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I love this thread. Here's what we do (it isn't perfect but works).
-We allow instant booking on VRBO. When a guest instant books my wife uses the information to manually create an instance in OR. This is well worth her time as we send a number of automated emails.
-If a guest doesn't instant book on VRBO we use the VRBO inquiry parser and manually input the guests email address (available from VRBO). Then we simply send the standard OR quote and life is great
-We also have a 3rd party booking units for us. We use the awesome OR ical import for these bookings. It's automatic and it just works.
-We, too, have seen a dramatic decrease in VRBO inquiries but a HUGE increase in AirBnB bookings. This has happened in the last year. I'm a huge believer that AirBnB will dominate in a few short years. We use the AirBnB app or website to do all correspondence with the guest. Once a guest books we use the awesome OR ical import (automatic). My wife gets the guests email address (available after booking) and puts it into the OR booking that came from iCal.
My money is on AirBnB. The new generation AirBnB's....the older generation VRBO's. If you aren't using AirBnB I'd recommend doing it sooner than later.
I have my own data for last year and this year in a table form by source, but i do not think I can post a JPG here?
Love to see some site wide data from OwnerRez on VRBO vs. TripAdvisor vs. Air vs. private/custom sources. I guess it woudl "system listing sites" vs personal ones. I strongly suspect BlueMtnCabins is right. Same thing for us. VRBO has dropped dramatically for us from the good ole days when it was nothing but VRBO. They may have made a lot of money from their acquisitions and changes but it's really hurt traffic for a lot of owners.
VRBO is not going to stay in the lead IMO. In 2015 80-85% of my bookings were VRBO. Now it is hovering around 30% and I am halfway or more booked for the year.
if I were you I would not try to spend too much time on trying to automate VRBO interface as I predict the bookings from that source will continue to diminish barring a miracle. They have messed up the site too much.
I do not even use auto reposnders with vrbo. I just let whomever wants to book using VRBO book via VRBO, then reservation gets synced/imported to OR and from there on I use OR for the communication.
As far as additional payment, it can be done via VRBO dashboard, but I do not recommend. get yourself a Square account and just bill/invoice a renter for an extra night, for example. Square produces beautiful invoices and receipts and it takes about 3 days to get money deposited to your account. Unfortunately I do not think Square integrates with OR, but it is perfect for one -off situations like this.
Possibly, we're still reviewing, but haven't seen any conflicts. You do have a weekly rate that would factor out to $361/night, but its for a different property.
I have not been able to repro the $361 issue, and also get the correct price when running the rate tester. But I believe it might be related inactive weekly rates for the property? I was going to delete these as they are no longer valid but I kept them in as I thought they might help debug.
We're looking into this issue. The weekly rates on the rates table widget is a known issue that's going to be fixed in the next release due out shortly -- the widget was showing disabled rates.
The $361 issue is separate. Did you ever have a $361 rate? If I run a rate tester or quote for those dates (8/12-8/19), I get the $425 rate.
If you create a quote again, can you reproduce the issue?
It also looks like the rates in the new rates table aren't matching my weekly rates, I'm wondering if this is part of the problem?
Damon
It looks like the incorrect rate might have been charged for my guest that just booked. I'm wondering if I'm missing something?
# ORQ1050818 was charged $361 per night but our rates show $425/night. Let me know if I'm missing something.
VRBO is migrating to the same model as AirBnb, what we call a "walled garden". Basically they're forcing communication and payment through them by not giving you the guest email address on inquiries. We still parse the inquiry emails, you just can't send an OwnerRez quote to the guest and have them check out via OwnerRez because VRBO wants their cut of the action.
There are a few larger property managers that VRBO has excluded from that rule, but even there they are planning to switch everybody over to the new model at some point this year.
The best thing to do if you have listings on VRBO/AirBnb is to take the booking on that side and use our Calendar Import (https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/calendar-import) to populate the OwnerRez calendar with the booking automatically. Once you make a booking you can email the guest and ask for their real email address, populate it in OwnerRez, and then your scheduled emails will work for those bookings as well.
We've got some enhancements for walled gardens planned for later this year -- stuff like parsing the booking and payment notifications so we can populate charges and payments, a guest "checkout" that would accept their email address and have them sign your renter agreement, etc. As the situation develops and we see what VRBO et al actually end up doing, we'll implement the correct features in OwnerRez to streamline that as much as possible.
Does anyone know the lowdown with VRBO and its subscription options?
I really would like to have OwnerReservations (OR) handle as much of my bookings as possible (including billing, etc). I just spent an hour with a guest who wanted to change extend their upcoming reservation and then struggling with the VRBO pricing system to get a reasonable adjustment to the billing for the reservation.
Why VRBO or AirBnB cannot make something as clean and concise as OR quoting and billing is beyond me.
The problem for me is that VRBO has a solid footprint in my rental area and most of my reservations come through it...even though I have tried to move to other services and even a custom webpage. I also have a lot of good reviews on VRBO which also helps.
Several years ago, I simply had the email from VRBO forward to OR and all was good in booking. I know that along the line VRBO changed policies several times and there was a back and fourth on if they would allow forwarding and parsing of their emails.. I think that they actually now have a closed messaging system?
Anyhow I notice that there are two subscription options now with them. An upfront amount and a pay as you go. I have the upfront amount (which has gotten even more expensive over the years....). Do either of these support automatic inquiries to OR now? I am sure they must not like it as it would bypass a service fee that they are also adding onto the renter for each reservation.
Just trying to look to optimize using OR for managing the costs on a booking (as well as the super useful scheduled emails), but keep a footprint in VRBO to optimize my traffic.
I think AirBnB is locked down very tight and not even worth asking about....
Glenn
Just wanted to let you know that you can now see the rates for a property in the property info page (by clicking the property in the Properties section).
We've also added more rate tables in other spots: https://www.ownerrez.com/blog/rates-tables-everywhere
I agree with you, Jackie! I have year-round seasonal rates that vary and I'm going crazy with this. I'm adding a 2nd property with another set of rates and it is so complicated.
I'm hoping for individual rate tables soon, too.
Hosted would be $15.99/mo for 3 properties.
No blog you missed -- we've got the feature out, but we're still working on the docs. I'll help you get it set up.
First step is to fill the Location, Description, Amenities, and Photos tabs of each property. That is what fills the site with property info.
Then, go to Hosted Sites in Settings, turn on the feature. It'll lead you right into adding a site. Name it something relevant, maybe "ric hart", and select Type: Multiple (because you want multiple properties on the site).
That'll set up a default site for you, at a test location on our servers. Once you've got that, you can customize, add content and custom pages, etc.
Let me know if you run into any snags and I'll get you sorted.
When you're ready to go live, let me know and I'll walk you through that process.
I would like to know how much hosted sites would be for 3 properties? Thanks! Also info about how to set this up. There may be a blog on this that I missed.
Thanks!
Thanks,
Yes we did run some statements and delete to figure out how things work. Statements and bookings looked fine to begin with.
Yep, this was a report bug. It wasn't filtering out statements that were deleted -- looks like you'd done some test ones at some point and deleted them.
This is now fixed.
And to be clear, this is just showing on the report Actual bookings and statements all look good. This is just a report bug, I think.
Hi Tammy,
To be clear, you're referring to the "PM Owner Remittance Summary" report?
I took a look at your account and you're right. There is owner remittance showing in months for which no statements have actually happened.
I've put in a priority ticket on this. I think we've got a bug in there somewhere.
These reports are really new by the way. We just released the Owner and Manager Remittance ones a week or two ago.
Thanks for letting us know,
-Michelle
What is this report actually pulling from? We have not had any payouts yet, just bookings. Some of the owners for the year show 0 and others show all bookings, and others show some of their bookings.
The owner statement however appears correct.
Hi Janice,
Your current billing "plan" is what determines how you will be billed. If you currently have the Legacy Usage plan, then you'll continue to be billed according to that plan's pricing model. Here's a support doc about Legacy Usage pricing:
https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/legacy-usage-pricing
I'm considering adding a 2nd property to my account. I'd like to know if the pricing will be per booking like my current property, or will I be switched to the flat $19.99/month price? Thanks.
Good question! The easiest way to do this is to create an email template in Settings > Email Templates using the merge fields that contain the charges and billing activity. You can then go to the booking, use "Email this Guest" and Switch to Template to send that email template.
I just put together a sample email template for you here: https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/template-receipt-billing-summary -- you can copy and paste that into the Custom Booking Template you create for this in your account. To paste, you'll need to hit Ctrl+V on your keyboard as browsers don't allow us to provide a paste button for security reasons.
Ahh. Is it possible to make a hidden page on one of your current sites? That's what I've done in the past for my cabins, for something like that where I want a special landing page for a email newsletter.
What I'm suggesting is to create a special page for that on the site, only accessible by URL not the menu, like http://www.smoky-mountains-cabin.com/bookfromnewsletter or some such. Then put the widget there, front and center. You can also put a paragraph tying it back to whatever you said in the newsletter, so people feel comfortable from both ends.
Would that work?
Thank you, I do not need one more site - already have 2. No, it is so I can have a link that can open from a mailchimp email, for example, when a person clicks on a "click to book" button. right now all I can do is to link that to my website, but the person still has to locate inquiry/quote widget on the webpage, and then plug in their dates. If link opened into inquiry form, they would not have to click around the page and could do inquiry right there and then.
What are you looking to do with the new widget style? Is this purely to avoid having a separate site, or is there a different flow you're looking for?
We do have a "hosted sites" feature that we're rolling out that includes the information you enter in listing data in your OwnerRez account, and then provides that hosted inquiry/quote as well.
Hi, I have a renter who would like a receipt as he stayed at my place for business travel and needs an official receipt to claim his expenses. I cannot seem to find a suitable 'report' or screen that would provide that. Does one exist?
Right now book/inquiry widget is embeddable - has to be embedded as piece of code/as html widget in a website. is there an option to provide inquiry/quote link to run the widget without need to embed in a website? Such as, where can be added as email hyperlink and similar, and open in a new https window when clicked? thanks
Thanks Michelle!
Thank you! It should do
