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1) After a guest supplies their email, why am I often limited to Channel and SMS for a response? In the example below I would expect 3 options: email, channel or SMS.
Normally OwnerRez is not used to send ad-hoc emails directly to guests - you'd customarily do that from your own email client. OwnerRez generally sends automatic emails from templates. We are working towards a unified inbox system that will add more functionality in this area.
2) I send a welcome letter to guests at booking. Since some people book months in advance, I also send that same letter out again 5 days before arrival so that the guest doesn't call me asking the multitude of questions that are all covered in the welcome document that they forgot they were sent 3 months ago. A same-day booking is subject to receiving duplicate emails. Is it possible to restrict the trigger such that if there arent 5 days until the stay that trigger is not activated?
Sure, you can add that as a condition to the trigger:
3) I'd like to delay some communications so that the guest doesn't get clobbered with several emails at once. I send: a) Request for signature on OR T&C condition form which also captures the guest's direct email, b) A plain text welcome letter, c) A very pretty PDF welcome letter d) a note informing them this is contactless entry and confirm their entry code. I was sending items after the plain welcome letter with a day or 2 delay; HOWEVER, that doesn't work for same-day bookings. How can I accelerate the delivery if the arrival is going to happen before a delay would occur? THIS QUESTION is similar to Question 2 except instead of wanting to cancel an email due to lack of time, I'd like to assure that an email is sent.
1. Using the condition similar to what I described above, set your current triggers to not send for last-minute bookings.
2. Set up a separate set of triggers only for last minute bookings, sending the appropriate templates as needed.
I have a few questions
1) After a guest supplies their email, why am I often limited to Channel and SMS for a response? In the example below I would expect 3 options: email, channel or SMS.
2) I send a welcome letter to guests at booking. Since some people book months in advance, I also send that same letter out again 5 days before arrival so that the guest doesn't call me asking the multitude of questions that are all covered in the welcome document that they forgot they were sent 3 months ago. A same-day booking is subject to receiving duplicate emails. Is it possible to restrict the trigger such that if there arent 5 days until the stay that trigger is not activated?
3) I'd like to delay some communications so that the guest doesn't get clobbered with several emails at once. I send: a) Request for signature on OR T&C condition form which also captures the guest's direct email, b) A plain text welcome letter, c) A very pretty PDF welcome letter d) a note informing them this is contactless entry and confirm their entry code. I was sending items after the plain welcome letter with a day or 2 delay; HOWEVER, that doesn't work for same-day bookings. How can I accelerate the delivery if the arrival is going to happen before a delay would occur? THIS QUESTION is similar to Question 2 except instead of wanting to cancel an email due to lack of time, I'd like to assure that an email is sent.
thanks
ed
Hi Ken!
UPDATE: Thank you so much for assisting with this situation!
The syncing issue is resolved and all looks great (with ABB) now that my listing has been reinstated. (still waiting for the Guest Favorite designation tho)... that went away once ABB reinstated and resisted the property.
At any rate, the calendar is sync'd up and all is good. RESOLVED!
Tracy :)
Thank you Ken. I sent an email already to the Help Desk... just unsure which avenue would get a fast response (or something easy that I can take care of...) I'll send the screenshots over on my original ticket.
Please write in to the Helpdesk with screenshots of what isn't syncing correctly, so we can investigate further. A full resync should not be necessary, but won't hurt and might help.
Under API channel, it's showing this: Disabled, yet active.
Forgive me, I'm a relatively new OwnerRez user, and this ABB delisting comes as a complete surprise, and just want to make sure all is back to functioning normally after being "offline" for 4 days.
(so if you could direct me on how to fix this, that would be amazing).
Hi Ken,
Already checked API connection... says it's valid. Did LQI as well, no errors (except for photo quality).
Any other suggestions?!? Should I choose to "trigger full sync" to get all back in line?
Tracy
If Airbnb disabled your account, that likely also deauthorized the connection in OwnerRez. When they re-enabled the Airbnb account, that woudn't necessarily also reauthorize the OwnerRez connection. I'd suggest checking your OwnerRez account, and your Airbnb API connection, for errors.
**Update: ABB finally reinstated our listing** but now, calendar is not syncing with OR... I've turned off Instant Booking for the moment in ABB, since during this ABB delisting, we received (2) VRBO reservations (it's been over 1 hour as reactivated ABB listing, calendar still not syncing with the (2) new Rez's).
Please take a look at this related Forum thread:
I think you'll find useful solutions there. If not, please write in to our Helpdesk with specific details for assistance.
Hi,
I have a trigger sending guests our Check-In Instructions email a couple weeks before arrival. I want the message to come from the email of our Guest Host, however, not from our standard Reservations email, so that if a guest replies to the email it goes to our Guest Host and not to our reservations team. (The guest host email is on the same verified domain as our reservations email.)
Does OR support using a second email address or is there a workaround?
Thanks.
Hello everyone,
On Saturday night, I received an email from AirBnB, titled "Your listing will be removed" stating "This listing appears to be a duplicate of "James McCool House" which had recent issues. Because creating a duplicate of a listing with reported issues goes against our policies, your listing will be removed from AirBnB on July 15th, 2024".
I immediately contacted ABB customer service line for clarification as to where this message is coming from, and what "duplicate listing" they are referring to. As of today, after speaking with 6 customer service representatives (the latest one, today, is supposedly part of the "escalation team"), my listing has now been "paused" since Sunday and we are not showing in the guest search, and cannot take any new reservations from new guests (I currently have 4 upcoming booked reservations with ABB, the soonest is this coming Friday, which ABB states they will "allow" me to keep and honor those reservations!)
The current ABB listing for my home has (5) 5-star reviews, and "Guest Favorite" badge, earned since listing in January 2024. The old listing (previous property manager, who we fired in January 2024, which is when I, as the owner of the home, started managing my own property and created the new ABB listing), also had Guest Favorite badge, and had and currently still has, Superhost status.
ABB is claiming we have negative guest reviews (1-star reviews) which we don't, and even the old listing, we had 70+ reviews, and I believe there was (1) review from over 1 year ago that complained about 4th of July fireworks, and gave us 1-star for the noise... Again, we had Guest Favorite badge as of January 2024 at time of transition between old mgr and myself starting the new listing. (ABB refused to remove the 1-star review for 4th of July noise).
ABB then shifted gears and was claiming we have been associated with the duplicate listing that has many cancelations! Under the previous manager, as she has Superhost status (and still does) and if she had too many Host-instigated cancelations, she wouldn't have "Superhost" status.
I've had the run around from 6 of their customer service representatives, 2 so far have told me "there's nothing they can do, as we see you associated with this duplicate listing".
I've asked each of them to send PROOF of what they are telling me (1-star reviews, reported issues, excessive cancelation, duplicate listing), and none of them can see any of this on their end, or send me anything that supports this claim.
All the while, my property is officially "paused" from taking any new reservations (which hurts me as Host, and ABB as the host website!). Our home receives about 50% of our bookings from ABB, and the other 50% from VRBO. We currently have a hosted website thru OR, but yet to receive any direct bookings (we are working on this actively).
A few online STR forums state similar experiences from other hosts with ABB, including a few that are going thru this same situation, completely unfounded. One fellow Host said the only way their properties were reinstated after similar situation, is they had a "friend of a friend" that held a higher level position at ABB and was able to correct, after SEVERAL weeks of being "paused" and lost revenue.
Does anyone have a higher level contact at ABB? I'm just getting started with my hosting career (self managing my own property) and have 2 more properties that are coming on board later this year after our busy season is finished. I don't want this issue to plague any of the new houses coming on board (both of which are currently with this old property manager we fired...)
Any assistance or feedback would be greatly appreciated! Frustrated, upset and feeling helpless, in Walla Walla, WA.
Figured it out.
Your top menu has 3 "sections" with menu in left, nothing in the middle and logo on the right. However, the middle section (with nothing) as not rendering anything, so the right logo section was taking up half the room. This led to an overlapping link where the logo "home" link was on top of the Blog menu. In other words, when you clicked on "Blog", it was actually clicking on the logo area and taking you to home.
I fixed this for you by putting some white space in that middle section which forced the logo section over to the right more. The Blog menu now can be clicked and opened like normal.
So your header went from this (old version):
To this (new version):
And the Blog menu now works.
Hi Lisette & Adam,
The actual blog, itself, works as you can confirm by going to the URL directly:
https://www.dreamstaygetaways.us/blog
So the question: why doesn't the top website "Blog" menu not go here? I dug around a bit, and I'm equally puzzled, so I've escalated this to be looked at.
Im a bit tech challenged so I hope I can explain my issue well.
I have followed all the instructions to set up a blog on my hosted website. I also published my first blog post as instructed. Unfortunately though, I cant get the blog feature to work on my test or live page. I believe it has to do with a slug issue. When I click on "Blog" on my site, the url remains the same as my home page (as opposed to it ending as "/blog" and therefore does not actually go to my blog page. How do I fix that?
Hi Mike and Elena,
The photo in the instructions may be out of date, but if you follow the steps outlined here the settings are in the same place.
Navigate to Properties > Property In Question > Rules > Change > Scroll down to Booking Window > Lead Time.
You would find a section that looks like the below image, if you're still having trouble finding it please reach out to our helpdesk and we'll see if we can guide you there.
If you control the domain welterrealty.com, you can add that as an additional verified domain name as explained here:
https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/email-from-reply-to-verified-sender
Please write in to the Helpdesk if you need more specific assistance with this process.
Thanks, but unfortunately, Jackie's email address is with another domain for another business unit we own at jackie@welterrealty.com.
You don't actually verify specified email addresses - you verify entire domain names, that you own. I see there is already one domain name that you have verified, soduspointrentalcottage.com . So, if Jackie has an email address at that domain - say, jackie@soduspointrentalcottage.com - it will be automatically verified already and you won't have to do anything special.
That all makes sense, but it begs a follow up question since I am not a techy. How would I go about getting Jackie's email varified? Thanks.
There are two different options available here, which may be able to get something close to what you want.
1. You can set up different Themes with different return email addresses. These are assigned to different properties, so, this way you can have specific return email addresses used for each property.
https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/theming
That function won't do what you're after here, though.
2. In an individual email template, you can control the return address directly. Normally you leave the default field codes, so the system automatically sets the return addresses dynamically based on your other settings, such as Theming:
But, although that is the default and is recommended, it doesn't have to be that way - you can manually replace this with the specific sender name (Jackie) and her specific email address, and that's what will be used when this specific template is sent out.
Note that the domain name of Jackie's email address will need to have been verified, in order for the message to be sent with the proper Verified status. Otherwise, it'll use our generic inquiryspot emails as well as Jackie's, which can lead to false spam detections.
We split the duties here a bit wherein I handle all the rental activity, marketing, etc, but another person (Jackie) handles customer service from arrival to departure. We'd like to set up a triggered template to come from Jackie introducing herself and offering to the guest to be of assistance during their stay. Is it possible to set up separate "from" email triggers or do they all have to come from the main email address on our account? Thanks
Not really - while you can set up a processing fee, this is not recommended because guests consider it a nuisance fee, and, it is not automatically assigned or removed based on payment type. You have to do that manually on a booking-by-booking basis.
https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/charging-guests-a-credit-card-fee
And, it is not possible for OwnerRez to accurately distinguish between credit and debit cards on the fly and add or remove fees that way either.
Is there a way to charge a processing fee for those that only use a credit card for our direct booking site and VRBO integration? We will accept debit card payments but without the processing fee
Thanks Everyone
-Fatma
Thanks Ken, you're the best! Enjoy the rest of your weekend. Ted
Sure, that's a Last Minute Discount. Here's how to do it:
https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/last-minute-discount
Does OR have a way to automate discounting rents when it gets to within 2 weeks of arrival date or do I need another service such as Pricelabs? Thanks
I took a look, and it looks like the Action in the Book Now button has gone missing, which is why it isn't doing anything - it should point to the Book Now page. You can fix that in the menu headers area as discussed here:
https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/hosted-websites-header-customizations-video
I don't want to do screenshots from your specific account in a public forum, so if what I've posted is too vague, please write in to our Helpdesk for more detailed and specific instructions.
Hi,
I can't find that anyone else brought this up, so hoping someone here has an issue to this issue, which is now at least a week old (when I first noticed it).
On any my four hosted websites, the "Book Now" button doesn't work (no response), so I cannot take any bookings through them. Has anyone else experienced this? If not, you might want to test it.
Help? Any ideas? Thanks.
Antony
Hi, I want to make a widget for my website, but I am not able to figure it out. Can someone please tell me if it's possible to create an inquiry widget that only has the input fields and not the photo. Basically, the bit in the red box in the screenshot.
Thanks in advance for any advice. :-)
