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It is something we've thought about doing for sure because of what the big guys have done in the past few years but it is a very hard market to break into because of the saturation that the big guys have. We could certainly build the listing site, easily enough, but then you have to market and promote it and try to drive it to page 1 on Google for common searches. The big guys have saturated a lot of that space. Also, it then takes away from our focus on the back end management which we do really well and have a lot of passion for. So long story short, we'd like to but it's a big undertaking and not something to do on a whim. ~Sam
Devin and staff, thus would be a great time for you guys to fill in with your version of a listing site for Vacation Rentals. Does this sound like something you can get into??? It is ripe for the picking. Be like what VRBO used to be. Just simply a listing site.
I have 4 rentals that share a beach area on a small lake in NH, USA, ranging from $500-$1700/wk in summer, totaling ~$70,000 in bookings last year. Repeat business is about 50%, maybe more. I had been using vacationrentals.com annual subscription, and occasionally other 10% off the top places, craigslist, and some more localized cheaper spots. I think HA bought VR, and then was bought by Expedia ... And, it keeps getting worse for customers and owners, it seems.
I just got a communication from vacationrentals.com about a change in their policies, which was clear that they are pushing more towards taking 10% of everything, AND selling their undercoating. This, combined with a recent phone conversation with a tenant who bought all their undercoating, really got me ready to move on. I'd happily pay 10% advertising fee for new bookings if I could do the paperwork through ownerrez.
My cabins happen to be 1BR, 2BR, 3BR and 4BR. The 4BR is booked from June 10- Sep 11, without a single day gap. The 1BR has 45 days available in that timespan, but often fills much closer to the travel date (2 people can make decisions more quickly than a family/2families).
Thanks for the reply Michelle,
I'm be looking forward to the widget being available. I imagine with all the owners stepping away from VRBO and HomeAway they will be very keen to be able to bring reviews with them to help them rebuild their business as quickly as possible.
Thanks for all the great work you're doing!
Rebecca
Hi Rebecca,
We do actually have plans for reviews, yes! We've had a couple of small projects on the back burner for that for awhile. The idea is to collect reviews from the listing sites (VRBO, FK, Air) if you have the mapping configured in our system so that we know which property goes to what listing. Then there would be a widget for you to display on your website exactly as you describe.
I don't have a hard ETA on this, but it's something asked for before and something definitely on the roadmap.
-Michelle
Greetings!
So far I love Owner Rez. At the moment I am trying to come up with a way to allow guests to review our property on our website. I realize there are a number of third party widgets available, with the more capable ones coming with a monthly fee. However, it seems that it would make more sense for a review widget to be integrated through Owner Rez. I'm sure I can't be the only one asking this question, are there any plans to introduce reviews?
On another note, I'd love to hear from anybody that has brought VRBO reviews onto their webpage, and how they went about doing it.
Thank you to anyone who replies!
Rebecca
Michelle,
Thanks so much for answering my question. I am familiar with CSS so I will look into that. I am using the Wix website builder and will have to see if the CSS file is a possibility with their templates.
-Janice
Hi Janice,
There isn't a specific setting on the widget that lets you change those colors.
However, there is a CSS Url field you can use to host your own CSS file and override any style/color you want. This is a bit more involved, particularly if you're unfamiliar with CSS. Do you have any experience with the CSS standard?
-Michelle
I see the ribbon and text settings, but somehow I'm missing how to change the calendar frame from the default aqua color.
Hi Michelle, good morning.
Yes, it worked!
Thank you,
Ella
Good morning Ella,
The delete issue should be fixed now. Please try to delete this on your side, and let me know?
Thanks,
-Michelle
Hi Sam, could you please delete it on your end?
Ella
@Ella: We're looking into the delete problem. This should have been fixed long ago, maybe it snuck back in in a later release? ~Sam
Hi again,
I have the same situation. I have a scheduled custom email with a reminder for security deposit payment. However, now that you offer such reminders in your system, it makes no sense for me to send one.
I am unable to delete it and get a "server error" message. Could you please delete it for me? This is for booking ORB430449.
I guess the problem still exists that once custom email is set up it cannot be deleted by us?
Do you use a separate refundable deposit charge on the Charges section?
Earlier, I was talking about the built-in security hold configured here: http://imgur.com/ylSRTzd . Those values are defaulted from the Property rules on quote creation, but can be changed per quote if you so desire.
I will need to look into this further to see what I may have done wrong. I didn't include a SD in the quote to this guest, just rent and tax, so I'm not sure why it was including one when I went to approve the payment. There are some guests I charge SDs to and others (repeat guests) where I waive it.
The security deposit rule is controlled in the quote. Problem here is, once you create a booking off of the quote you can't change the quote values. Pending bookings are a edge case, sort of half quote, half booking. I'll look into adding something that lets you modify some settings if the booking exists but is still pending.
In the meantime, I turned off secdep for that quote in the backend. If you refresh the page, you should have the option to confirm without taking the secdep.
Hi there, I have guests staying an extra week. They are repeat guests and I don't want to charge them a security deposit. It looks as if I will have to charge them a reserved deposit given the only options I am being shown in accepting the credit card to take them off pending status.
Can you please let me know how I can just charge them the $700 without incurring the reserved deposit? The customer's last name is DeMichele.
Thanks!
Hi Claudia,
Great to hear from you again!
That's a great suggestion.
You could figure that out right now by using the Export button above the grid and then opening in Excel sum'ing on the column.
Also take a look at the Payment Details report under Reports > Details > Payments. Use the Scheduled Payment checkbox to filter. Then look at totals. That assumes that you have a scheduled payment in place for each booking.
Ella, will do. There has been a greater push for that feature lately, and we may have an early beta version of this out in just a few weeks actually.
"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."
Please keep us posted on this! That would be awesome
When you go under LIST, is there a way to give a total of outstanding Balances at the bottom?
Thanks!
Claudia
Glenn,
I do everything via OwnerRez. I reply to VRBO that I will send them a quote shortly and to look in their Spam/Junk Mail. I then go to OwnerRez and send them the link. I have both my email and ownerRez emails on VRBO, so everything is already entered into OwnerRez when I get there.
Hi Glenn,
We have a one-time manual iCal import (Tools > Import iCal) that will bring in bookings from other systems as "blocked off time" but this has to be triggered manually. We do not yet support a full background syncing for iCal.
-Michelle
Hi, quick question about booking calendar blocks. I can find the ical links to expose bookings (and blocks) to other websites. However I cannot seem to find a spot to put other ical links to block the OwnerRes calendar. I have a third party overall calendar that I manage and put blocks on dates. I would like these to show up as unavailable on the OwnerRes calendar. I am linking a web page to OwnerRes and want to use it as one of several sites that I take bookings on. From my overall calendar I ensure that all is aggregated from the sites and have an overall block that is resent out to AirBnB, VRBO, and Flipkey... I also want to send out the blocks to OwnerRes.
I am convinced to give the website another try. Weebly seems to be the best bet for this as they have beautiful templates and the sites are easy to create. I will certainly use your widgets. Are there any tricks to getting traffic to these websites? Like I said before I had a page for a year but I really did not get any inquiries off of it? Anyone else have experience with personal websites.
Noticing that VRBO has made yet more changes requiring more money. Although I get a lot of business from them I would really like to move away from them....
Sent!
Nancy, the person you're talking to is giving you mindless scripted responses. They don't know what they're talking about. Do you have a Virtual Terminal login with them? Might be this: https://terminal.securenet.com. Contact our ticket system at help@ownerreservations.com and give us the login for that, and we'll take a look for you. There may be a setting that needs to be turned on. Otherwise, we'll advise you on what to do next. The bottom line is that something on the SecureNet side is not configured correctly. We have many users using SecureNet accounts and none of them are returning this message other than your account. Thx, ~Sam
The CS person at SecureNet says that in order for ecommerce to be enabled, I need to put a pay button on my website that has source code in it. Do you know what she means by that? Would it help for you to talk with this person? I explained to her that the whole payment system was set up linked through your software and that people didn't pay directly from my website. She didn't seem to understand. I'm afraid I'd just get the same answer if I called back.
Edited to add, here is the log she just sent via email. Says "resolved" but it's not.
Name: Nancy
Mid: XXXXX88
Issue:
* merchant is having integration issues. She is sending invoices from Owner Reservation
Resolution:
* I advised the merchant how we normally integrate with other websites. However, the merchant is stated the Owner Reservations writes there owns codes and she send invoices from their websites. I advised merchant that she has to send invoices from our system, so we can process the payment. She stated she will call the other company back for more assistance. resolved
SecureNet has a list of error codes on their website in this PDF:
https://www.securenet.com/sites/default/files/Error%20Codes.pdf
On the fourth page of the PDF, you can see the error message that I mentioned in my previous post. That's the one we're seeing coming back.
The guest is right - this not from his bank. This message is coming from SecureNet and telling you that your account is not enabled for e-commerce/online transactions. They should be able to help you fix it.
