General Help and Questions

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Hmm. What error message are you getting?

Are you making 5 emails, one for each property? There's an easier way to make it specific for each property -- create custom fields for the information that will change, like directions or lock code, then define values for those fields in each property. Once that's done, you can create a single email template that references the field and is updated with the correct value for the property on the booking.

Here's an article on that: https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/pre-arrival-email-templates-triggers-custom-fields

Good Afternoon,

I'm new to all this and am just getting set up. I'm attempting to create a triggered email with arrival information. it has to be specific for each property (i have 5). When attempting to set up the first one, i get an error message when i type in the name of the email template and also with the subject line the recipient will see. I have looked and looked for an answer but am not sure why I am getting an error.

thanks,

I got the periodic calendar import working, and used that template for the triggered email just now. Seems like its going to work well :). Thanks.

Actually there's an even easier way to do it!

First, set up our calendar import to pull in the bookings from the Airbnb iCal. We've got an article on that over here: https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/calendar-import

Then set up a trigger to send an email out when an Airbnb booking is created. Airbnb is one of the few listing sites that include the temporary email in their iCal, so we're able to scoop that out for you. Here's a blog post about that: https://www.ownerrez.com/blog/send-trigger-emails-based-on-the-listing-site-or-sending-airb

Great to hear that more tools for working around the walled gardens are in development!

I just started using airbnb for 1 of my 4 rentals, and it is getting some decent bookings with lower fees than HA, it seems. I even had 1 person say they found me on airbnb, and then they booked through my website. Maybe some people are figuring out how to maneuver around the walls :).

Anyhow, airbnb seems to integrate my calendar nicely, but I didn't figure out if it was possible for it to export their bookings to my OR calendar. So, whenever I get an airbnb booking, I block off the time on my OR calendar, and if they actually pay, then I have access to one of their temporary emails and I put that into OR, and push out the welcome message, and receipt through that.

Is that the best way right now to do things with airbnb, or am I missing some automation?

I tried weekend Night. And when I tested the quote if I stayed 2 or more nights during the weekend it only charged me the weekend rate for one of the nights. I tried to adjust by: required, possible, not possible I think the choices were and no matter what I did I was only charged 1 night at my weekend night rate not both or 4 of them. I just changed everything for now to only 7 night rentals so that I do not have any errors. But what I want is to charge more for weekend nights. Now I am stuck only accepting weekly. I cant accept nightly rates.

Ahh, yes. I was able to get a copy booking to booking or quote feature into this morning's hotfix -- basically the same thing as we've had for copy quote to quote.

Keep in mind that this will only populate the fields you see on the create screen, so if you have a guest with 5 addresses, it'll only grab the first one.

To do a full copy will take a good deal more time for us to develop, with that more in depth lookup button etc. but hopefully this helps out for now.

I would prefer a "copy booking" option so I can easily create a new booking and only have to update dates and rates without re-entering addresses, phone numbers, etc. The lazy option!

Yes, I do usually look up the previous info when creating a quote or new booking.

I also like the idea of a "lookup button" to find previous guests but only if it also brings the guest's info with it if I'm trying to use it to create a new booking.

Thanks,
Jackie

Not yet, but that's high on the list. We're looking at things like a copy booking that works like the copy quote or a lookup button on create booking to find previous guests.

Do you usually look up the previous info when creating a quote or a booking directly?

The "Weekend" rate is for the entire weekend, for example the total charged for 2 nights.

If you want to do a per night rate, pick "Weekend Night" -- that'll be applied each night that matches..

I am trying to set up where I charge 1 rate on M-Th-F-Sa-Su and 1 Rate Tues & Wed. I go under Rates and set up week day rate and week night rates. It seems it only charges one night during the weekend with the weekend rate, the night I marked as required--Saturday. The other nights are not being charged the weekend rate that I allowed. What should I click: Allowed, Required? To make sure all my weekend nights are charged the same?

I couldn't find this but suspect there's already a solution. I have many guests who want to reserve their same week for the following year - is there an easy way to create a new booking for a repeat guest without having to re-enter all their personal info? Thanks!

I responded to this (sort of) over here:

https://www.ownerrez.com/forums/general-help/vrbo-walled-garden-is-up#59325

Summary:

* If you're going to use VRBO and Air (which pretty much everyone does) you will have to get used to accepting Book Now requests and using their message thread.

* We are working on tools to work WITH the message thread and Book Now stuff that they send.

* It is more important than ever to export your records out as the walled gardens put up their high walls

Yes, VRBO is going full-Airbnb. There are still some users getting email addresses in their inquiries. Other users can copy/paste the guest's email address out of the VRBO control panel into the OwnerRez inquiry. But in general, it should be assumed that sooner or later, VRBO will be like Airbnb end to end. You will have to respond in their message thread (either by email or in the control panel) and no guest email address will be provided until after the booking is made.

Now, what does that mean for OR...?

We have seen this coming for a long time. There is now more of a need than ever to use a 3rd party independent management system for your bookings because the listing sites will never provide you the tools to properly market and care for your records, especially across multiple listing sites. As the walled gardens go up, and the walls on the existing ones gets higher, it is extremely important to export that data out and make sure you are centralizing your records AWAY from the walled gardens. Expedia, as a corporation, has zero incentive to provide rich management/marketing tools for you (the owner). They have EVERY incentive to NOT build those things and lock you away from your customers as much as possible.

That being said, how are bookings managed if the listing site locks down the up front lead/inquiry? Couple of things...

You should assume that you will need to respond through VRBO message thread (if not now, then soon). We are working on an inquiry/email overhaul that will work WITH this message thread. You'll respond through OR and your messages to the guest will go back through VRBO, using the proxy email they provide, to update the VRBO message thread and get to the user. It will be plain text only (since that's all VRBO and Airbnb support) and links and emails won't work since they would just get stripped out anyway. But you'll be able to capture the message thread in OwnerRez so that your records stay centralized.

If you still have access to the guests' email address when they make an inquiry (even if you have to login to VRBO to copy/paste it out) you should still use that. Talk to guests directly as possible as much as you can. To get around the response rate counter, just send a "Hi, I've sent you an email directly. Please give that a look" which tells VRBO that you responded.

After a booking/payment occurs (on VRBO or Airbnb) that information will get exported back to OwnerRez automatically, via calendar import and through email parsing. We'll capture that VRBO/Airbnb email and "clean up" the booking record with more information as it comes in.

To help with post-booking/payment "clean up", we'll be adding forms that the guest will be directed to get things like:

* Their real/full email address
* All phone numbers
* Their POC name and guest list
* Sign the renter agreement in OR
* Credit card for security hold
* Other rules/things to agree to

This clean up process will be dynamic so that the guest is automatically asked for it after booking (you don't have to send an email) and will be based on the things you want to collect if you want to.

We have been hard at work for awhile on a number of these things, or the things under the covers that are needed to support what is coming.

Also keep building your own personal marketing channels! Your own website, your FB page - it is important to use those tools as much as possible. In the near future, we may have some diabolical tools to liberate guests who are visiting listing sites. ;-) Have a place where they can land! Have a website ready where guests can book when they figure out that they don't have to pay service fees!

Hmm...does this mean that with VRBO an OwnerRez quote will no longer work (e.g. all bookings will need to go through VRBO)?

Hmm....does an OwnerRez quote go through their walled garden email address?

Right now there is an option to check to auto send quote in response to inquiry. On certain sites, like AirBNB and now VRBO, the quote link will not go through. Is there a way to send auto response to all sites but send quote only when inquiry originated on certain sites? ex: i want to send generic response to all inquiries no matter where they originate, but send quote only to inquiries originated from non-dark-veil sites like my own site, widget, or TA.
Sites like AirBNB would only get generic response without quote.
overall would be good to have auto responses text differ by site too.
TIA

Starting this month, pre-booking conversations will be facilitated through our secure messaging system. You and the traveler will be able to see each other's contact details after a booking is confirmed.
https://community.homeaway.com/docs/DOC-4592

Can you send me the OwnerRez property id and the Airbnb iCal link? I'll have a look.

Air has a bad habit of including rules like arrival days or days in advance in their calendar feeds as blocked off time.

I synch the OwnerRez calendar with AirBnB. On Memorial day I had an opening but my calendar in AirBnB showed "Memorial Day" as blocked. It turns out that Memorial Day from OwnerRez was passed through iCal as blocked to the AirBnB calendar. My AirBnB to OwnerRez synch then showed "Memorial Day" as blocked on my OwnerRez calendar. Not sure if this makes sense, but I think this is what happened.

That should work, but VRBO are always changing their formats.

What if you try a new link with all of the options checked?

I've created a custom iCal link with guest info and property location for export to VRBO. On their calendar it still just shows "untitled event" as if I had used the default iCal link. Do you know if VRBO is blocking the details?

Screen shot of my custom iCal link --> http://i.imgur.com/h4BXQsJ.jpg

OK, that's some good info to have -- particularly the idea on outputting into the iCal export.

We are starting the planning on this, so I'll keep you posted as we get into development.

By default, all email will use your account email as the reply to.

If you want, you could go into the email template settings and change the FROM to use a different email. Are you looking to have a different FROM email per property? You can accomplish that using custom fields with a different value set for each property.

Normally, though, I find that the single reply to is better so folks don't get confused if they are inquiring for multiple properties etc.

If you have your own domain name with email configured, we can actually set up to send email directly from that address -- let me know and I can walk you through the setup steps for that.

Hi,

I have two properties.

How do I set two emails that will have a 2 different "From" so the guests know that I am responding with my business email.

Is that possible? Or we only have one email account that we use to respond to the guest regardless of what property it is.