tea...
• Guests tend to book and cancel quite easily and do not expect to hear from you unless and until it is within the "no cancellation refund" period. I've learned to charge the deposit amount and then only contact them once it is less than 60 days before check-in (or whatever your policy is)
• Must contend with some "deadbeat guest" bookings who seem to be unreachable or irresponsive after booking or whose card are declined or missing info; I've learned to avoid frustration by trying to bill their card once only and if declined, mark card as "invalid" then send them a link to the invoice letting them know they have 24 hours to pay (at least the minimum due) or their reservation will be canceled

Pun intended. So after close to 2 dozen bookings since last year for 2 of my properties, all but one (future stay) have fizzled out or cancelled. Not to say that this lone remaining one will not cancel too once we get closer to non-refundable period. Is that everyone's experience too?

To be embedded in email? I send post departure email saying "you could have saved $X if you booked with us direct", where $X is amount of VRBO fee. So far I have been populating custom field manually , but since I see it as a value on the booking as being imported form VRBO, is there a name? Same fort AIrBNB. TIA

Where would be a good place to start to understand the details of how OwnerRez and ResortCleaningApp interface? The ResortCleaningApp website is not very informative without setting up a personal demo. I was hoping you might have some inside info. Also, how expensive is the ResortCleaning App?

Now that you have integrated with Pricelabs, I'm curious if you or anyone who may be using it can comment on whether things are working as expected and were there any idiosyncrasies that we might need to be aware of?

Hi Paul,

Thanks! That worked great. The process to download from VRBO to Excel and back into OwnerRez was very smooth and simple.

Now I just need to get Airbnb working.

Randy

Hi. My lodging association is looking into using the property management tool for the sole purpose of customers being able to book online with association members without needing to go to each individual page for availability and booking. My question: Has anyone done this? Can you share the link so I can take a look? And for any property manager- what are the pros and cons of using this tool in OwnerRez? Thanks in advance!
Allison, Owner
Dam Near Lake of Egypt Cabins
www.damnearcabins.com

Sorry for the lack of docs around Channel Bridge and our channel management at large. We've been pushing updates faster than writing docs. ….A general problem around here.

Our channel integration varies based on the channel and what is possible (ie. what we've been approved for, partnership wise, or what the channel is technically able to do). Channel work is probably 75% of what we do so it's constantly being updated and worked on.

We have two basic types of channel management - API Integrated channels and Synced channels. Again, this is based on the limits of each channel (either technical limits or them not approving us yet for something more).

"API integrated" channels means we have a partner level agreement with the channel and our servers talk to their servers. The rates, rules, availability are automatically pushed back and forth and there's nothing you need to do manually. Bookings are sent over to our system automatically as well. In the case of TripAdvisor, the listing content (photo, amenities, descriptions) are all pushed across too, so if you change any of that in OR, it will change on the TripAdvisor side. We are finishing up a large API integration with HomeAway where all of that will happen with HomeAway as well. That's in the final stages of testing with a pilot group of users. Currently, we have API Integrated integration for Booking.com, CanadaStays, TripAdvisor and (very soon) VRBO/HomeAway. We're also working on API integrations for Airbnb, ECBYO and some others but those are farther out.

"Synced" channels is where we support calendar integration (iCal) and inquiry parsing where we support standards that all channels adhere to (like iCal) and import/export what we can. We've done a lot of work to make our parsing and iCal support as smart as possible for things like booking cancellations or moved dates but there are natural limitations.

Early on, we realized that:

1) We could not have API Integration with every major channel we wanted (or at least not as fast as possible), and

2) The "Synced" style with iCal and inquiry parsing wasn't going to cut it because bookings only come in with dates and guest name and everything else was left out. Also there are time delays between iCal updates.

So we built an in-house tool called "Channel Bridge" that simulates the user with the goal of copy and pasting data between their channel account and their OwnerRez account. The idea is to find and extract booking data from VRBO and Airbnb so that you can fully flesh out your bookings in OwnerRez and keep them up to date - guest email, phone, charges, payments and more. You want all that in OwnerRez so you can manage bookings directly without logging ina nd out of channel constantly, and you want your down-stream stuff (reports, search, QB integration, etc) to be accurate across all bookings whether channel or not.

Channel Bridge is a work in progress and it will be for a long time. It's a fairly difficult problem area to work in, but there is a lot of potential. At the moment, it involves some manual steps (eg. downloading bookings then importing those into VRBO) but our goal is to make it more automated.

We also recently added rate push to it so that, if Channel Bridge is installed, you can push rates through it from OwnerRez over to the channel.

Look under the top Guests menu. Then click the Reviews menu in the sidebar under that.

I've been reviewing the "Reviews" section and attempting to test it out. I'm looking at the Searching and Exporting Reviews writeup and it says "To get started, click the global Reviews menu". The sample screenshot shows the Reviews button to the right of the PM button. My OwnerRez does not have the Reviews button. Just the PM and then the Tools button to the right of it. How do I get the Reviews button to show up?

1) I looked at channel bridge for the first time. OTAs - in the left hand menu, I see Airbnb & HA/VRBO.

How does this work with FlipKey, Booking.com and other OTAs?

2) Do you ever plan an OR app? :)

OK. In addition to doing VRs, I also plan to have a serious side business doing tours starting late. And of course, I would like to sometimes have people take my tours and stay in my VRs. I plan to use Bokun (owned byTripAdisor) as my tour mgmt software and OR for VR mgmt software.

The problem of course, is that Bokun has crappy/simple-minded accommodations functionality and OR is not really a tour system.

So (only in the case where I sell both to the same group as a package), I wind up splitting the booking for the same group on two different systems. And their data on two different systems of course.

Was thinking maybe doing something with tours and combining the package off my OR hosted website. The tours are on a different website of mine connected to Bokun. But somewhat stuck on how that would work well. Or any clever way to make this work.

Open to ideas?

In VRBO
- Reservation Manager
- Payout Summary
- download spreadsheet

While displayed report shows summarized payout totals, the spreadsheet shows detail by payment.

I took a second look at this and it may depend on your payout schedule with VRBO.

What report inside VRBO is showing the actual disbursement dates to you? I'll have a look and see if we can pick up that data as well.

To enable the channel, go to Settings > Channel Connections, click on the CanadaStays channel in the list, then use the Change button at the top to edit it. Check the "Active" box and save it to enable it.

That'll activate it on our side, but you also need to create an account on CanadaStays and contact their PM support to get the sync enabled on their end (for this connection, they pull from us). Have you done that yet? If not, email chloe.nielsen@canadastays.com and get the ball rolling on that end.

yes, we want it online now. First to test and understand what the channel offers (with test bookings and the calendar blocked out). Then we'll want to open the calendar and take future bookings once we get a little closer and are sure of the open date.

I am using Channel Bridge. I'm not seeing any dates related to when VRBO pays me .... I'll dig deeper, but the payment report seemed to only show the date the guest paid VRBO

How are you populating the data into OwnerRez?

If you use our channel bridge tool it will record the dates of payments made to you vs. by the guest, and it will also track the payment fees and other things taken out of the payments.

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/channel-bridge

Yep, this is a good idea. We have a concept we're working on for tasks in general that could encompass things from responding to an inquiry to a guest card payment failed to making sure a listing site guest signs the renter agreement. Periodic tasks could be another part of that as well.

It's purely conceptual stages now, so I'd recommend tracking this in your normal calendar app for the time being.

If you're using MailChimp, they have a form tool you can add to your website: https://mailchimp.com/features/custom-forms/

If not, there are many tools that have similar email capture forms.

However, I'd also be careful with paid ads -- it's very easy to spend a lot and get no results, unless you're working with a very targeted set of ads. And even if you do convert some of those to email addresses and start emailing them, it's still a pretty low conversion rate to bookings. Just my experience with my own properties and the ad buys I've tried.

I am looking for a pop up form or way to capture visitors email on owner res website. i have spent $$ sending traffic to website via paid facebook, IG and google ads but no luck getting any reservations and very few quote requests? And i can understand this is after christmas/holidays and school year too ...

however that said is there a way to prompt the visitor to tell them - not ready to vacation right now? ok. provide your email so we can keep you updated about discounts and specials etc?

thanks for your help

I just realized while working Quickbooks that the very nice payment detail report isn't too useful, because it shows the date the guest paid VRBO but not the date the payment arrived in my account.

Is there any possibility of having OR become aware of the date that Homeaway initiates the deposit to my bank? That's the date that I really care about with regard to accounting and payment of taxes.

I'm considering not tracking guest payments per property in Quickbooks, but that means giving up on ever really knowing the long term profit/loss because QB is where expenses are tracked.

(update)
I found a report on VRBO which when downloaded lists all payments made to my account. The amounts are frequently different, due to (i believe) the security deposit and adjustments made to fees after it's returned. Question - Is there any way for the payment report in OR to include the booking ID from VRBO? eg: HA-GSPQ1Y That's the only booking ID that VRBO includes in the report.

I can clearly do this outside of OR in a google calendar, but would be nicer to keep contained in OR.

Is there any kind of calendar based reminder system possible? Or any workaround?

A good reminder system would treat each tax date/item as a repeating task which can be marked 'done' when complete. Would be nice to have a weekly reminder report about upcoming or overdue tasks.

As I type this I'm thinking there are many other uses for a task system too, like annual maintenance/cleanings/repairs etc.

Example Dates:

April 30 Annual Property Taxes Grand County (look for mailed letter)

Jan 31 HOA Dues (ACH autodraft)
Apr 30 HOA Dues
Jul 30 HOA Dues
Oct 30 HOA Dues

Jan 20 State + County Sales Tax (colorado.gov/revenueonline) Quarterly if <$300 monthly tax owed
Apr 20 State+ County Sales Tax
Jul 20 State+ County Sales Tax
Oct 20 State+ County Sales Tax

Jan 20 WP Town Sales Tax
Apr 20 WP Town Sales Tax
Jul 20 WP Town Sales Tax
Oct 20 WP Town Sales Tax

Jan 20 WP Village Sales Tax
Apr 20 WP Village Sales Tax
Jul 20 WP Village Sales Tax
Oct 20 WP Village Sales Tax

Thanks for the suggestion. That kind of list of ones to end to doesn't exist yet, as you already know, but something like that would be good. The problem here is that create triggers can be sent at many other points in the system too, so it's not always possible to through up a warning on the email going out.

Hi Richard,

We can do that for you on this side. Do you want us to do that now or wait until the 2-3 month period is over and the property is fully online? I assume you want it online now so that you can take bookings for the future, but I'll let you confirm

Chris,

I'll do as you suggest (disable all triggers based on booking create, then reimport all bookings I have so far with the check box for 'send create')

I find this awkward though, and a little scary to potentially *ever* send emails in bulk without intending to do so.

Is there any possibility to put some kind of interlock in place, for instance presenting the user with a list of emails about to be sent with an option to cancel all?

Personally I'd prefer that after the initial import it not be easy to trigger the send create triggers. Should require extra steps such as clicking a box to send to "previously unsent create triggers" or something similar.

Just my $.02

SUPER helpful way to explain the workaround! Thanks Chris!

We have a property set up and published in Canada Stays for testing, property id 637166. The property will not be coming online for another 2-3 months but we want to have all of our systems and processes in place before then. Under Channel Connections, the Canada Stays link is showing Disabled. I've included the Moon Valley Retreat property in our OwnerRez account but not the Mother in Law suite since we will not be converting the Mother in Law suite over to OwnerRez until we have everything fully operating and tested for Moon Valley. How do I enable the Canada Stays API channel?

Sure can! Just create a trigger and mark it go be sent "as soon as" the booking "is created". Now that will only happen if the booking is created with an email address of course, so if it's a channel booking, you may need to bring in the guest's email address before the trigger can be sent. Channel Bridge can download guest email addresses (along with a lot of other things) for you after the VRBO or Airbnb booking is imported.