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OK. Good to know something like that could be in the works. Thank you.
At present, there is not. We are currently working on overhauling many aspects of this process though, so something along these lines may well be possible in the future.
Hello,
I wonder if it is possible to collect a piece of guest information at checkout only for guests from certain listing sites. At checkout I ask "how did you hear about us?" and created a custom field definition {BXLEADSOURCE} to collect that information. That's all great for direct bookings, but it seems redundant that a guest who books through VRBO are being asked to tell me that they found out about us on VRBO.
Is there a way to only ask the question for direct bookings?
Thanks,
Bobby
No, Channel Bridge is still functional, so this is unexpected. Give it another try after a few hours, but if you're still getting the error, please write in to the Helpdesk with full details and a debug log as discussed here:
https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/channel-bridge-common-issues-questions#debug-log
Hi,
When I attempted to run channel bridge to download Airbnb bookings for payment reconciliation, I got this.
Analyzing your Airbnb bookings: staying 12/1/2023 to 6/3/2024 Finding csrf token Found csrf token V4$.airbnb.com$QBAqQIOu5Po$87GEOpKowfgq_LYzctdFuqX92_2H6rCZXtmooI1kgug= Kicking off Airbnb Transaction CSV download Error occured while initiating CSV download. Ignoring. Downloading bookings page 1 Found 0 bookings in 00:00:01 Found 0 matching bookings in 00:00:01 Analyzing your Airbnb future payouts Downloading future payouts page 1 No additional matching bookings by future payouts Done in 00:00:00 No bookings found
I noticed there was "Error occured while initiating CSV download. Ignoring.".
Is Channel Bridge tool deprecated and this is what's expected going forward since Airbnb payment sync is now in place or is this unexpected?
Thanks,
Maria
Trying to do something similar. Do you have a trigger to turn on pool heat/cooling if the guest has paid for it? I can't seem to figure out how to do it based on my conditions vs the OR integrated conditions.
Thanks
James- Was the Elavon processing to which you are referring not the popular Costco sponsored plan?
We reached out to Elavon/Costo and got this answer:
We (Costco) only offer IC Plus to businesses that process over $1 mil annually. STR are no longer being boarded under MCC 6513 – they are now listed as lodging due to VISA rules.
We found this:
https://usa.visa.com/content/dam/VCOM/download/merchants/visa-merchant-data-standards-manual.pdf
It's an official Visa document, and it says on pg. 87:6513 Real Estate Agents and ManagersThis MCC must be used for the payment of management fees, rental commissions, rental payments, and other payments at real estate agents, brokers, and managers engaged in the rental and management of residential and commercial properties. This MCC should also be used for payments of deposits for real estate purchases.
Short term rentals (of less than one month) must be included in MCC 7011 Lodging – Hotels, Motels, Resorts, Central Reservation Services (Not Elsewhere Classified) or, if appropriate, the Merchant’s MCC.
This MCC does not include mortgage loan payments and real estate purchases. These transactions must be identified with a more appropriate MCC such as MCC 6012 Financial Institutions – Merchandise and Services; MCC 1520 General Contractors; MCC 8111 Legal Services and Attorneys.
That's a great question!
What you might consider here is having a backup Agreement stored in your Settings > Legal Agreements that has a lower priority number set so it is not being sent out in your regular {BUFIXUP} messages when bookings are created. You could then make adjustments to that backup Agreement as needed, and manually send it from the Legal tab within the booking, using the e-Signature dropdown.
The guest would likely still receive the regular Agreement you'd usually send out, but you'd then be providing them with the adjusted Agreement after the fact for them to sign with the changes.
We'd love to discuss this in more detail with you. Would you mind writing to us at help@ownerrez.com so we can provide screenshots, maybe even a video, to show you the concept in more detail?
GVR does support a minimum and/or maximum length of stay requirement on surcharges. These can be set adding the Number of Nights criteria on the surcharge edit page in OwnerRez.
I contacted support and sent screen shots and details earlier today. No response yet.
Please write in to the Helpdesk with specifics so we can investigate.
This is a serious problem...I just found an Airbnb booking made 16 hours ago that has 2 "linked" guests on it and the trigger didn't run to send my renter agreement/guest contact info template because it "Did Not Send" and when I hover on that note it says "This trigger wasn't sent when this booking was created at May 30, 2024 5:33 AM because: No Airbnb thread found for this contact." I had to preview the message and copy and paste it and send it manually to the guest. This defeats the entire purpose of having templates and triggers and brings into question the reliability of the system. I am now having to monitor everything closely to make sure messages are being sent.
Hi Ken, that's perfect!!! Thanks so much!!!
Sure! OwnerRez can't set that up automatically, but, you can set bookings up manually with as many payments as you like. Here's how:
Wondering if there is anyway to set up for our guests to make more than 2 payments toward a reservation? This is specifically to see if I can continue to offer the following that I routinely offered to guests (before converting to OR) that want to rebook the vacation week 1 year in the future, upon checking out this year. We have historically allowed them to make the reservation with a small deposit if 1 year in advance, and then bill them in 2 additional payments at 6 months and 45 days prior to the next reservation's check-in date. Is there any way to automate this option? Thanks, Ted
So, I did a search in forums of this topic and found that OR doesn't support "replacing existing RAs" but updated ones can be uploaded to the "files" tab within the booking, for document retention. OR really should consider addressing this because I've had several RAs which required updates after they've been signed. Luckily, the guest and I let the issue(s) slide, but it could put me (the host) in a precarious situation legally, if there were litigating circumstances!
With that said...
Whats the best way to handle RA changes?
I've got a potential guest inquiry asking to bring a pet. "The boss" and I decided to allow this one time circumstance, due to the revenue it will generate over the upcoming holiday, but our RA would need to be modified as a result.
I have Adobe Acrobat...should I simply modify after its been signed and provide the guest with updated RA?...that seems to be the easiest solution, but what if the guest refuses to sign as a result of the current "no pets" rule listed on the RA?
...or should I temporarily modify the RA template for this one time booking?
Thoughts?
I think this may be helpful?
We need this update as well. We have properties that are owned by separate owners, they would each need a separate statement.
*You can create discounts or surcharges, without ordering, to apply only to GVR. If you only use one percentage discount, you could determine to create a cleaning fee that is adjusted for the discount.
*For example, $100 cleaning fee and 20% discount across the board, make the cleaning fee for GVR only $125, then the discount of 20% take it back to that original $100.
Does GVR support surcharges that apply only to certain lengths of stay? Can I create a lower cleaning fee that applies to 1-6 day rentals and then a higher one that applies to 7+ day rentals that my weekly discount can then discount back down to the normal amount?
*You can create discounts or surcharges, without ordering, to apply only to GVR. If you only use one percentage discount, you could determine to create a cleaning fee that is adjusted for the discount.
*For example, $100 cleaning fee and 20% discount across the board, make the cleaning fee for GVR only $125, then the discount of 20% take it back to that original $100.
Apparently, GVR doesn't support ordering surcharges and discounts. I asked OR about simply stripping the positioning data, but they said they don't want to presume how OR users want to run their businesses (I love OR to death, but man, sometimes I can tell I'm dealing with a company made up almost entirely of people who think in binary if-then statements like programmers instead of people who think like normal people who just want software that works ;) ), and besides, doing so would have the effect of applying discounts to all charges, including cleaning fees.
Oh yes, I remember this problem during setup. There is a discussion about ordering somewhere in the forum. In an ideal world, what I personally would like is for OR to strip the ordering GVR only
Joel,
Looking at all the recipients carefully, you are correct. However, this is an entirely new behavior -- as of today, or so it would seem after carefully checking my inbox. Before, I would just see one message recipient per booking
Hopefully this thread helps others who are surprised by what appears to be cross-threading at first.
Again, thanks for your help.
Antony
I just checked your account and looked at these messages. Initially this behavior might sound abnormal, but due to how Airbnb "message threads" work, it's actually expected.
In both cases, the Airbnb "message thread" has multiple participants, including multiple guests and multiple co-hosts. Who participates in a "thread" is completely controlled on Airbnb's side (I believe guests can invite other guests into their message threads... and there are other factors too I assume).
The result is that, all three of the guests: S, K, and L, all saw the message posted by L because all 3 are participating in that message thread. Anything you post to L will also be seen by S and K. Think of it like "CCs" on an email.
Unfortunately, our "conversation" view is insufficient to convey this information. That's one of the many reasons we are working hard on our new Unified Inbox interface which will be behave like a real inbox and clarify these situations where many people are participating in one conversation.
Sigh. I will, I was just hoping to get a quicker answer if it's not affecting just me. It's been 4 days since I sent in my last help desk help request and I still haven't heard back. As this issue is directly affecting customers I was hoping for a resolution a bit faster than that.
Mine are actually experiencing real errors. I wrote into the Helpdesk and was told that these errors are actually valid and I do need to make changes to avoid being delisted.
Apparently, GVR doesn't support ordering surcharges and discounts. I asked OR about simply stripping the positioning data, but they said they don't want to presume how OR users want to run their businesses (I love OR to death, but man, sometimes I can tell I'm dealing with a company made up almost entirely of people who think in binary if-then statements like programmers instead of people who think like normal people who just want software that works ;) ), and besides, doing so would have the effect of applying discounts to all charges, including cleaning fees.
One of the OR reps suggested I raise my cleaning fee to account for the weekly discount, but since my average length-of-stay is 3.03 nights per booking, that would have the effect of artificially raising the cleaning fee to an uncompetitive price for the vast majority of my stay or me taking a loss on it for longer stays, neither of which is a viable option for me.
I have had exactly 1 inquiry from GVR since it went live a few months ago, and to be honest, I suspect the whole GVR project is going to end up on the extremely lengthy list of often-popular products that Google has killed off over the years (https://killedbygoogle.com/), so I'm not really inclined to do much kowtowing to Google here.
I'm thinking I'll just exclude my weekly discount entirely from Google entirely until they get their act together and make their system work with how vacation rental owners actually handle fees and discounts. It just boggles my mind that Google provides zero ability to apply a rent discount only to the rental rate. Like, how did this product ever pass QA with that omission?
And of course there's literally no one at Google to even report this to, since Google doesn't believe in customer-facing support. So they may not even realize there's a problem here.
I guess I'll still have to create separate cleaning fee and pet fee surcharges that only apply to GVR (because they need to have no ordering information in them whatsoever, since OR won't strip them out on my behalf).
Anyone else have any ideas or suggestions before I spend an hour or two mucking with my surcharges and discounts? I can't be the only person this is affecting...
I recommend reaching out to help desk as this is extremely unusual.
Now all my guests are getting messages that aren't even from me, but from a host at a place that I co-host, with instructions for a property that they have never stayed at....
HELP!
Further to my message above, this error appears to be more than a display bug, because according to Airbnb the message from one guest was sent to two different guests from unrelated bookings. Here is what Airbnb shows for the first example in my message above:
Possibly this is an Airbnb error, but it can definitely cause a lot of trouble if it continues....
Thanks Adria, in the end I just set up a Hosted Website for each property and gave each its own domain name. Because I started with a multiple-property page, I'm now geting GVR error messages when I try to integrate via API with GVR. I've sent in a ticket a few days ago to help sort that out, though I haven't yet heard back.
This morning I started getting messages sent by one guest showing up as having been from several. This is a bug.
Here's what the message queue looks like. Three of the exact same message from three different guests at exactly the same time.
Actually only Lillian sent the message. When I click on the message from Karen, I can see this:
As you can see, the title says it's a conversation with Karen, but all the actual messages are duplicates of my conversation with Lillian.
When I click on the conversation with Susan, I get the same thing.
This has been going on since last night. Here's another example of one guest sending a message, but it's showing up as if the same message was sent by three different guests at the exact same:
Clearly a bug. FYI.
