General Help and Questions

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The first thought that crossed my mind is to have a link on the realtor page that goes back to you.

>> They won't do that as their listings are built inside of their proprietary software

How do you keep the calendars synced when the agent does not use anything that can handle iCal?

>> Manually

Can you get an email from the realtor when a reservation comes through with them? If so then this would be relatively easy to do using zapier which could pick out the details from the email as soon as it comes in and then add it to your calendar.

>> Not consistently

>> one of the brokers uses a google sheet which I don't think that Zapier could easily pick out details from

I agree. I'd love to see an OR guest communication phone app, allowing push notifications, that has all the threads from the various OTAs while also being connected to a text portal imbedded in an OR direct-booking page. If OR included the option for co-host communications over this, it might even circumvent VRBO's deficiencies in that realm, or perhaps even simplify/extend the co-hosting option across all API-connected OTAs.

Hi Doug,

While we don't have a published app in the app stores, the OwnerRez progressive web app, which is saved as an app icon on your phone, supports push notifications. Supported Devices

Team Access allows for your "co-hosts" to communicate inside OwnerRez with guests via Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com. We have tiered permissions coming soon that can limit access by property/ies. Team Access Overview

Coming soon:

BUMP!

Any updates on this? I'm hoping to have a LOT more direct bookings in 2025 and manually emailing guests that book through the website feels like a sloppy/clunky way to communicate. This thread is several years old at this point, so I'm hoping there are some updated advice/questions!

Hi WaterfrontGem - a lot of the previous discussion is handled. This is also just a general help and questions forum, not the feature request one. Feel free to go search for existing ones to vote up or add a request there.

We are discussing what it looks like to have direct booking threads come into the new Inbox (and we already have plans to bring email into the Inbox later this year). Both of those would help communicate with your direct booking guests.

It's down the road a bit but we also have plans to build a Guest Portal that guests could return to, review the details of their booking, and possibly send messages, etc. Guests tend to fall back on the ways they are already used to communicating with email and texts/SMS. There's been a lot of new features come about since this thread was started. SMS is a great tool to extend your reach through OwnerRez communicating with guests. Have you looked at establishing SMS capabilities via OwnerRez? We have inquiry and quote triggers that can auto-answer for you and if you used SMS you could communicate out with them and when they reply those would be in the Inbox.

Got it. The {BUREVIEW} is what I was missing. Thank you for all of the help!!

You create a trigger and template to be sent to the guest after departure. Here is template sample Link field is {BUREVIEW}

and trigger sample 

Hi Jason,

As mentioned, you need to send an email with a review link so guests can enter their review for your property. 

You'll find what you're looking for in the article I mentioned earlier. This is one of the template examples in that help doc:

Hey Jason! This support article walks you through how to set up a message to be triggered automatically after a direct-booking stay that includes a link inviting the guest to leave a review: https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/trigger-example-send-thank-you-guest-who-booked-personal-website 

I understand this. But where do I set up a link for them to leave a review through my direct book site? The link provided in the widget only takes them to the reviews page. Not to where they can leave a review. 

No, because it is done through email or text link. You do not want random people without links leaving reviews on your website/widget do you you. The widget is for displaying reviews, not for collecting them. Reviews are collected via sending a link. 

I have all of the triggers and templates set up. I have the reviews widget added. But there is no way to leave a review on the reviews widget. 

Thank you so much!

I've been having issues with the VRBO channel bridge since January 21st. I now have 7 new bookings and cannot import the data. Rev 13.15 did not resolve the issue. I tried the reservation ID method as well and got the same error.

Yes, thanks for adding it!

Hi Jason,

You'll want to check out this article to help configure the header layout for tablets and smartphone. Sounds like you may need a Book Now button on those configurations:

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/hosted-websites-editing-headers-and-menus

If you need more assistance with this, please send us an email at help@ownerrez.com and we'll be glad to take a look!

Hi Jason!

Here are some examples you can use to have your direct book guest write a review for your property:

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/trigger-examples#scheduled-after-departure

Hi Scott, 

Are you looking for this new booking link in the inbox conversation? Hope this will help you get to the booking overview quickly.

You need to create trigger/template to send to the guest who departed with link to submit review. Guests leave review through link you sent.  Once review is submitted (you can approve them one by one or set to auto-show) it will be shown on your website and/or included in your review widget. 

Currently, it appears that direct booking can only be done from a computer, but not through looking at my OwnerRez website on a smartphone or tablet. Is this not an option? Or do I have something set incorrectly?

Has anything been done with this? I now have guests direct booking through my OwnerRez website, but I am not finding a way for them to leave reviews. Only the ones left on AirBnB and VRBO show up  on the reviews page. 

Are you referring to Safely?  When I visited their site it seemed like you need to have 10 rental properties.  Is that correct?

RentalGuardian Damage Protection policies are for standard booking types, they exclude Event coverage so this would not work for Denise.

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/damage-protection-common-issues-questions#common-exclusions

However, one of our other integrated insurance/protection partners may have an offering that works:

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/integrations-overview#insurance

If you move this to the feature request forum I will put my vote in

Yes, I had this situation where a dog got locked into a room and clawed the wall and door and window trim all up. Airbnb would not cover any general labor, however they covered specific items that had a receipt or that could simply be replaced. If I remember correctly, they paid about $200 - $300 of the total damage which was a couple thousand.

I don't allow pets anymore because this wasn't a first.

The options are to either chalk it up to a cost of doing business and move on (which is what I did), or get yourself specific insurance for these scenarios. 

The first thought that crossed my mind is to have a link on the realtor page that goes back to you.

How do you keep the calendars synced when the agent does not use anything that can handle iCal?

Can you get an email from the realtor when a reservation comes through with them? If so then this would be relatively easy to do using zapier which could pick out the details from the email as soon as it comes in and then add it to your calendar.

We rent our home and have just added an event space for 40 people on our property.  We currently have home insurance and require guests to pay for the insurance offered through Owner Rez, however we are thinking we may need enhanced liability and damage coverage policy for rentals that will be using our event space.  Does Owner Rez offer or recommend anything like that? 

Denise, When I was browsing I did see that OR has a Native policy through Rental Guardian, as well as a few others. 

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/rental-guardian

Hi Ed!

We don't currently support IF..THEN..ELSE logic in our triggers.

You could set up two templates - one email and one channel template.

Create two triggers to send - one to send the email template and the second to send the channel template. You'll use an email condition in each of them. For the:

• Email trigger, the condition would be the booking has a real email address
• Channel trigger, the condition would be the booking does not have a real email address

Here's what the condition looks like. I've highlighted the two applicable choices for what you're trying to do.

We rent our home and have just added an event space for 40 people on our property.  We currently have home insurance and require guests to pay for the insurance offered through Owner Rez, however we are thinking we may need enhanced liability and damage coverage policy for rentals that will be using our event space.  Does Owner Rez offer or recommend anything like that? 

When I'm reading or writing in a conversation with a guest, I will often need to click on the link to their booking, quote or inquiry. The unified box doesn't have this. It has a link to the transactions to a booking, and from there it's true that I can just click on the Overview link. But having that Overview link in the unified box will be best and appreciated.

I'm having the same issue.  How do you use the excel template?

Tools > Import/Export > Import bookings (from excel) > Download the template provided in this page.

Currently I'm waiting on a VRBO api so am using this for now. I set up Zapier to put my bookings into the spreadsheet automatically, but can be done manually. It's slightly better then putting them into ownerrez manually one by one.

I have tried several times over the last few days and i haven't been able to get it to work so i decided to manually enter the guest information and the $ break down. The only information that was sent over from VRBO was the first name of the guest.