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Yep, that's basically how priority works. The higher numbers have higher priority. I like doing multiples of 5 or 10 so there is space to easily rearrange.

Also keep in mind that longer rates that fully cover the period will be chosen over shorter ones if the priority is the same (or blank). So if you have a 7 day quote, a week rate will take precedence over a night rate, but for a 4 day quote the night rate would take precedence. You can also set proration to apply to more days than the rate vs. going both ways, so you could make a 60 day rate that applied to 65 or 70 days.

All this is to say if you add 3 and 6 months it *should* just do the right thing -- of course, use the rate tester or quick quote to make sure it does what you expect.

If you give me the exact rates and dates I can set up a test here to see what happens.

For the arrival/departure break, I see what you're trying to do there, but how do you define it exactly? What's "the middle of the month"? The 15th? The second Sunday of the month?

Right now we have the capability to define arrival and departure days by day of week, so that wouldn't quite fit what you're looking for, although setting Saturday-Saturday would help a bit.

Hi! I am a little confused about how to set up rates so that people get more accurate quotes from me. I have a fairly complicated rate schedule.

I set my rates by the week or the month depending on the time of the year, and I just completed setting and inputting these rates for the next year. I also offer special rates off season for people renting 3-6 months, or 6 months or greater. But right now I only have the week and monthly rates plugged in to OwnerRez. I ask people to contact me for the 3 and 6 month rates because I can't figure out how to set that up. Those deals only apply to certain months of the year (our off season April-Dec.)

I see where I can seet prioritization in the back end, but I don't understand what number to plug in there. Would I plug in a 2, for instance, if a monthly rate takes priority over a weekly rate? So a 2 for monthly and a 1 for weekly? And if I set the 3 and 6 month rates, I'd give them higher numbers? I'm a little confused about that.

If you have any suggestions for how I can set up and prioritize the 3 and 6 month rates, I'd appreciate it. I'm concerned now that if they plugged in a three month or six month request, the quote would be a lot higher than it should be.

One more thing, in February and March I have two week minimums, and the vacations must break in the middle of the month. In other words, I can't have someone rent the middle two weeks of the month because then I'd be hung out for one week at the beginning and end of the month, and I would not be able to rent those easily. I've done the two week blocks for the past two years and it's worked out perfectly. Some people take the whole month, but if people only want two weeks, they can choose the first two or last two. My issue is this: How do I set it up so that they get an unavailable email back with a custom message that February and March are first two weeks, second two weeks only?

Thanks for the help. My head is spinning a little bit with all of this.

Check your email contact information, they changed my log in email to the OR one, so I was on the phone for 30 minutes to be able to log in. Email was different than what I had or is in the system. They also think I have another account so my main business email that is listed in there isn't assigned to me... anyway check your contact information.
Wendy

here is another tidbit. So it does work with OR auto responder (good). But what happens since auto response email is sent to the inquirer directly, now there is a ticking clock in the TA dashboard that expects owner to respond or send quote via their dashboard. which means owner still has to log in and at least send some meaningless response via dashboard to the inquirer to stop the clock (bad).

No doubt! Most guests don't bother even reading the listing, let alone the notes and additional info! But at least this lets you cover yourself against accusations of false advertising.

well, I did that, but as we all know most people do not read ANYTHING :)

The listing sites - not just TripAdvisor but HomeAway and the rest too - almost never have enough settings to let you control your rates and policies the way you really need to.

I'd recommend using the Additional Rules box in TripAdvisor to type out exactly what all you require. That way, when the guest inevitably contacts you about the difference in quote or policy, you can point to that spot to show that you showed what was required.

here is update. If you are a VHR owner, your listing has been migrated
To TA/FK interface. everything, to me , looks like FK. Except you do see travelers contact.
You still need to log in and make some updates:
Tax rate; cleaning fee; booking deposit; features etc.
What I did is I set up "other" email address with "inquiryspot" address.
On OR side, you need to set it up as "Flipkey" listing site and make sure you enter FK/TA property number there. It works. moreover, inquires originated on FK version of your listing will come to OR as "flipkey". Inquiries from VHR site will show as "Tripadvisor".

issue with FK/TA side of things 9at least for me) - is that a) they can only allow to define booking deposit as a percentage of total (mine is fixed number $300) and b) they only allow to define "weekend" as Fri Sat or Fri Sat Sun. My weekends are Thu Fri Sat or Thu Fri Sat Sun. So quote displayed on Ta side will NEVER match the OR quote because FK/TA treats Thu as weekday (weekday price). I expect traveler complaints.

If it doesn't parse through correctly (into OR as an inquiry with all the fields filled in) just let us know the inquiry number or URL. You can send that to the ticket system at help@ownerreservations.com. And thanks!

I just sent myself a test inquiry. You can use it for format. Where you want it forwarded?

They've contacted users in the event that they can't figure out which VHR listings match up with TA listings. If you don't have TA listings, they probably just moved your VHR over. No need to refund or call you in that case. My information here is from users and 3rd parties, not TA itself, so it may not be 100% correct. I'm just reporting what we know on this side. If you start getting new inquiry emails with a different format, please forward that to us (or let us know the OR # or URL of the inquiry) so we can get a hotfix going for the parsing.

I am A VHR subscriber, and I have not been contacted to close my listing nor sent a refund. Only thing change is that when I log in to VHR it takes me to TA dashboard. All VHR and TA side reviwws have been combined and now seen on both sides. Thanks

@BlueMtnCabins: TripAdvisor has been steadily closing all the independent VR brands they own (VacationHomeRentals, FlipKey, Niumba, HolidayLettings) and merging them into the TAVR platform so that all brands are fed by TAVR listing data. They have been contacting owners and sending refunds for VHR listings over the past few months. We do not have any updates yet about what the VHR inquiry emails will look like, so we can't update our parsing engine yet. At the moment, the VHR inquiries remain the same. Only the owner dashboard side of VHR has been turned off.

Do we need to change our settings for email parsing etc now to Flipkey?

Thank you. this is not a frequent scenario, but this year it did happen! Thankfully, wile group #1 was going back and forth with me, Group #2 booked Dec 23-28, so not an issue this time:)

Hi BlueMtnCabins,

Very sorry for the long delay in responding on this! Missed it until today. Thanks for the nudge.

There isn't a way, at the moment, to handle to that type of situation. We'd need to add a property rule disallowing check-in on specific dates (or days of the year) or perhaps holidays. That's not something that we currently support.

If the housekeepers were willing to work those days, it might actually be a good thing because then you'd have two groups you could bill for holiday rates! But it's understandable that they won't.

-Michelle

?

Never had this happen before, but got an inquiry from people who want to check in on Dec 25th (Christmas day). We do not allow Christmas Day and Christmas Eve check ins because housekeeper will not work on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. If I allow check in on the 25th, it would mean that prior guests MUST check out on 23rd or place will not be cleaned in time for the 25th check-in. That wastes valuable high-demand high priced days.

Is there any way to set up seasons/rates to allow check in on the 23rd or 26th, but not on the 24th and 25th? While still keeping 5 night min etc? I .e so that they can check in on 21st, 22nd, 23rd and check out on 26th or later?

I have same scenario with Thanksgiving, just until this year never had anyone who wanted to check in on a day of a holiday itself.
TIA

I did have one conversion for a shoulder season rental which was perfect.

It's the pinned post on the page - https://www.facebook.com/jimandkellys/

Any conversions to bookings? Can I share your ad?

I've been dabbling with FB ads for a month or so. Here's my experience:

1 - Mondays produce the most traffic to my website
2 - One should be very specific in their post to generate traffic
3 - I've found that my cost per website click was about .50
4 - Make sure you "target" your audience by selecting interests, age groups and geography.
5 - Create an instagram acct for your page and link the 2 together.

As a side note, 90% of my FB traffic comes from mobile devices. If you want them to visit your site make sure your website is responsive otherwise you are wasting time and money.

Thanks. I'm just beginning the journey. The fundamental metric I want to produce is cost to acquire a customer.

Can U point me to documentation for GA,? I haven't instrumented yet...

Looks like we were showing either season based rates if you have them OR all seasons rates if you didn't have season based rates.

Just pushed up a hotfix to show both at the same time if you have both. Look good on your end?

Interesting coincidence -- I was just looking at the FB pixel tracking stuff the other day. We should be able to implement that similar to how the Google Analytics integration is done -- you put your FB id in user settings, and then we render the code for different events.

GA renders the following right now:
- pageview on widget view, quote accept (checkout) pages, one-off payment pages, hosted website page view
- BookingStarted event on "book now" button click in book now widget
- InquirySent event on "send inquiry" button click in book now widget
- Booked event on booking complete
- Ecommerce transaction on booking complete

Looking at the FB docs (https://www.facebook.com/business/help/952192354843755), we could do this:
- ViewContent on widget view, quote accept (checkout) pages, one-off payment pages, hosted website page view.
- InitiateCheckout event on "book now" button click in book now widget
- AddToCart event on "send inquiry" button click in book now widget
- Purchase event on booking complete

For views related to a property, pass content_ids with the property id and content_type product.

For events related to a checkout, pass content_ids with the property id and content_type product. Also pass value of the booking total and currency.

Does that sound like it'd work? Any other events you'd like to see triggered?

I've seen a lot of interest on doing FB ads, but no real numbers or experiences on whether its cost effective. Would you be interested in doing another guest post on the blog about your experiences? The one you did a couple years ago on analytics and continuous improvement was excellent!

I'm experimenting with FB ads and I'd like to measure the conversion rate for people clicking "Inquire Now" button.

Here's the custom code they say to add to my site (but I'm not a developer)....Do you have any guidance on how to do this?

<!-- The below method uses jQuery, but that is not required -->

<button id="addToCartButton">Add To Cart</button>
<!-- Add event to the button's click handler -->

<script type="text/javascript">
$( '#addToCartButton' ).click(function() {
fbq('track', 'AddToCart', {
content_ids: ['1234'],
content_type: 'product',
value: 2.99,
currency: 'USD'
});
});
</script>

Hello,

I have 3 seasons (peak, fall transition, spring transition) and my standard rate. The rates table shows my 3 seasons rates but not my standard rate. Please advise

I have not seen it again

We weren't able to reproduce the issue from scratch. Have you seen it crop up again?

I'll get another couple pairs of eyes on it and see if we can find anything.

Any news on this?

Hey, just wanted to let you know we just released ecommerce tracking. If you have ecommerce enabled in your Google Analytics account and your GA id set in your OwnerRez account, conversions will start flowing.

This is the ecommerce plugin, not enhanced ecommerce plugin.

Let me know how this works for you!