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Yes noticed that when tried to sync new VRBO booking
We've noticed some intermittent issues with HA/VRBO iCal feeds over the past couple of days. This morning around 1AM all HA/VRBO calendars started returning HTTP ERROR 500 instead of a valid iCal feed. The main HA/VRBO site is still up, but calendar feeds are broken. You can check this by going into HA/VRBO and copying the iCal link into your browser -- you'll get an error message like the one below.
This is affecting not just OwnerRez but everyone using iCal with HA/VRBO.
We're monitoring the situation and will update as we have more info. In the meantime, we recommend manually creating the booking in OwnerRez if you get one from HA/VRBO so that all of your other calendars update correctly from OwnerRez.
If you do see your iCal from VRBO working, let us know.
Tonadjust channel settings -do u have to have PM module ir channel manager for that?
You can't turn off the rate push -- booking.com forces it on the connection, actually.
Instead, we've got a rate adjuster on the channel settings so you can +20% and that'll be applied to your rates as they're pushed across.
Thank you for yhe update, i guess i will wait for integration to try. Is there an option NOT to push rates and set them in booking instead? I want rates there higher than on my own site. Tx
Yep, there's now a dashboard where you can enter and manage the property and rates, and they support iCal sync.
We're actually working on direct booking.com integration right now, which will be released in the next week or two. That will let you push rates to booking.com and get reservations into OwnerRez automatically, with cards on file and scheduled payments etc.
I put a few of my properties on booking.com already and have had a good experience so far. The key thing is to make sure to set strict policies, particularly a hefty cancellation fee, requiring address and phone, and requiring credit card and cvv to book.
maybe not entirely related, but a booking.com question. anyone signed up recently? before you had to give all your property info to a rep and they created listing and description for you, which ended up looking like some hotel room description. is there a dashboard now owner can access and maintain their rates and policies? How do you find it for a stand alone vacation home? how do you prevent over occupancy? any push back form renters on rental agreement?
Yep, it is "single" because it can do only one property at a time, but I went ahead and removed that suffix because you're right, it can be confusing.
Thank you for that info, Chris. I think I got hung up when selecting a widget and the description said Booking/Inquiry (Single Property). :)
The Facebook example was very helpful. I hadn't seen what the availability widget looks like in action. I like it!!
You can do this by creating a booking/inquiry widget and turning on the "show property selector" option.
You can also combine this with the property/availability search widget which will let guests search through your properties on FB and then link out to the property page on your site. Here's an FB page set up that way: https://www.facebook.com/mexicobeachrentals/app/190322544333196/
I am unable to find a widget with property selector any more. I saw the instructions about the widget set up:
"If you choose "All Properties", the generated code will detect the correct property based on the URL of the page where it is hosted."
My issue is that I have one Facebook page for all my properties. I have embedded widgets in html tabs on my page, so I was hoping for a widget with a property selector. Or, will I have to embed a separate inquiry form for each property?
If the fields are set to show and be required on checkout, it will show them both on quote checkout and when later sending a renter agreement signing link. However if the booking arrival date has already passed, it won't show them on the renter agreement signing link to keep the guest from changing existing information.
I checked your account and it looks like you have the Primary Guest DOB field required for checkout, but the additional guest fields are not shown or required. Change them to shown and they will come up as long as the booking arrival is in the future.
I am curious, did you get this to work for you? I added custom mandatory fields to the rental agreement thinking it would prompt the user to fill them in during signing but apparently I didn't understand how it works. Do I need to send the renter an email asking for the additional and then enter it into ownerez?
To change the charges, go to the Charges tab of the booking or quote (you can do it in either place depending on whether the guest has actually booked). The simplest thing to do is to add a new charges (using the plus button next to the item you want to add it above), set it to a type of Other Discount, and put in a negative amount or % (see screenshot -- click for a bigger version).
If you have discounts you use a lot, like repeat guest discounts, you can set those up over in Settings > Surcharges & Discounts and they'll be available to select in the Type box.
How do I make a booking for a discounted price without changing the rates already set up? My neighbor is booking the house and I need to put in booking but I have discounted the rate for them.
Thanks, Chris! I just went in to check and it's working now (although I didn't change a thing). Maybe it just needed to resync to update? Who knows! I'm just happy it works. :)
Can you double check that you copied the link from the custom iCal and not the default one? I grabbed one of your custom iCal's and added it to my Google calendar and it came through correctly (see below).
If it is already correct, try deleting the calendar on Google calendar and re-adding it. Sometimes they will grab the initial data and not update when you add more data.
Help! I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I'd like to export my calendars to Google and have it show the renter info. I created a custom ical link and checked all the boxes, and it still doesn't show anything except "booked".
I believe that's the total number of bookings (and booking amount) you've got for that property to date. Like a general global total. The reports show a hell of a lot more, so I'm not sure what the point of that is.
When you click on 'Properties' and get the list of your properties, in the right column there is a number and dollar amount. What is that? Is it the potential you can make in a year at 100% occupancy?
Thanks
Where are you looking for the refund option? You can currently go to the Transactions tab and record a refund there.
Sure! The easiest thing is go to the Dates tab of the booking and change them. If you haven't changed the charges from the default charges, you can recalculate them at that point. Or if you have changed the charges, once the dates change is made go to the Charges tab of the booking and update the charges to match.
Then go to the Transactions tab of the booking and make sure the payments are what you want. If the guest checked out on a quote, you'll have a default scheduled payment for the final payment for remaining balance, so that would automatically pick up the new balance. Or if you need to charge now, you can charge the card if you have a card on file or request payment if you want to let the guest do it (or they're using PayPal).
Hi guys,
Can you please add an option for Refund/Reimbursement? Maybe together with surcharges and Discounts?
Thanks,
Claudia
Can I change the charges & dates of a reservation after they have paid their deposit.
I have a guest who would like to stay 5 nights vs 7 and have paid their deposit. What would be the best way to change their charges, dates and my calendar.
Thank you
Thanks.
I will give that a try.
We just pushed out an update that should handle all of those date formats for HomeEscape.
Can you send through another test inquiry and see how it looks on your end?
You can either manually enter via copy paste or download the reservation export from VRBO and import it into OwnerRez using the import in the Tools menu.
Either way, you're correct -- you don't get an auto send of lease agreement like with Airbnb and would need to send a signing request once you've got the contact info in place.
Yes, that should work as long as it was actually booked that day. You can preview the link yourself to make sure.
We have a todo list item to allow you to exclude bookings from a listing site from a calendar export. Once that's in place you'll be able to create a custom calendar export, exclude the VRBO bookings, and use that for VRBO instead of the default export.
In the meantime, like you mentioned, it doesn't actually hurt anything on the VRBO side to have the extra blocks, it is more of a display issue with how they show the calendars.
We don't currently have an SMS system in OwnerRez, although that's something we have plans to do.
One thing you could do would be to use Zapier and Twilio to transform OR triggered emails into SMS's to the guest.
Zapier is an integration tool that takes info from one app and passes it to another.
#1 - So if you set up an email integration in Zapier: https://parser.zapier.com/, and then configure OR with a trigger that sends an email on check-in and departure to that Zapier email address including the guest phone number, Zapier would be able to pick up the info.
#2 - Then set up Twilio which allows you to send SMS: https://zapier.com/apps/twilio/integrations with Zapier -- a Twilio account is a buck a month for the phone number + $0.0075 per message, so very affordable. And connect the incoming email trigger into Zapier in step 1 to send the SMS to the guest using Twilio.
It's a bit roundabout to go through that method, but it should work and get the SMS to the guest in a timely manner.
