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OK, so I've come to that critical moment when I actually have to bill someone through the system! I've entered their booking information. I've set up an account with SecureNet/WorldPay. How is it that I invoice someone so that they enter their own credit card information or do they have to provide it to me? Am I directly connected with SecureNet/WorldPay at this time? Should I have them use a Book It button instead?
I also need to let them know how the security deposit will be handled and I'm not sure how to inform them of this ahead of time.
I think once I do this a time or two it will be easier but right now I don't know if I'm doing the right thing and I don't want to screw up.
I think it depends on whether you pay them the annual subscription fee or whether your listings are free to list with a commission paid for each booking. The annual subscription listings should allow it; you just have to get them on the phone and bend their ear.
Get your website back up, add our widgets, and start directing new guests there any chance you get. You'll be surprised, over time if you keep at it, how much traffic you can bring in directly. A lot of listing sites, even VRBO, allow you to include a link to your website from your listing. You can also find local or regional listing sites or blogs (in your immediate vacation area) to post your website link. If you work at it, over time, you'll bring in a lot of traffic.
We have a project for "hosted sites" that has been simmering on the back burner for awhile. When released, you'll be able to turn on and manage a personal website directly from inside OwnerRez.
But there are options, so stay at it!
Do you think VRBO will allow the new "old fashion inquiry"? I would guess that they would immediately perceive it as a way around their new user fee of which they would lose revenue. Has anyone else had success with this? I guess I could try changing my email back to the OwnerRez email and see what the inquiries look like.....
Yes, leaving VRBO entirely is attractive on the surface, but since I get 75% of my bookings though them, I am not sure it would be a wise move.
I did have a website at one point, but I got little-to-no traffic to it and hence no bookings. Any suggestions on how to get a private website noticed by potential customers?
Hi Glen, I'm a bit biased of course :-) but I think OwnerRez features like reporting and automation are definitely worth the cost!
I wouldn't recommend duplication though. Can you just do your quoting and payments in OwnerRez?
For a lot of users, VRBO will pass through all guest info as "regular old fashion inquiry" if you call and ask them to. If you do that, and then make sure VRBO is sending those emails to the OwnerRez @inquiryspot.com email address, it will parse through nicely. No need to do any quotes or payments on the VRBO side, and we can keep your VRBO/FK/Air calendars up to date via iCal.
Anyway, good luck with booking. We're here to help! The listing sites have tried to steal all the power away from owners and managers, but it's not working very well. Lot of users have up and left VRBO entirely.
Speaking of which, what's the situation with your website? Do you have one? If so, do you have OwnerRez booking widgets in place?
So I used to use OwnerRez all the time for my property which was linked to VRBO (Homeaway). The inquires worked well and I was able to book and management payments through OwnerRez – which worked well – really well.
About a year and a half ago, I made, in retrospect, the bad judgement call to start processing everything though VRBO as I figured it would be ‘easier’, especially with their ‘Hospitality Manager’. That turned out to be a pipe dream. The hospitality manager is hard for some guests to use and the booking engine is buggy – I already flat out lost one reservation request due to a bug that did not allow me to send an updated quote. Obviously with this new traveler fee, this was the last straw.
Hence I am considering going back to OwnerRez to handle and manage all my bookings. The booking engine is much easier and more flexible than VRBO and the automated emails are awesome. In the meantime I have started getting bookings in from AirBnB and from Flipkey. In my humble opinion VRBO/AirBnB/Flipkey are the only real players in this game. I have tried many of the other sites – some where I have had to pay an annual fee – and the results of them are 0 bookings in 3 years. I would say my bookings are broken down from VRBO/AirBnB/Flipkey as 75%/20%/5%
My overall question is such: With VRBO now joining the ranks of providers who tack an extra fee onto each booking, has anyone still had success in utilizing the inquiry engine here? The last time I really used the system, one could process VRBO inquiries relatively easy and manage the booking fully from OwnerRez. However I can imagine that like AirBnB and Flipkey, VRBO is now a closed system in order to prevent any bypass of their greedy customer service charges as imposed by their own system.
What are others doing? I am considering duplicating bookings in OwnerRez regardless just to use the excellent reporting and auto-email features of it. Mind you, in full honesty, I am trying to decide if the $5/booking cost is worth it for just that.
Thoughts by anyone? Open to advice / suggestions ;-)
This is now available.
Go into your inquiry widget settings and change the Text Color setting under Display.
Perfect... I'll get that into our next hotfix release, which should be sometime in the next couple of days.
That would be great! Thanks!
We have a way to set custom CSS, but that's not very friendly if you're not familiar with web tech.
I could add a setting with color pickers like the calendar colors, would that work for you?
I have embedded the calendar and the inquiry widget on my website. My problem is I can't see the text because it is black and so is my background. How can I fix this?? Thanks!
Hi Laurie,
Those are some great questions. The process is very simple when adding it, but let me answer each of your bullets.
1) You are not responsible for any of the pricing or calculation information. It's automatic and the guest can select it, as an option, right when accepting their quote. If the guest has paid for travel insurance, you can see it under the Booking > Insurance tab.
2) No, you do not need to collect or remit tax. The travel insurance add-on is not even part of your quote or booking payments. It's handled entirely separately. The booking/quote charges will not mention it whatsoever.
3) Yes, it is a separate transaction. It will not go through your credit card merchant account. It is paid for directly through a connection we have with Travel Guard who charges it on their side.
4) Yes, we send the guest a copy of their policy and a list of common questions and who to contact for claims. That process, and the phone line for it, is managed by Travel Guard.
5) Yes, you can see it on Booking > Insurance page. From that page, you can also send the guest a link to buy it after the fact if they decide that they want it after booking.
6) No, you do not need to change your cancellation policy or mention it in your renter agreement. If the guest cancels and makes a claim, that is done by Travel Guard (who sends them their money back). You do not need to do any refunds or send any money.
7) Yes, you can use the PDFs that are shown there. The other thing you can do is prepare a test quote for yourself, after turning on the travel insurance settings, then look at the quote acceptance form (as a guest would) and click the "What is this?" link next to travel insurance. That would open a section which will provide you with more links and PDFs you can use.
Hope this helps,
-Michelle
Hi, we would like to activate this feature for our bookings, but I have some questions...
1. Does the insurance purchase appear anywhere on our quote? Are we responsible in any for calculating pricing, or is the whole insurance purchase process automated and outside our normal quote process?
2. Do we need to charge tax, or is the business in anyway responsible for paying or collecting tax on this purchase?
3. Is this a separate transaction, not associated with our credit card merchant transaction for the booking?
4. If a customer elects travel insurance, is all necessary documentation and contractual language supplied to the customer directly through Travel Guard? (Are we out of the loop? Refer any further questions to Travel Guard? Is there anything we need to know to support this product.)
5. Will there be a record anywhere in our booking that indicates this customer purchased travel insurance?
6. Do we need to add anything to our contract in regard to having offered Travel Guard as a cancellation protection option?
7. If we were to refer to this product on our website, I would assume it would be fine to apply/incorporate the descriptive .pdf files you referred to in the support information.
Thank you,
Laurie Elliott
Riverside Properties
laurie@riversideproperties.org
This issue is now fixed.
We just overhauled the tax system, and it looks like it's interfering with the quote charge ordering. The total should be fine, and bookings are fine. I'm looking into this as we speak and should have a fix out shortly.
I don't know if you know about this issue. If I put a discount on the charges page and save it, it goes to the bottom of the invoice under the taxes. It looks fine and charge is correct but if I go to change the quote again, it includes the other items above it in the discount including my fees. I don't know what it's actually charging if someone books... if it's the discount on just the rent or the whole booking...
Hi JJ,
At the moment, there is no form that will update the card info without taking payment. You would have to collect the card information from them offline and entire it. We do have that added to our development roadmap already - the ability to switch cards - but it not yet been scheduled for work.
-Michelle
I've been taking tiny deposits for people booking future calendar years. Then I pull the remainder of the 50% deposit on March 15th.
Some people want to use a different CC for the 2nd payment, which is less than the full amount. The payment link allows them to add a new CC but only for the full balance. Is there a way they can add a new CC online or do I have to call them all and type in the info directly?
thanks,
-JJ
Can't wait for the OwnerRez connector.
Nothing scheduled yet. If you're curious, we're working on these items right now in development:
- Turning taxes into reference items (a day or two away)
- QuickBooks integration (very close, few days left)
- Damage protection
- Our big OwnerRez Connector project to by pass walled garden listing sites
- Centralized messaging for guest messages in and out
Are you looking for a dump of inquiries or bookings with email address? The default export, available in the Export button at top right of the Inquiries page will give you an Excel file with guest info including email. You can get the same thing for bookings by going to the Bookings section, List view (in top right), and filtering for all time.
Note, this will only include email addresses we have, so if the inquiry came from AirBNB or HA/VRBO stripped the email you won't be able to access it this way.
Hi guys,
Is there a report out there that gives us the list of Email addresses of potential guests? Can we select by Bookings and/or by Inquiries?
Now that HomeAway is charging guests up to 10% in Service Fee, after the owners are paying them to list with them, we would like to contact potential guests to inform them there is way to avoid the extra fee...hence, OwnerRez, or other software programs.
Potential new customer may be coming to you very soon. :)
Claudia
Thanks. Any idea when this change might be in effect?
Good morning Ella,
That's a great question. Yes, we are expanding triggers - we have a number of development updates coming there, but most of them are on the criteria side. For instance, increasing the type of events for when triggers are sent or which bookings/quotes qualify.
At the moment, we don't have any updates planned for sending it during certain hours or specifying the time zone to be sent in. However, that's a really great idea. I can see how that could be frustrating for you depending on where in the world you're sending from. And it's true that some types of trigger emails may be better received by the guest later in the day or even in the evening.
-Michelle
Unfortunately, that is not possible at the moment. But it's something that're planning on adding as part of our result-to-settings migration. Basically rules will move to settings where they can be broken apart and have criteria like which seasons and properties to run for. At the moment, all rules are one-to-one on properties.
Is there anyway to set the minimum stay by season? For example, we only allow week stays in the summer but allow 2 day stays in the offseason. I need this capability to be able to allow guests to automatically book online.
Hi there,
I'm wondering if you are planning on implementing a bit more detailed settings for triggers. Emails are sent right before 4 a.m., after 3 a.m. eatern time with the current settings and don't work very well for me.
Having either specific hours or at least windows of hours would be a lot better.
Case example: I have an automatic email to be sent a day prior to departure with certain reminders about check out. It would be nice if that email arrived sometime in the afternoon, not the moment the guests wakes up.
Guests staying only two nights receive this email right after spending the night and I think that's a bit too early. Sending in the morning of check out however it's a little bit too late for me.
Thank you for consideration.
Ella
You guys are awesome, problem solved!!! Thank you again!
Keep up the good work.
Best regards,
Diego
This is now fixed. Have the guest retry the checkout.
Hi Diego, we already see the problem on our side and will be fixing this shortly. Thanks for your patience and I apologize for the error. You are the first Brazilian PayPal user we have encountered and there are a couple of unique things about the way PayPal Brazil does things. This should be fixed shortly.